12/4/21 - Weekend Listening from Intercontinental Exchange
Our guest this week: Gregory Zuckerman, author of A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine
Last May, the geniuses at the World Health Organization opted for the Greek alphabet sequence for labeling “important” new variants of Covid-19.
Somehow, the Alpha, Beta and Gamma variants didn’t cause a crisis. Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL) was none too thrilled when the fourth such variant reared its head this summer. “We just call it the variant,” CEO Ed Bastian told the Wall Street Journal in July. “There’s other variants coming up behind it,” he told the reporter. He didn’t have to wait long. There’s 11 alphabetic stops in the step-by-step progression from Delta to Omicron, and this morning that variant has already been reported in 12 U.S. states.
The curious thing is, the WHO opted to pass over the two immediate Greek letter predecessors. First came “Nu,” which would have caused verbal gymnastics when speaking of “the new Nu variant.” Then came Xi which, sharing the transliterated spelling of the name of China’s president, introduced a host of other problems. The WHO tries to steer clear of “causing offense to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups” when it labels a new disease, the organization offered in an email to Reuters.
So whether it’s Omicron, Pi, Rho, Sigma, or the six additional stops on the way to Omega, the variants are bound to keep the vaccine researchers and manufactures working overtime in the months and years ahead. CEO Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) expressed a “very high level of confidence” on CNBC this week his company’s Covid treatment pill will be effective against the omicron variant.
Confidence, among a long list of other attributes, is what got us a Covid vaccine within a year. Researching, reporting and writing from his New Jersey basement during the height of the pandemic, the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Zuckerman wrote the origin story on The Shot to Save the World. We spoke to Greg in our episode this week.
The view from the Zuckerman family basement:
Greg Zuckerman’s Scoop on the Race to a COVID-19 Vaccine Gregory Zuckerman, author of A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine, spent the past 22 months diving deep into the companies and personalities developing a defense to the pandemic. Greg returns to the podcast to share the vibrant story of perseverance, inspiration, and triumph that culminated in the creation of not one but several shots to end a modern plague. He also updates listeners on the subject of his last book, RenTec’s Jim Simons.
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