WEBVTT - Operation Warp Speed 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.840 Hi, I'm Carol Masser, and this week's cover story is 0:00:02.880 --> 0:00:06.600 about Operation Warp Speed and calling the search for a vaccine. 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:09.280 Operation warp Speed, which is of course the federal government's 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:12.520 mission to accelerate development of a COVID nineteen vaccine. Well, 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:17.560 it hasn't always engendered confidence. The name comes from Star Trek, 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:19.960 and Trek eas know that when a spaceship travels at 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.480 a high warp factor, well things can go wrong. And yet, 0:00:23.480 --> 0:00:26.319 amid the horrors of the pandemic and America's mishandling of 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.440 the crisis, Operation Warp Speed is looking like a rare 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:32.920 bright spot for the United States. So far, Operation Warp 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:35.960 Speed has awarded more than twelve billion dollars in vaccine 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:38.919 related contracts and has an overall budget of as much 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:42.000 as eighteen billion dollars, all of which may end up 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:45.000 looking like a bargain if it helps end the pandemic, 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.920 and there's a chance that may happen relatively soon. You 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:51.959 wouldn't bank your future on someone you don't know. Financial 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:54.560 advice is simply better when your banker gets to know you. 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:58.200 That's what City National Bank believes. The better they know you, 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:01.040 the better they can help you. Achieve yours. See what 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:04.720 personal can do for you at CNB dot com. Here 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:10.000 it comes, amid the horrors of the pandemic and America's 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:14.440 mishandling of it, some good news. Operation Warp Speed is 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:18.480 likely to produce a vaccine zoon by Stephanie Baker and 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:23.559 Cynthia Coon's On a late August day, in an industrial 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:27.440 corner of Baltimore that had been mostly silenced by the pandemic, 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:31.800 a red brick manufacturing plant was buzzing with activity. Deep 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:35.160 in the building, in a zone called Area three, the 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:38.240 stainless steel shell of a bioreactor lay on its side, 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:43.040 Having just arrived from Massachusetts. Employees had begun the task 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:46.720 of making the bioreactor operational. Within weeks, it would be 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:50.720 the center of a production line for coronavirus vaccines. When 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.720 the owner of the plant, Emergent BioSolutions, ordered the bioreactor, 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:58.840 one supplier said some critical parts wouldn't arrive until November 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.480 or December, and so Emergent enlisted the help of Operation 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:06.760 Warp Speed. The federal government's mission to accelerate development of 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:11.440 a COVID nineteen vaccine officials working with OWS, a couple 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:14.400 of whom are embedded with Emergent called the supplier to 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:16.720 say the order couldn't wait, throwing the weight of the 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:20.800 government behind the request. It's almost like having that bat signal, 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:25.359 says Sayed Hussein, who heads the company's contract manufacturing business. 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:29.400 They've been a great partner for US. Emergent might be 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:33.680 the ultimate operation warp speed company. In June, it secured 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:35.959 a six hundred and twenty eight million dollar no bid 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.600 contract to produce vaccines and therapeutics, one of the biggest 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:43.880 allocations of OWS funding outside of the pharmaceutical companies actually 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:48.240 developing the vaccines. It subsequently signed two hundred and sixty 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:52.120 one million dollars in contracts to make doses for astra Zenica, 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:54.760 and then a four hundred and eighty million dollar contract 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:59.000 with Jensen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson. Those 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:03.440 companies are themselves Elves recipients of billion dollar plus OWS awards. 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:07.480 Earlier in the year, Emergent produced vaccines for trials by 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:12.000 the biotechnology company Novavax, which subsequently received one point six 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:16.600 billion dollars from OWS. Emergent is in business with three 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:19.480 of the six vaccine makers. OWS is known to have 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:24.079 backed Over the past decade, Emergent turned itself into a business. 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:27.520 The US government couldn't live without, the sole producer of 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:32.320 approved anthrax and single dose smallpox vaccines stockpiled for emergencies. 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:36.040 When the novel coronavirus hit earlier this year and the 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:39.280 US government went hunting for surge capacity to make vaccines, 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:42.720 it turned to Emergent. This was actually a kind of 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:47.720 global race to secure manufacturing capacity, says Paul Mango, Deputy 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:50.160 chief of Staff for Policy at the Department of Health 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:54.160 and Human Services and a key figure at OWS. We 0:03:54.240 --> 0:03:57.360 knew we would need an enormous amount of manufacturing capacity 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:00.120 to get this done, hundreds of millions of doses in 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:02.920 a time that has never been done in history. There 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:06.040 wasn't a lot of idle manufacturing capacity laying around in 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:11.000 the US. Operation warp Speed isn't an agency as such, 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.720 but rather a mechanism to coordinate among private companies and 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:19.600 an array of US government bodies, the Department of Defense HHS, 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.760 the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:26.359 and Prevention, and beyond. More than six hundred people in 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:29.600 HHS and ninety people from the d o D are involved. 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:32.640 It's a coordination activity that helps to cut through the 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:37.400 bureaucracy faster, says Paul Stoffel's chief scientific officer at Johnson 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:41.000 and Johnson. O WS has awarded more than twelve billion 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:44.880 dollars in vaccine related contracts and has an overall budget 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:48.200 of as much as eighteen billion dollars. As if the 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:52.520 logistics and science aren't challenging enough, President Trump has dialed 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:54.760 up the pressure to get a vaccine cleared before the 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:59.080 November third election. F d A Commissioner Stephen Hahn dashed 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:01.760 those hopes in lates September when he drew up tough 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:06.160 new safety guidelines for approving coronavirus vaccines just after he 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:08.719 was released from the hospital for his own case of COVID. 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:12.800 Trump attacked Han by tweet just another political hit job 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:17.600 at Steve. F d A. The precedent's single tangible, constructive 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:20.800 contribution to the pandemic response has been to bless the 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:24.760 establishment of ows, Denying the virus was a real threat 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.400 for months, Trump failed to come up with a national 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:30.080 strategy to control it spread and left it to the 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:34.120 states to respond. Then he endorsed a company driven approach. 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.880 Mango says There are now more than twenty five manufacturing 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.520 sites producing or gearing up to make vaccines, vials, and 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:45.640 other things necessary for a mass vaccination program. With ows 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:49.800 tracking progress through streams of spreadsheets, it appears to be 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:53.920 a conspicuous exception to the otherwise disastrous management of the pandemic. 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:57.440 The only part of the pandemic Trump responded to was 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.920 things he could get companies to manufacture. As Peter Hotez, 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:04.360 dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.919 College of Medicine in Houston, there was never an understanding 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:10.680 that the hard part is giving adequate time to make 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:13.880 sure the vaccines work. It was always reframed as a 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:18.080 manufacturing problem. It was Trump bringing in his personal relationship 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:24.240 with CEOs to get them to make stuff. Calling the 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:29.480 search for a vaccine operation warp speed hasn't always engendered confidence. 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:32.600 The name comes from Star Trek, and trek eas know 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.040 that when a spaceship travels at a high warp factor, 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:39.240 things can go wrong. More to the point, Anthony Fauci, 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:43.440 director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases NAID, 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:48.000 has expressed concern that the name suggests recklessness. No one 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:53.000 is cutting corners. Fauci insists perception issues aside. The idea 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:57.000 behind OWS makes sense. A top notch vaccine specialist from 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.560 the private sector, former Glaxo Smith Klein executive of Monsef 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:04.839 Sloughie is paired with military logistics expert Gustav Perna, a 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:07.400 four star general who led the U. S Army Material 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:11.680 Command and is now the OWS Chief operating officer. They 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:14.800 are a study in contrasts. On a recent visit to 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:18.240 a Cincinnati hospital taking part in a vaccine trial, Perna 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:21.960 was in camouflage fatigues while Sloughie wore a blue button 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:27.160 down shirt. Guided by Sloughie, a Moroccan born Belgian American scientist, 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:32.360 OWS selected a portfolio of coronavirus vaccine candidates being developed 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:35.560 by some of the world's top pharmaceutical companies, as well 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:40.480 as some untested newcomers. By betting on several horses, OWS, 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.400 in theory, increased the chances that one or more would 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:47.080 cross the finish line everyone hopes at a warp like speed. 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:51.640 Sloughy steered investments not just to different companies, but also 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:55.480 to different ways of making vaccines. MODERNA and Viser, which 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:58.520 is teamed up with Germany's bio in Tech are testing 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:02.640 vaccines that use messenger RNA, a genetic material that instructs 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.680 the body to make viral proteins that in turn trigger 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:09.800 and antibody response, in this case against stars cove to 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.720 the virus that causes covid J and J and Astra 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:17.680 Zeneca are using a viral vector technology that deploys an 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:20.920 altered common cold virus to carry the genetic material of 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:25.480 the coronavirus and produce an immune response. The novavax vaccine 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:29.000 and one from Glaxo and France's Sinophi are based on 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.040 the virus is spike protein and use an immune boosting 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:36.079 adj evan to spark antibody production. Fiser might be first 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:38.280 out of the gate. The company has said it could 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:42.079 be ready to apply for authorization by late November. Unlike 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:44.360 the others, the company chose to pay for its own 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:47.560 testing and production and will recoup some of its investment 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:51.680 only when its vaccine gets authorized and OWS buys the shots. 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:55.559 Slowey says his being new to government is an advantage. 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:59.480 Everybody is party to a given kingdom, he says, having 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:02.640 somebody from the outside come in that's effectively blind to 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:06.079 all the history and politics the bureaucracy that may exist 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:09.679 and is uniquely focused on integrating their work was an 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:12.160 essential element of how warp speed was able to go 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:16.800 very fast. O WS released a document in mid September 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:20.400 outlining how it would distribute vaccine doses. It has a 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:23.640 military tone. The title is from the Factory to the 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:28.440 front Lines. General Paul Ostrowski, perna's deputy, has said the 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:31.000 goal is to begin delivery within twenty four hours of 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:36.320 any approval or emergency use authorization, with distribution centralized and 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:39.920 farmed out mainly through McKesson, a Texas drug distributor that 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.160 had an existing contract with the CDC to deliver vaccines. 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:47.120 To track where every dose goes, OWS is building an 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.960 integrated computer system that brings in the CDC's existing systems 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:53.840 o w S, as it expects to have as many 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:57.800 as seventy five thousand injection sites across the country. States 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:01.439 have sent the CDC proposals for how to manage distribution locally, 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:06.040 but in mid October, the bipartisan National Governors Association submitted 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:09.120 a long list of questions to the Trump administration about 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:12.440 everything from funding to storage, making it clear the states 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:16.400 don't see a workable federal plan in place. Some observers 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:19.679 have questioned how a victory for Joe Biden might affect 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:22.760 the course of the program. According to Mango, the point 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:26.440 is largely moot. The US is on track to produce 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:30.720 more than one million doses of coronavirus vaccines manufactured by 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:33.200 multiple companies by the end of the year, he says, 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:37.000 and by inauguration day, the vast, vast majority of the 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.600 heavy lifting will be behind us. The Biden campaign says 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:44.440 it will back scientists involved with warp Speed. Joe Biden 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:47.040 and Kamala Harris will provide the leadership that has been 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:51.440 lacking under Trump, to empower scientific professionals throughout our government, 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:55.160 including those involved in warp Speed, to ensure that a 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:59.439 safe and effective vaccine is distributed equitably, efficiently, and free 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:04.079 to all our Americans. Spokesman Andrew Bates said. Mango says 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:07.480 more than six hundred million shots should be available by April. 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:12.240 Behind those big numbers are a lot of variables and uncertainties. 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:17.280 Five of the six OWS backed vaccine candidates require two doses. 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:20.480 It's possible the FDA will not approve all of them, 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:23.319 which means untold millions of doses could end up in 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.599 the garbage, and indeed, Astra Zeneca and J and J 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:29.320 have had to pause their U S trials because of 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:34.920 safety concerns. Both companies resumed on October. Visers needs to 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:38.600 be kept at negative seventy five degrees celsius, which makes 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:45.160 distributing it across the country a daunting task. The creation 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:48.679 of Operation Warp Speed might have been unnecessary if not 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.840 for a series of decisions that now look tragically myopic. 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.120 Public health experts had been sounding the alarm about the 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.600 lack of pandemic preparedness for the past two decades, but 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:01.800 they were drowned out by con turns over a bioterrorist attack. 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:05.640 Those fears were amplified in June two thousand one when 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:09.240 a group of US officials and policymakers convened for Dark Winter, 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:14.000 an exercise which simulated a biological weapons attack involving smallpox. 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:17.240 In many ways, the exercise gamed out much of what 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.960 is unfolded in the US during the COVID pandemic, including 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:23.880 the lack of surge capacity to treat victims and the 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:28.120 difficulty of controlling the outbreak. After Dark Winter came September 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.920 eleven and a series of highly publicized anthrax attacks in 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:35.400 the US, ushering in a new round of government spending 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:40.360 to ward off a bioterrorist attack. Emergent, then called Bioport, 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:44.800 was the loan producer of the only FDA licensed anthrax vaccine. 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:49.840 The federal government soon began stockpiling millions of doses. In 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:54.360 two thousand four, Congress passed the Project BioShield Act, which 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.720 provided five point six billion dollars over the following decade 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:02.120 to develop and purchase medical counter measures, vaccines, and therapies 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:06.479 against biological and chemical attacks for the strategic national stockpile, 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:11.680 including emergence anthrax shot. The Act wasn't designed to tackle 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:15.680 naturally occurring infectious diseases, despite coming right on the heels 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:20.000 of severe acute respiratory syndrome or STARS, which was caused 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:23.800 by a coronavirus. STARS had by that time infected eight 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:27.480 thousand people globally and killed seven dred and seventy four 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.439 with outbreaks still popping up in Asia that year. Drug 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.160 companies weren't eager to invest in the development of drugs 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:38.360 and vaccines needed for the strategic national stockpile. They're often 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:42.320 risky research bets with an uncertain payoff. So in two 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:46.560 thousand six, Congress created the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:50.960 Authority known as BARDA to fill that void. Through a 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:55.600 series of BARTA contracts and acquisitions, Emergent consolidated its grip 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:58.959 on the bio defense industry. In two thousand seven, it 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:02.000 secured a contract to deliver nineteen million doses of its 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:06.080 anthrax vaccine for the national Stockpile. It then acquired and 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:10.480 renovated a facility in Baltimore, the one now producing COVID vaccines. 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.439 There's a world in which those vaccines might have come sooner. 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:19.800 In Hotez, the Baylor scientist, got a large NAAID grant 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:23.680 to devise a vaccine against stars. By twenty seventeen, the 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:27.200 grant ended, and even though the vaccine looked promising, he 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:30.480 couldn't find money to begin testing it in humans. He 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:33.800 says it might have provided some protection against the new coronavirus. 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:37.240 We had it in the freezer. He says, these are 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:41.640 not really money making products. President Obama said in an 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:44.920 October speech that he left the Trump administration a sixty 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:48.200 nine page document on how to deal with emerging pathogens, 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:53.360 including coronaviruses. We literally left this White House a pandemic playbook, 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.400 he said. But the Trump administration has made a habit 0:14:56.440 --> 0:15:00.640 of pulling the plug on Obama era initiatives. Int eighteen, 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:05.320 Trump's National Security adviser John Bolton dissolved the Directorate for 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:09.160 Global Health, Security and Bio Defense, created by Obama after 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:13.080 the Ebola epidemic of to coordinate the White House response 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:16.960 to outbreaks of infectious diseases around the world. Bolton said 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:20.000 via Twitter that global health remained a top priority of 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:23.520 the National Security Council and that its experts effectively handled 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:29.520 the nineteen Ebola outbreak. Responsibility for pandemic planning has long 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:33.320 been scattered across the federal government. There's nothing as visible 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:37.360 as a federal emergency management agency. Perhaps the closest thing 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:40.800 is the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.040 headed by Robert Cadolick, a doctor and retired Air Force colonel. 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:48.320 A year after being appointed to the position by Trump, 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:52.120 cadlik took control of the six fifty million dollar budget 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:55.400 for the Strategic National Stockpile, which had been managed by 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:59.240 the CDC. Catholic was at one time a paid consultant 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:02.440 for Emergent and had been in business with the company's founder. 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:06.920 The Washington Post reported in May. Asked whether emergence relationship 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:10.200 with Catholic put it in a favorable position, the company 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:14.160 said it's worked with multiple administrations, both Democratic and Republican. 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:18.520 Under the Trump administration, Emergence revenue has more than doubled 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:21.920 to one point one billion dollars in twenty nineteen from 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:25.360 four hundred and eighty eight million in twenty sixteen. When 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:29.120 the pandemic hit, the Strategic National Stockpile had millions of 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:33.440 doses of anthrax vaccine and enough smallpox vaccine to inoculate 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:37.440 every U s citizen. It's not as though Cadolic didn't 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:41.840 recognize the risk of a naturally occurring pandemic. In twenty nineteen, 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:46.000 his office oversaw a simulation of an influenza pandemic emanating 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:50.880 from China. The exercise, called Crimson Contagion, laid bare how 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.520 unprepared the US was for something like the novel coronavirus. 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:59.040 In testimony before Congress in December twenty nineteen, Catholic said 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:03.479 the US lacked sufficient manufacturing capacity for almost all necessary 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:09.679 pandemic supplies, vaccines, therapeutics, needles, syringes, and masks. If the 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:13.359 simulation was designed to spark significant changes to the government's planning, 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:21.800 they didn't come in time. On January, Shaan Kirk, Emergent's 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:25.600 head of manufacturing and technical operations, grew worried as he 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:29.119 watched the news about a respiratory illness spreading in Wuhan, China. 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:32.000 He walked down the hall to his colleagues running the 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.040 company's global supply chain and told them to start locking 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.399 up critical raw materials. I was fearful that this thing 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:42.240 could blow up, he recalls. Later that month, Emergence submitted 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:45.320 an in depth white paper to BARDA reminding the agency 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:48.920 of everything the company could do. Rick Bright, who was 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.000 serving as director of BARDA as the virus hit the US, 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.840 filed a whistleblower complaint earlier this year that painted a 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.280 picture of a federal government that was slow to act 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.840 on vaccines. He says he was ousted in April after 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:05.480 fighting pressure to allow use of hydroxy chloroquine, an anti 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:08.160 malaria drug that Trump had been pushing despite the lack 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:10.680 of rigorous trials to prove it was safe and effective. 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:15.000 In January, Bright says he tried and failed to persuade 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:19.399 Catolic and HHS Secretary Alexaser to allocate money for COVID 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:23.680 drug and diagnostics development. In a written statement, the HHS 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:27.040 said that from his position, Bright couldn't know everything being 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:30.960 done to combat the pandemic. Bright didn't respond to requests 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:35.280 for comment for this story. BARDA pressed ahead on COVID anyway. 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.480 In January, the agency contacted Johnson and Johnson to discuss 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.000 using the same approach for the novel coronavirus that it 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:45.520 had used for its Bola vaccine, recalls Staffles, the chief 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:49.200 scientific officer, we know the technology you have is developed 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:51.879 and you can scale it, he recalls BARDA experts, saying 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:56.280 over three meetings in Washington in February, Staffel says the 0:18:56.359 --> 0:18:59.560 company and BARDA came up with a development plan. As 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.400 at hammer out the initial contract, J and J began 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:06.879 talking to Emergent about locking up manufacturing capacity. On marcht 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.600 HHS announced four hundred and fifty six million dollars in 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:14.359 funds to support clinical trials and manufacturing of J and 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:18.000 J's eventual candidate, followed by an additional four dred and 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:21.920 eighty three million dollars for Maderna. In April, Emergent signed 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:25.480 an initial one thirty five million dollar agreement to manufacture 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:28.520 J and J's vaccine, with some work starting in twenty 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:34.320 and large scale production beginning in By mid April, daily 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.440 deaths from COVID were surging and the pressure to act 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:40.880 was growing. HHS officials were fleshing out how to set 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:45.040 up OWS. The decision to create a new body struck 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:48.800 some as an unnecessary gimmick, given there were existing inter 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:52.120 agency structures in place that the government used to respond 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:56.680 to Ubola. Although OWS wasn't formally announced until mid May, 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:00.160 HHS and the d D started laying the ground work 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:02.640 by interviewing as many as ten people for the role 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:07.320 of Chief Advisor ASAR, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and White 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.879 House advisor and Trump's son in law Jared Kushner interviewed 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:13.920 Slowie and decided he was the right person for the job. 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:18.320 He joined OWS as an outside contractor instead of as 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:21.720 a government employee, which meant he wasn't subject to federal 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:25.680 ethics rules regarding disclosure and investment of shareholdings that might 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:29.359 conflict with his role. Slowly agreed to work for OWS 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:33.119 for a nominal one dollar salary, with his expenses covered 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:37.639 under an HHS contract awarded to Advanced Decision Vectors based 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:42.880 in Alexandria, Virginia, which is handling compensation for several OWS consultants. 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:47.560 Sloughie has come under fire from congressional Democrats who say 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:50.879 he has too many conflicts of interest with OWS companies. 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:55.680 He vociferously denies that. He says he's a registered Democrat 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:58.240 who joined o w S because he believed finding a 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:03.040 vaccine was more important than party politics. After heading vaccines 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:06.560 at Glaxo Smith Klein, he'd taken board seats at Maderna 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:11.120 and briefly the Swiss drug manufacturer Lonza Group, Maderna's vaccine 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:15.359 manufacturer of choice. When he agreed to join o WS, 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:18.680 he resigned from Lonza and Maderna and promised to sell 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:22.640 all his Maderna shares. He insisted on keeping his multimillion 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:26.439 dollar stake in Glaxo, which he's called his retirement, but 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:29.600 pledged to donate any gains to the National Institutes of Health. 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.040 From the day he started at OWS, he says he 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:36.320 wasn't involved in negotiating the deals with Maderna or the 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:39.879 Sinophi Glaxo partnership. I stayed completely out of it, so 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:44.920 Lowie says. On July two, Francis Collins, the NIH director, 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:49.040 and Gary Disbrow, acting bar to director, testified on o 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:52.880 WS before Congress, but refused to provide details on how 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:56.399 the program would pick vaccines to fund. At that point, 0:21:56.520 --> 0:21:59.440 o w S had announced one point to billion dollars 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.200 for Astra's Enica's vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford. 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:07.400 Democrats asked how many vaccines it would back more than one, 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:10.720 dis Brows said with a chuckle, I'm sorry, it really 0:22:10.840 --> 0:22:15.440 is procurement sensitive. Over the next six weeks, OWS handed 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:18.360 contracts worth more than eight million dollars to back five 0:22:18.400 --> 0:22:23.840 additional vaccines, those from Johnson and Johnson, Maderna, novavax Biser, 0:22:24.200 --> 0:22:28.840 and Sonophi jointly with Glaxo. The government reluctantly released some 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:32.720 of the contracts heavily redacted over the summer in response 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:36.560 to Freedom of Information Act requests. Slowe says the fuss 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:40.919 is unnecessary. They are playing vanilla contracts. There's nothing special 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:43.479 about them apart from the amount of money, which relates 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:47.159 to the cost of developing the vaccines. In mid October, 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:50.960 the advocacy group Public Citizen filed a lawsuit demanding the 0:22:51.000 --> 0:22:55.440 release of coronavirus vaccine contracts. SLOWI says the contracts will 0:22:55.480 --> 0:23:00.920 be released soon. On October, HHS released the Maderna contract 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:06.160 heavily redacted. Ows has provided a huge payday for many 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:10.359 pharma executives. Maderna executives netted a profit of one and 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:13.680 fifteen point five million dollars from selling shares in their 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:17.359 company from May fifteenth to August thirty one, according to 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:22.640 Accountable Pharma, a nonpartisan watchdog group. A Maderna spokesman said 0:23:22.640 --> 0:23:26.359 the share sales were done through previously scheduled programs and 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:31.360 in accordance with insider trading regulations. Emergent executives netted five 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:35.119 million dollars selling shares during the same period, and in September, 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:39.440 the company's executive chairman, fouled l Hebre sold an additional 0:23:39.480 --> 0:23:41.960 eighty thousand shares for a net profit of eight point 0:23:41.960 --> 0:23:45.840 one million dollars. Emergent said in a statement that executives 0:23:45.920 --> 0:23:51.520 regularly sell stock following all laws governing financial transactions. Emergence 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:54.520 shares were up seventy eight percent this year through October. 0:23:55.720 --> 0:23:59.280 It's a perfect business, says Eli's Upnick, a spokesman for 0:23:59.320 --> 0:24:03.680 Accountable Armor of the OWS companies, their downside is covered 0:24:03.720 --> 0:24:07.040 by taxpayers, and their upside is already in their pockets. 0:24:10.520 --> 0:24:13.359 After announcing the six d and twenty eight million dollar 0:24:13.440 --> 0:24:17.919 OWS award for Emergent in June, Perna and Slowie visited 0:24:17.960 --> 0:24:21.600 the company's Baltimore manufacturing facility to deliver a message that 0:24:21.680 --> 0:24:24.320 the entire U. S. Military was ready to help work 0:24:24.359 --> 0:24:27.800 out supply chain glitches. He had said that everything is 0:24:27.840 --> 0:24:32.120 on the table Emergence. Hussein recalls of Perna's message, every 0:24:32.200 --> 0:24:36.679 day counts, every hour counts. Some farmer executives described the 0:24:36.720 --> 0:24:40.160 military's role in speeding up vaccine manufacturing as a genuine 0:24:40.240 --> 0:24:44.359 bright spot in the federal pandemic response. Much of the work, however, 0:24:44.480 --> 0:24:49.800 remains opaque. Ostrowski, Perna's number two, says, OWS intervened on 0:24:49.840 --> 0:24:53.399 behalf of suppliers working with Maderna to expedite orders of 0:24:53.480 --> 0:24:56.920 key equipment and supplies, but he didn't offer any specifics. 0:24:57.760 --> 0:25:00.359 My hat goes off to these great America ends that 0:25:00.440 --> 0:25:03.119 want to be part of the solution to this national pandemic, 0:25:03.359 --> 0:25:06.640 he said. An emailed responses to Bloomberg Business Week's questions. 0:25:07.359 --> 0:25:11.320 Maderna is the largest recipient of taxpayer funds a total 0:25:11.359 --> 0:25:14.600 of two point five billion dollars to advance and supply 0:25:14.720 --> 0:25:18.760 its vaccine, including a three hundred million dollar milestone payment 0:25:19.080 --> 0:25:21.560 if it's able to deliver one hundred million doses by 0:25:21.640 --> 0:25:26.600 January thirty first one under an FDA Emergency Use Approval 0:25:26.760 --> 0:25:30.320 or full license. Maderna said in a statement that it 0:25:30.440 --> 0:25:34.119