Library Day -- Part 3 -- September 10, 2023

Locator: 45601BOOKS.

Before I get started, it is just me or have others noted that the "southern surge" is almost entirely a "political story." I have not yet seen business magazines spend much time on the "southern surge," nor have I noted any books on the subject from a business perspective. I don't even know how big a story it has become in college policy courses.

Moonshot: Inside Pfizer's Nine-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible, Dr Albert Bourla, Chairman and CEO, Pfizer, c. 2022. 

Wow, this is going to be fascinating. This book has been added to my "Covid Library."

Salk and Sabin come to mind.

No index. 

Eighteen pages of bibliography.

Chapter titles:

• business not as usual
• what is obvious is not always right
• thinking big makes the impossible possible
• Lightspeed [see Miller's book on the Turkish researchers][aka Warpspeed]
• the ultimate joy
• past, present, future
• manufacturing, the second miracle
• equity: easier said than done
• navigating a political minefield
• a beacon of hope
• the science of trust
• a pro-patient, pro-innovation agenda
• epilogue

I love the opening quote: "What matters is not what happens to you, but how you react to it." -- Epictetus, AD 50 - 135 (a long life in that day and age).

Page 18: wow, wow, wow -- the story of Pfizer partnering with BioNTech in 2018; a start-up founded by children (now PhD researchers) of Turkish migrant workers in Germany. Their focus: cancer treatment using mRNA technology.

Page 32: process of Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3 in bringing a medication to market.

Page 73: the author's own story. It begins with his ancestors who had fled Spain in the late 15th century.

Page 77: Tony Fauci mentioned. First time?

Page 97: "The first patients to receive our Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 were at University Hospital in the Midlands of England, north of London. Following Margaret Keenan, the second in line was none other than William Shakespeare, then an eighty-one-year-old patient in the frailty ward." [Don't you just love the Brits use of language?]  "It had been 269 days since we started the vaccine's development."

Page 107: then the glossy black-and-white and color photos. Wow. Not one photo of Donald Trump (Warpspeed) but two photos with Joe Biden.

Page 129: "On June 9, during the flight over, I read a New York Times story with the headline "Biden Aims to Bolster US Alliances in Europe." Biden, who will arrive for a series of summit meetings buoyed by a successful vaccination program and rebounding economy, will spend the next week making the case that America is back and ready to lead the west. Mr Biden's overarching task it to deliver the diplomatic serenity that eluded such gatherings during the four years in which Mr Trump scorched long-standing relationships with close allies, threatened to pull out of NATO and embraced Putin and other autocrats, admiring their strength, the article read."

Page 135: vaccine equity. A most interesting subject.