Welcome back, you know it is really
hard to believe that it's been
almost two years since COVID-19 was
first exposed to Western Washington,
but did you know that Seattle played
a key role in developing one of the
COVID vaccines in his first book?
The first shots,
author and journalist Brendan Burrell
takes us back to March of 2020.
It was just less than two
years ago all this happened,
but it seems like it's been
a lifetime ever since.
Take this back to what was going
on in Seattle March of 2020
when far as the vaccine goes.
Well March 16th,
2020 was a very important date.
That is when the first participants
in the Madonna clinical trial
arrived at Kaiser Permanente
Health Center there and received
the first doses of vaccine so they
were the they were the Guinea pigs.
They were and they were only one of two
locations in the United States, right?
That we're getting these vaccines.
It was here and was it Nashville?
The trail ended up expanding to a broader
number of sites, but originally it was.
It was just going to be in Seattle.
Wow, that's amazing.
I was actually a medical health reporter
at the time and I remember covering
the important roles that are local
organizations played like Fred Hutch.
They played a large role in developing
the vaccine and Operation Warpspeed.
Share what you highlighted
about their involvement.
The former president of Fred Hutch,
Larry Corey is a very
complexed virolo gist facts.
Knowledge is too done.
A lot of HIV vaccine trials,
and he's actually very close
friends with Tony Fouchy.
They they worked on many
HIV projects together.
When Operation Warp speed
was coming together, Dr.
Fauci calls up Corey and
he's like I need you.
Can you come out and and
spend time in in DC?
And Corey actually told me
he's like he's like listen
I work for the government
but I'm staying in Seattle.
It's
amazing to think about that and you
know I think a lot of the interesting
points about learning about this is
it wasn't necessarily a new science.
When it came to immunology,
which is what I think Fred
Hutch was specialized,
but let's talk about the scientific
heroes in your book and how
they were able to create the
COVID-19 vaccines so quickly.
Well, rewind the clock to January 2020.
The sequence of the first sequence of
the coronavirus is uploaded by a Chinese
scientist and it ricochets around the world.
So there's all these little scientists
and elaborate university laboratories and
at the National Institutes of Health,
which is one of the places I focus on.
Who are, you know,
basically hitting into high gear
to start developing their vaccine.
So within three days Barney Graham.
Who is the the key vaccine ologists
at the NIH has sent off a sequence
design for the vaccine to Moderna and
these are their longtime partners,
collaborators,
and they're basically say we're
going to get into clinical trial
as quickly as possible.
Within three months,
they actually only did it in 62 days,
and that's that's when those those
folks in in Seattle got vaccinated.
There was some skepticism.
Do you address that skepticism with
Operation warp speed? In your book
Operation Warp speed was it was so dizzying.
I remember I was reporting on COVID,
and I'd heard what foul she had said.
Oh, it's not going to be 18 months before
a vaccine, and then suddenly the president
is saying by the end of the year there was.
Scientists were skeptical they were worried
we were rushing things and I think that that
shook many people in the local communities.
I mean, did you? Did you want to
take a vaccine that was rushed?
No, and, but what I talk about in the book
is that that's not really what was going on.
Under the surface, there were.
All these scientists,
with their nose to the grindstone
trying to do the best they could
and not worrying about the noise,
and they were going through
all the typical processes.
These technologies,
the M RNA and the actual strategy that
went into the coronavirus vaccine.
These have been decades in the making right?
And so yes, we went fast.
We broke records,
previous record was four years
for mumps vaccine.
This vaccine was produced in 11 months
and it was done safely with the clinical
trial included in Rule 30,000 people.
Which is large for any clinical trial.
I wonder when we talk about this,
because I think the one thing that people
keep reflecting on is the pandemic.
It's never going to be over and in
a sense viruses are the only thing
evolving faster than us, right?
I mean, this is something that we
will be continuing to fight, right?
A virus gets inside your body and
it makes you know a billion multiple
billion copies of itself and every
single copy is a little bit different,
and so that's where these variants emerge.
And so yes, in some sense we are in a
perpetual arms race against the virus.
Fascinating stuff, all right.