Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
albert berla ceo of pfizer if you would
like to skip ahead to our conversation
the timestamps as always are below
but if not
please allow me to say a few words about
truth and human nature
specifically about two groups of people
throughout history that seek to lay
claim to the truth
the first group will tell you that only
they possess the truth and that the
government will save you the company
will save you the science the
authorities the experts the institutions
will save you
the second group too will tell you that
only they possess the truth that the
government will hurt you the company
will hurt you the science the
authorities the experts the institutions
will hurt you
both groups have the benevolent and the
malevolent their heroes and their
charlatans and i think the hard truth
is that no one in this world can tell
you with absolute certainty which is
which
you have to use your mind
this is the burden of being human of
being free
don't blindly follow any leader neither
the emperor nor the martyr who points
out that the emperor has no clothes
and then there's the lessons of history
vaccines have saved hundreds of millions
of lives in the past century and in
general the advance of medicine has
saved billions of lives if you ignore
the power of science you're not being
honest with the lessons of history
and
if you ignore the corrupting nature of
power and money within institutions
including governments and companies
that led to the suffering and death of
hundreds of millions in the past century
you are once again
not being honest with the lessons of
history
i announced that i will be having this
conversation with albert berla pfizer
ceo and a lot of people wrote to me
i would like to say that i was and am
and always will be listening and
learning with an open mind from everyone
my own opinion worth little as it is is
that the development of the coveted
vaccines is one of the greatest
accomplishments of science and recent
history
for the rest from safety and efficacy to
policy and economics i stand humbled
before a complicated world full of fear
and anger
a small number of malicious people from
all walks of life will use that fear and
anger to divide us
because the division makes them money
and gives them power
i took two shots of the fisa vaccine
this was my decision i don't ever want
to force this on anyone and i certainly
don't want to dismiss your concerns or
worse you as a person if you choose not
to get vaccinated
i can assure you one thing in this
conversation and in any conversation the
choice of questions i ask and words i
say is mine and mine alone when my words
fall short as they often do
it is only because of the limitations of
my mind and of my speaking ability it is
not due to pressure or fear
i'm not afraid of anyone i cannot be
bought by anyone with money power or
fame i hope to prove this to you and to
myself in the coming years
this life is short and to me without
integrity it is not worth living
people sometimes talk down to me call me
naive
perhaps they are right
but it is who i am
i think this life this world
this our human civilization is beautiful
and as dostoyevsky said
beauty will save the world
this is a lex friedman podcast and
here's my conversation with albert berla
the development of the coven 19 vaccine
was one of the greatest accomplishments
of science in recent history no matter
what this should give people hope for
the future and yet it is more of a
source of division
i hope we can discuss both the inspiring
and the difficult ideas in this
conversation
so that we can do our small part in
healing this division
i hope so
take me through the day of november 8th
2020 when the pfizer team were waiting
for the results of the phase 3 clinical
trials
we had assembled in a very small office
that we are having in connecticut very
few people
there were five i think
and
in in another place
what we call the data monitoring
committee which is a group of experts
independent experts they're on pfizer
we're going to have
the opportunity to unblind the data
and then
tell us if the study needs to continue
or if it is successful or if it fails
and we were waiting for their call so
the call came
a little bit later when what was
expected which created a lot of
anxiety to all of us but came around i
think two o'clock you're just sitting
there waiting what were you feeling
sitting there waiting and teasing one
another
drinking coffee making jokes
so what how did you feel like when you
heard the results
the successful results
free liberated and
happy
like if a
huge weight that was
on my shoulders was lifted
i heard you uh
said i love you to the team
i did
you know
this is how we speak in uh
in the mediterranean listen maybe it's
the russian thing too i i i
love love so i appreciate that kind of
uh
celebration
so looking back from that moment to
before how much did it cost to develop
the pfizer
biontech vaccine
what was it like making the decision to
make that investment
when the risk is very high and you don't
know if it's going to be successful
you know we do a lot of that anyway this
is what we do in our daily work we are
putting
money
we are investing in research which is
highly risky the difference in that case
was
that within the risk at all we put it
all in
we put everything
in one go so that we don't lose time
usually we'll spend 50 millions and then
if that goes well then we will spend
another 50 and then if it goes well then
100. here we put all together
a little bit more than 2 billion dollars
2.3
billion dollars and
it was a
significant decision
but it was a very easy decision to make
in the context of what we were living at
that time
it was pandemic people were scared we
were scared we didn't know how tomorrow
looked like
we were living unprecedented situations
and
we knew
that we have capabilities that may help
so there was not a second question or
choice we go all in
when you make decisions like that
you're the ceo of a company
that needs to make money
and that
hopes to do a lot of good in the world
how much of both of those things are
part of the calculation
so when you said it was a obvious choice
um i think you've said a bunch of things
of the kind of saying we need to go all
in
instead of very boldly diving in
how much was that that the world is
facing uncertainty and fear and
potentially
destructive pandemic in the early days
just when you're seeing the full
uncertainty before us don't know how
it's going to unroll and how much of it
is
this may also be a good financial
decision to take this risk yeah i think
about it all the time and i know very
well
that if you focus too much on making
money you will never make
you should focus in what is the real
value driver and the real
value driver it is to
make breakthroughs that change patients
lives
if you don't do that you will never make
money
if you do that
don't worry things will fall into place
and also money will follow
but the mentality of the company needs
to be how to help the pace and that's
what
the management was that the shareholders
want because that's the only way that we
can create value in this particular case
we're not thinking at all
about what are we going to
make when we sell it or if we not sell
it
because what we were focusing 100 was
how to bring a solution to the world
that will help all of us
change the way the fear that was bring
hope to the world
and
as always when you do that you will have
good returns as well
on a philosophical level on a human
level do you ever worry
that the pressure to cover the costs
that were invested
to develop a new drug to develop this
vaccine
harms your ability to conduct unbiased
studies
ah not at all because the studies are
highly regulated
everybody knows what regulators and when
i say regulators fda
european authorities uk authorities
israeli authorities japanese authorities
canadian authorities want to see
how the study needs to be conducted
and what exactly they need to see to
approve it or not
so
clearly everybody takes into
consideration how much money i'm going
to invest and what is the chances that
i'm going to to lose them but what you
can do is to change the rules of the
game so that you won't lose the money
there are very well established
methodologies that would say
with very high precision if your
medicine is effective if your medicine
is safe and those are there for all and
are playing with the same rules
do you have an intuition about why is
the fda trying to get 75 years
to release the pfizer data they're
trying to request that it will not be
released for 75 years
and then
maybe the broader version of that
question is do you think
people should have
sort of um full transparency and
immediate access to the data immediate
you know on the scale of weeks not years
i think the relations with
with regulators they have been always
very transparent and there are a lot of
laws that
they are forcing
regulators to
end companies to put out there their
interactions and what exactly was
discussed
now to to go into specific details of
of some discussions i don't know what is
the reason that fda wants to take the
time and but i'm sure they have very
good reasons
well let me just say my side of it
it doesn't look like a good reason it
looks like maybe it's because i come
from the soviet union now this is not
you saying this this is me saying this
um
is there seems to be a bureaucracy that
gets in the way of transparency that's
always the challenge with government so
government is very good at setting rules
and making sure there's oversight over
companies and people and so on but they
create they slow things down which is a
feature and a bug
and in this case they slowed down so
much i think the reason they said it at
75 years is because
they set a rate of being able to only
review 500 pages of data a day or
something like that and that's a very
kind of bureaucratic thing where in
reality you could just show the data
and it's not like something is being
hidden
but in the battle to win people's trust
to inspire them with science it feels
like transparency is one of the most
beautiful things one of the most
powerful things that the fda has
fda is
has the potential to be one of the great
institutions of our country and uh this
is one example that it feels
to me like a failure so in your
perspective you're saying i'm sure they
have a good reason so to you the fda is
this black box
that you submit things to once they
approve
you know that
those are the rules it's approved that's
it but this is not a black box we know
very well what
is the process everybody knows very well
what are the processes
the
review process also it is
very detailed they have scientists of
very very high caliber not every
regulator in the world but the europeans
the
the bridge the fda clearly
they have very very high caliber of
scientists that they are going into
a lot of details and
also
basically everything for a study is
really
released by law in the
specifications of the product but it's a
very detailed document yeah but it is
issue and has basically the essence of
everything was discussed i don't know
about
specific documents if take them time to
release but clearly this is not a black
box
type of process a lot of this stuff is
how do you effectively communicate to
the world
about the incredible science that's been
done about the processes that were
followed and i agree with you and
sometimes it's just ineloquence in
communication it's not that there's a
failure process it's ineligible to
communication and silence silence in the
moment when clearly a lot of people are
bothered
and have questions
this is when you speak out and you
explain exactly why
as as opposed to letting the sort of
distrust build up
and linger
because the result is there's a very
large percentage of the population that
just
um
i mean it divides people
and science suffers i think
and also the effectiveness of solutions
suffers like the vaccine and so on
i asked a few folks i know if they had
challenging questions for you i'm sure
many of them
answer your call
uh yeah uh yeah yeah you know many
friendly folks out there uh by the way
i'm sweating not because um this is a
difficult conversation it is but it's
also hot in here for the record
so one of the folks is mr jordan
peterson
i don't know if you know who that is
he's a psychologist and intellectual and
author
he suggested to me that i raised the
concern that there is a close working
relationship between pfizer fda and cdc
so we we talked about fda
do you worry that this affects both
positive and negative
uh pfizer's chances of getting drugs
approved the fact that there's people
you know that worked at the fda that now
work at pfizer pfizer fda that there's a
kind of pipeline
does this worry you that it affects your
ability to do great
unbiased work
i have zero doubts that this is not
affecting at all
their ability to be unbiased and
regulate
and in order to for this the system also
reinforces that by creating significant
time barriers if someone moves from an
industry to fda she won't be able to
deal with topics for a period of time
and then for even an enhanced period of
time with topics that are related with
the company he or she may come from
i think these
regulators they are
very very strict
uh rightly so
if anything i feel sometimes that maybe
they should
be
a little bit more open-minded
particularly when it comes to new
technologies
rather than trying to judge
and implement the same framework of
variation of new technologies to all
they are always as regulators in the
conservative side but
always always they are unbiased and they
are trying uh the best and it's not only
one or two people
they have processes to make sure that
their self checks and balances within
the agencies both in cdc and in the fda
difficult decisions they bring external
experts that they should express easy
decisions they are internal experts that
they are debating a lot and if there are
disagreements they elevate them so
i think it's
we are lucky to have
good regulators i think
i agree with what you said before
as with all governmental agencies there
is bureaucracy
and the bureaucracy needs to be
addressed
and by saying the rockets is not
relaxing
the
the bar the bar needs to remain high
but uh
being uh
focusing on what matters rather than
on the on the detail
so you don't you know
i've been reading quite a bit about
history you don't worry about human
nature and corruption that can seep in
you're saying institutionally there's
protections against this i think there
is always
the the fear of corruption particularly
when you speak about public servants
but uh clearly the risk is very
different country by country
and speaking about and agencies by
entrances i think the regulatory
agencies
have a very good track record and
history of the us of europe of
england
of a very very good track record of
integrity
it's uh something i think about so i
grew up in the soviet union and um
i need to perhaps introspect this a
little bit but when i was growing up
ethically there was a sense
that bribery is the only way you can get
stuff done
that that was the system of the time uh
like you get pulled over by a police
officer like obviously you need to bribe
them
i mean it was like the way of life
um and then so coming to this country
was is beautiful to see that the rule of
law has so much power and ultimately the
rule of law
when enacted when
uh when it holds up it gives people
freedom
to do the best work of their lives
but they're still human nature and that
that worries me a lot here and again it
goes back to the perception the
communication when there's people that
have worked at pfizer
and an fda at the cdc
you know you look at their resume they
have those things on their resume it
worries people
are these great leaders
that we are supposed to see as
authorities
are they playing a game on us
i would say
that uh i recognize what you said about
what happened in uh or what i'm sure
that
what you describe in
the country that you're coming from it
was
how you experienced it and i know that
there are other countries that you need
to do these things to do your job
i don't think is the case
in this country
particularly when it comes to those
agencies that you mentioned
i think they have a very
high track record and also i don't think
that there are a lot of people that they
are worried about it or doubt i'm sure
like everywhere there will be a minority
but the vast majority of the americans
the vast majority of the europeans the
vast majority of the brits the vast
majority of the israelis they trust
what fda or ema or cdc
or mhra
will say
still there is currently a distrust of
big pharma in the public maybe this is
something i'd love to hear your comment
on
there's the stress of science when it's
tangled up with corporations and
government institutions like we've
talked about
but you have they have to be entangled
to achieve scale
oversight and to achieve the kind of
skill that pfizer has been able to
accomplish
how can pfizer regain the public trust
how can you regain the public trust do
you think not regain but sort of take
steps
to increase the public trust
reputation is something that
you can lose in buckets but you can earn
it back in drops
and
once you lost it
you are going to take a lot of effort to
bring it back
and the pharmaceutical industry lost it
it's clear that the reputation of the
industry
in the last decade was on the lowest
that we have seen
ever and
for there are many reasons for that
but clearly there are reasons that are
related also with the behavior of the
industry that needed to change and i'm
hopeful that
very few
will disagree that the industry is a
very different industry right now
that being said
i truly believe that uh if there is one
lesson that stands out
from the main lessons that we learned
here in covet
is the power of science in the hands of
the private sector
i think it was the private sector
that came with solutions with diagnostic
tests when we didn't have
solutions with respirators when we
didn't have
solutions with treatments solutions with
vaccines
and
i think that demonstrated very clearly
to the world the value
of a
thriving
life sciences sector private lifestyle
sector to society
that also affected very positively the
reputation
both of the sector and of pfizer
i'm not going to make the mistake to
consider given
i'm not making
to make the mistake that because our
occupation is high
that will remain so
we need to earn it every day every day
with everything we do
with everything we say with the way we
behave
and i hope
that we'll rise to this occasion and
we'll do that
you've been in pfizer for 28 years time
flies when you're having fun and you've
become ceo
in 2019
it is the company you love
a company you believe in
it's a company that has developed drugs
that has helped millions of people
so let me ask yet another hard question
on this topic of reputation in 2009
pfizer pleaded guilty to the illegal
marketing of arthritis drug bextra and
agreed to 2.3 billion settlement
how do you make sense of the fact that
this happened
to a company you love and that you
believe in yes
the dextra case
in 2009 was related to things that
happened in 2003
and the things that happened in 2003
were things that basically several of
our apps did off-label promos
so they spoke about
with the physicians about off-label use
of the product and they shouldn't
and can you clarify so off-label are
things that the fda didn't approve extra
stuff
you basically say this drug does extra
stuff that the fda never approved
correct and this is something that it is
allowed when physicians are speaking to
physicians but it is not allowed for the
pharmaceutical companies to refer to
this studies because usually our studies
that are happening of labor
and
apparently several of our reps in 2003
they did it
and
we had to
[Music]
to settle in 2009 and we paid a very big
fine as you said
the fine was related not to
the severity of the contact but the size
of the revenues so this the fines are if
dexter was a small product we would get
a small fine vector was a very big
product and we got a very large fine
very bad what happened in 2003
i don't think that these things
happened since then we have a stellar
record from 2009 until now
of complying with every single
regulation and rule we have internal
processes to make sure
that these are not happening by
individuals that may have an interest
for example to get a promotion they may
try and do things that they are not the
right things
and we have more importantly a culture
in this company
that really sets aside people that they
think differently
so i
didn't like what happened in 2003
but i believe a lot has changed in the
20 years that followed
almost 20 years
so you're developing drugs you're
developing solutions to help millions of
people but there's risk involved
and so
there will be lawsuits heading back your
way
because there's a lot of lawyers in the
world
partially
how do you put that into the calculation
of of how you tried to do good in the
world
um
that some of the causes the lawsuits
how do you uh
not fall victim to thinking that it's
just the cost of doing business and then
some of the losses might actually
represent real pain that people are
going through
you know i i think that we try always to
do the right thing and that's as i said
very
well embedded into our culture if you
don't do the right thing
sooner or later you will pay for it
one way or another yeah and right now
for us doing the right thing it is
being able to find innovations to
issues that are real
diseases that they do not have good
coverage good treatments right now
we try to find treatments that
significantly
surpass the current standards of care
and we try
not only to comply with what regulators
are asking us to do this is what you
need to do to prove the safety or the
efficacy but exceed them
no matter what we do on that
i'm sure that people will find
opportunity because as you said there
are a lot of lawyers to sue us but we
believe in the justice system and we
believe that
eventually
if you are doing the right thing
you will
be on the right side of the history
i'm really glad you say that because um
focusing on doing the right thing no
matter the money
i believe is the best way to make money
just exactly
and also in another way in other realms
creating a product that people love is
the best way to make money so focusing
on the on the core of the thing that
makes people feel good that brings value
to people's lives
so i'm now in austin texas
my good friend joe rogan
he's been highlighting to me
this aggressive uh
marketing on mainstream media channels
by pfizer so let me ask the general
marketing question
do you see this as a conflict of
interest is it my bias the reporting of
news
that a lot of us a lot of people
me included look to these mainstream
channels of news for kind of authority
of like what the heck's going on in the
world
and
if pfizer is sponsoring
uh
many of these shows
there's a worry it may be a perception
thing but there's also natural worry
that it would influence what they're
talking about because they're afraid of
losing the sponsorship it's subtle
but at scale it might have a serious
impact do you worry about this
i think people could go one way or
another
because of multiple reasons
from our perspective we
i don't think we have aggressive
marketing
what do we do we go on tv and we are
having
ads about our products
and
they are highly regulated
i think it is the right of people to
know to learn that if there is a product
like that it's very
clearly that we cannot say things that
they are off-label that have not been
approved we need to have every time we
go on tv as you know fda is forcing
us to say also the bad things that can
happen for a medicine sometimes that
takes more time
than the good things
and i don't think that we are doing
aggressive marketing
no
people could be influenced
in and can be biased in in the podcasts
or in the other type of media
activities that they have for multiple
different reasons
yeah i know but it's still it's pressure
it's human nature i mean i i if it's one
of those perception but i i worry about
you i think i have a ton of sponsors for
this podcast for example and none of
them ever asked me to
anything they're just you know
i think
likely that kind of pressure is not
happening for pfizer
but there's implied pressure sometimes
and i worry about that a lot
because um you know i look at academia
like i i look for the good in people i
tend to believe most people are good or
have the capacity to be good and desire
to be good
when i came to mit i
i was a little bit
disappointed maybe heartbroken
how much pressure
i think unjustified pressure people felt
from financial constraints
especially at mit when there's i think a
lot of money
people still felt constraints
and they weren't
it wasn't bringing out the best in them
they weren't supporting each other they
weren't loving each other like
celebrating each other's successes
i don't want to blame money on
everything money constraints but
when you have sponsors it just um
i personally worry that it doesn't bring
the best out of people
and so
i feel like i want to put some
responsibility on sponsors and and great
big companies
like pfizer to to kind of uh
not
get in the way of the best of human
nature whether it's sponsoring uh
podcasts
mainstream media
like i don't know athletes whatever yeah
you need to know that we are so so
careful with sponsorships first of all
we have very few
very very few
we have a team that for every single one
could be two thousand dollars
they will try to see if there is a
conflict of interest in the way we do it
and also what is the reputation
of the
of
the the persons or the programs that we
are sponsoring so
i don't think
our friend i think was from texas uh yes
yeah i don't hear rogan yes yes
i don't think he got it right that we do
those type of things
we don't oh in terms of manipu like
having a negative effect on not even
having aggressive sponsorships we have
very few
yeah when you clip them all together and
most of the sponsorship that we have it
is more on patient related organizations
right rather than we are very careful
not to sponsor other things that can be
perceived not even
influenced but perceived that we may
influence so we are very very careful on
that this is not the case with us
so with the incredibly fast development
of the vaccine
could you tell me the story from the
engineering
to the science to the human story of how
you could do it so fast
by november you even had the ambition to
do it by october it was in the initial
days
how do you eight days later
in that time
how do you show that the vaccine is safe
and effective
uh given that i think previous vaccines
have taken years to do that yeah
the vaccines take years to do that and
the the time
that it takes it is basically
the vast majority the time to conduct
the final
phase 3 study that is the confirmatory
study
and you do that because the phase 3
study cost a lot of money in our case
cost almost a billion
so you don't want to go and risk a
billion in blind data normally before
you do a lot of experiments to make sure
that the product that you're putting in
the phase 3 is the right one
we didn't have the time
so we risked all the money so we went
into we condensed all the time towards
this phase three but the phase three
study had to follow all the rules that
any study
follows
when you do this trial could you just
briefly
describe the basics of what is phase one
what is phase two what is phase three
let's say that there are so many phases
when you try first of all to find what
is the right vaccine we tried from 20
different vaccines we nailed down to
four
and for those four we selected
eventually two and then eventually one
once you have
those selections what is the dose you're
going to use and then we tried multiple
different doses to see which one we
think is the best what does trying
entail in those early days you go first
of all with
smaller
doses in humans
and then after you have done a lot of
experiments in animals
so that you can feel that it is safe
enough to go to humans and then go with
very
low dose and then you gradually increase
the dose and then you monitor those
humans to make sure that there are not
any let's say reactogenicity to what you
are giving them at the same time you
start to measure what is doing in terms
of
immune responses so you do that with
multiple vaccines and you do that with
multiple doses and you do that with
multiple ages of people young people all
people
and eventually
from the 20 vaccines to multiple doses
to multiple schedules is it after
three weeks the second dose or is it
after four weeks or after six months
all of that will inform you
that i think this is the vaccine this is
the dose this is the scheme that i
believe
will give me the best results and when
you have that then you go to do what we
call the phase three
this is a very big study
with thousands of people
where you use the vaccine that you think
is the right one
and a placebo
the placebo in the vaccine they look
identical
nobody knows
if is injected the placebo or vaccine
the physician that makes the injection
the doctor doesn't know if he's
injecting placebo or vaccine he knows a
barcode only the computer knows
in order to go into this computer there
are keys and there are at least two
people that needs to put their keys so
that someone can see the data
and there's those people
they have legal obligations never to do
that
right so before a certain point so all
of that is blinded
the idea is that when you go into this
study you need to make sure that you are
going with the right one that's why it
takes so many so much time but the study
is the study
you need to have a significant number of
people
that will give the two and then you let
them live their lives and then you see
how many of them will get the disease
and then you see if
there are differences in percentage of
infections for the vaccinated compared
to the non-vaccinate at the same time
you're monitoring all of them to see if
there are differences in the safety
profile if those that go to placebo have
the same let's say
heart attacks with those that they
didn't
they got the vaccine because heart
attacks will happen if you have 50 000
people that
because it's part of life these are the
all these processes are very very
very well established and since years
what we did the last one was exactly the
same as we did always we just didn't
lose time
we didn't we were not careful with money
instead of
recruiting 50 000 people over
a year
because we had let's say
30 hospitals doing the recruitment
we went with 150 hospitals doing the
recruitment that cost a lot of money but
instead of recruiting them in a year we
recruited them in three four months so i
did this type of things
by
taking
return on investment taking cost out of
the equation and we were able to achieve
this result but
it's not
the process believe me it is the heart
of the people
people don't know what they can and what
they cannot do
and if anything they have a serious
tendency to underestimate what they can
do
and always
when you ask them something that is
seemingly impossible
they will think out of the box to be
able to deliver
we discussed about the timing instead of
eight years we then asked them to do it
in six we asked them to do it in eight
months
our normal manufacturing
yearly production files was 200 million
doses of vaccines every year that was we
are doing in the last 10 years
we didn't ask them to make 300 million
dollars for a new vaccine we asked him
to make three billion
doses for a new vaccine
the discovery phase of a new molecule
like the treatment that we have now the
pill against coffee takes four years we
then ask them to do it in three we ask
them to do it in four months which is
what they did
when you are setting this type of goals
they know immediately they cannot
just think within the box
and immediately this is where the human
ingenuity and the heart comes and this
is how they surprised all of us
so there's incredible science and
engineering going on here this time
absolutely
this is what's bothering me
that the conversation in the in public
is often not about that
you know it's about politics
unfortunately politics so i spent the
day with elon musk yesterday
he works with rockets uh similar
situation as with pfizer in the sense
that there's nasa and then there's this
private company
and that's a source of incredible
inspiration to people
no politics very little politics
um so this is part of the thing i'm
trying to i'm hoping to do our little
part in this conversation to
help untangle a little bit just reveal
the beauty
and the power of the thing that was done
here especially with vaccine but other
things that are being done with the with
the antiviral drug
let me just kind of linger on the safety
what can you say
there's a lot of people that
are concerned
that the
fisa vaccine by the way of which i took
two shots
no booster yet
is unsafe
what do you say to people
that say that
no they should not
fear something like that it's completely
wrong there is no
medical product in the history of
humanity that have been tested as much
as this vaccine has been administered to
hundreds of millions of people
and because
of the importance of covid they have
been scrutinized those people
constantly right now healthcare
authorities are looking for every single
signal around the world of people that
they got the vaccine and try to see if
it is vaccine related or not
there are electronic medical records
that will tell us
when and what happened to a person when
he did
got the vaccine and
we know now
more we have so high certainty that it
is so safe
exactly as the datasheet
says about this vaccine more than any
other product
they should not be afraid of something
like that and they should not listen
to
information but it is misinformation but
it is spread on purpose
well
i don't like the word misinformation
because
you know again back to the soviet union
anyone who opposes the state is
spreading misinformation
so you can basically call anything
misinformation that's the unfortunate
times we live in
is
you can call anyone you can basically
call anybody a liar and say i'm the sole
possessor of the truth
and just no offense to me just because
you wear a tie doesn't mean you're
any more likely to be in the possession
of the truth than anyone else so i
wouldn't disagree with that at all i
don't think that that's somebody who's
not wearing it
and as you can people can see that i'm
not wearing a tie and you are
but it's not about um
being able those that they have the
power
to to impose on the others the stigma
that
you what you are saying is
misinformation
but there are few things that the
society we have accomplished and science
is one of them
and
data
is
and analytics of data is another one
and to say that
something
which is highly scientific by people
that they are not scientists
i
i think that it is not what you are
describing what used to happen in soviet
union or in any other autocratic
regime in the world right now but i
definitely do think
that uh the scientists the public
science communicators i've listened to
over covet have really disappointed me
because they have not
spoken with empathy they haven't
sufficiently in my view have put their
ego aside and really listen to people
yes people that don't have a phd people
have not
really
you know
maybe not even taken like a biology
course in college or something like that
but still they they they have children
they they worry they fear
they don't know who to trust they don't
know if they should listen to the ceo of
pfizer who might have other incentives
in mind who might just care about money
and nothing else and so
they just use common sense and they ask
questions and i think to them talking
down to them as if they're not
intelligent so on is something
scientists have done
almost like rolled their eyes and that
disappoints me because i think that's
kind of what's is the source of division
look humility is a virtue yes and
yes the fact that you are educated
doesn't mean that you are having either
humility or empathy
or you have good
human qualities this was never
and will never be
a metric of judging this type of virtues
those that they do this
they're wrong and actually
they they are not
doing good service to the public health
because they are undermining people
aren't stupid they see if you're not
be
respecting them and if you are not
respecting their need
to learn because that affects their
health the health of the mother of the
kids so i fully agree with you that we
should be
very
patient to explain again and again and
again
what is happening and the vast majority
of the people that they don't get
vaccinations right now is because
they're afraid it's not for any other
reason it's not that they have a an
agenda what i'm saying it is there is a
small number of people
that they have make business
for them
to
[Music]
profit from this anxiety i'll give you
an example
i have been arrested by fbi this is what
someone wrote
i i read it i laughed i mean
okay
this is where they take it there was a
reason why they wrote that the files you
always are fbi because they want to
create doubts in the minds of the people
that they're afraid and say look if fdi
arrested him likely i will not do the
vaccine but i laughed
a week later
the wife of the physical ceo
died
there is a picture in this website of my
wife
someone sends to me
now i'm pissed i'm not laughing i try to
find my kids
to tell them if you read something mom
is fine don't worry
then i remember that she has
very old parents back in greece we start
calling them to making sure because we
know that that will be picked up by
greek newspapers and they will publish
it okay they are those people that wrote
these things they know very well that my
wife didn't die and died because she was
vaccinated right
so this is the narratives that they are
on purpose
forming
to profit
from
the stress and
the anxiety of good people and that's
something i have to kind of people that
listen to this that kind of dialed
institutions
i do also want to say that there's
quite a few folks
who realize they can make money
from
[Music]
saying
the man is lying to you
the government is lying to you
it's all corrupt
it's all a scam
big farmer is lying to you they're
manipulating you
i'm surprised that how much money can be
made with that
and it's sad so you have to just as
people use their common sense
to uh be skeptical when listening to
politicians and powerful figures they
should be skeptical
to also when listening to sort of the
the conspiracy theorists or not even the
conspiracy theorists but people who
raise questions about institutions
think think on your own think critically
with an open mind
that everyone can be manipulating
you but also everybody has the capacity
to do good
and i think uh science in its pure form
not when entangled institutions
is a beautiful thing
and in the hands of many companies it is
a beautiful thing at scale
still
you have a lot of incentive as having
created the vaccine advisor this
incredible technology
to uh
sing it praises
so that there's a kind of you know
people are skeptical like how much do we
trust
how excited
uh albert is about this vaccine so for
example i mean not to do a shakespearean
analysis of your twitter but i think you
tweeted something about a study with a
100 efficacy of the vaccine or in
stopping a transmission or something
like that
do you regret
uh sort of
being
uh like over representing the
effectiveness of the vaccine technically
saying correct things
but just kind of like
highlighting the super positive things
that may be misinterpreted
you know saying a hundred percent no i
never said something hundred percent
that every time i speak if a number is
hundred percent i rushed to say that in
biology there is nothing hundred percent
because always there will be when you go
to the millions okay they were in the
study things that were 100 for example
deaths or in south africa yeah when we
tried it there was a hundred percent
efficacy
clearly in small numbers when the
numbers will become much bigger the 100
will not hold but will be 95 96 so still
the direction of this is the point so
i'm very very careful
how i what i treat and
in addition to
how careful i am i have people that
they are looking at and they are having
second or third opinions to make sure
that we don't put why because i know
that people are listening to me right
now everything i say
and i want to make sure that they
continue not only
not only being clear as to what i want
to say so there are no misunderstandings
but also i maintain the trust
of the people i don't think that
someone who only there picks information
and only emphasizes positive things it's
someone that it is the one to be trusted
and i want me and pfizer to be trusted
so many felt the vaccine was presented
as a cure
that wouldn't require regular booster
shots
was that something you believed early on
did you always believe that many regular
shots would be required it may be in a
bigger picture how many
do you think this will
for the fisa vaccine is it something you
see that's taking uh a booster shot
regularly like annually
yes in the beginning when we had the
first months of the vaccine people would
ask me do we need another one and i said
we don't know i was very clear about it
then around april may i started seeing
the first data and i made statements
that i think we will need a booster
around 8 to 12 months after the second
dose and then after that annual
revaccinations this is what i said
believe is the one of the most likely
scenarios
and it was based on the data that i had
but then delta came
and because i always making the
the caveat that with
absent and uvaria with everything we
know
with delta it was proven that we need
the booster to move to the three to the
six months and this is what
happened
and uh
i still said i think
the booster is six months and then i
think it will be an annual
re-vaccination likely we have to monitor
to see the data but this is the likely
scenario
now we have omega
and omegran says that the
two doses might be challenging we don't
know exactly yet but three doses work
so clearly a lot of countries already
started moving now the third dose
not in six from six months to three
so that they will
reduce the period that people will not
be
protected with uh with
the third dose
i don't know with omikron if how long
this will last and frankly i don't know
if we will need a new vaccine taylormade
to omicron based on everything we know
so far
we are monitoring and to know way more
in the weeks to come
if there is a need for a new vaccine we
will have it
and if there is a need for mass
production of this new vaccine
i can also feel very comfortable that we
will not lose any of our capacity that
we have developed right now we are
running
at one billion almost approximately
doses per quarter
four per year
and if we have to switch
and have half of that in the new half of
that in the old we will do still four
billion dollars so i think the world
should feel very very
comfortable but if there is a need we
will be ahead of the virus yeah he did
uh he delivered or produced three
billion this year vaccines and you're on
track to do four billion next year yeah
i mean if we had uh
uh a lot more time we would talk about
how the heck you achieved that kind of
scale it's truly incredible
let me ask the policy question
what are your feelings about vaccine
mandates
in terms of
do you think the most effective way to
vaccinate the population is to acquire
it or
do
you go with the american way and give
people the freedom to choose
i think it is
a very difficult
topic in a very difficult decision who
whoever needs to make it and clearly
it's not me it is the public health
officials of every country that they
have to make this decision i have to
make the decision for files
employees
and i had to
to
balance
the fear of those
that they work that they want to feel
that the others are vaccinated and the
fear of those that they don't want to
get the vaccine and eventually i came to
the decision that we will mandate
advice we are flexible we are giving
exceptions of course for health maybe
some religions
but
we decided to to mandate it now
at pfizer we when we did this decision
we were at 90 vaccination rates when we
said we are going to mandate it
and that
took it up to 96.
it works
right
this 10 percent was never going to move
i felt because no matter what you have a
small number of people that really are
scared
and they don't feel comfortable to do it
okay
it worked in our case we took it to 96
i'm happy for those people
a lot we're not disease and some will
not die
of of the of those people but it's not
to me to say because the debate
uh it's serious debate
and there are a lot of pros and cons if
you need to push people if you need to
give them the freedom uh and uh
it's comes with a territory if you are
elected to run a country
you should be ready to make difficult
decisions and no matter what decision
you make there will be fake stories
written about you as we talked about
arrows you will not be able to please
everyone yes
uh well let me just say that i think
again coming from the soviet union i
think at the public level at the federal
level mandates is um
it's a really bad idea
even even if it's good for the health of
the populace
um there's something about preserving
the freedom is really powerful about
this country in like doing the hard work
of convincing people to get vaccinated
to choose to get vaccinated if they want
but still have the freedom not to that's
a really powerful freedom
to me it's super lazy to mandate
people should understand the science
and want to get vaccinated
do you think children need to get
vaccinated
i do i do think that they need to get
vaccinated
so
age ranges 5 to 16
there's a lot of parents
that um
[Music]
that fear for the well-being of their
children
can you empathize with those parents can
you
steal man their arguments against the
vaccine
for their children
you know because people know who i am i
had the opportunity
to
interact with parents before that was
let's say
approved and there were so many way more
that
i had a lot of empathy because they were
afraid
for their kids because they didn't have
a vaccine
and they were the ones that were
speaking at that time bring me vaccine
when are you going to bring me vaccine i
really fear i feel that this is unfair
but i'm protected my husband is
protected my old son is protected and my
little sweetheart because he's below the
age is not protected
now that we have the vaccines i'm sure
that
those that they are afraid of the
vaccine not of the disease which are
smaller number
admittedly also they will have
if they are afraid of them i'm sure they
were afraid even more about their kids
because they love
i would say more than they love
themselves
so it's going to be this situation and
again the same
how can we do
to demonstrate to convince people to win
the minds and the hearts of the people
that this is the right thing to do what
do you think about that calculation
because the risk for kids is very low
kids do die kids do go to the hospital
from covid yes
but the rate is very low
the rate is lower but kids they do die
and how can you say that i'm not going
to i'm not going to protect a kid for
something that it is likely to happen
and it is not only that what happens in
the school when they stop the education
process because a kid got the disease
and they don't have vaccines so that
they can control it is such a big
disruption and such a big risk
for
for the health
of of the of the
kids that it shouldn't be a debate look
how many kids are having polio right now
well
fewer number than those that they're
having covered in in the hospital
but everybody's getting the vaccine
it's um well polio was deadlier for kids
but it's not now so why some a kid to do
it
now because needs to be protected well
the unique thing about the covet vaccine
is a new type of technology too so
there's an extra concern
[Music]
choosing to vaccinate a child
you're making a choice that can
potentially hurt them
that's the way parents that are hesitant
about the vaccine think
i think choosing to vaccinate
children makes a choice
so that something could not potentially
hurt them which is the disease that's
why we are doing vaccinations since ever
i
know that
there are people that they are concerned
for themselves and for their kids
what i know it is
that i'm a scientist and i'm a parent
and
i am telling you that vaccines is a very
good thing for kids and thank god we
were able to develop
so we've talked quite a bit about the
vaccine but there's an incredible new
technology that pfizer is developing
with the paxlovid the antiviral for
covid
where does that stand
how does that work
um and how are you able to develop
in four months
like you said and all of that in just a
few minutes
first of all what this is about this is
a real game changer
this is a course of treatment that you
get only if you get the disease you get
covered
then what happens is that you will take
for five days pills day and night
and twice a day for five days
and instead of ten people from those
that dies is to go to hospital only one
will go
this is an end
with all the caveats that the numbers
are small no one died it was a hundred
percent efficacy on deaths of course i'm
sure that
in real world when the numbers are
getting very high we may have
99 instead of 100 but
these are spectacular
results for something that you can take
home and stay home
the biggest problem right now in europe
in the u.s when we have surges every
time that we have a search
of
of covet it is that the icus are fu