| 英文摘要 | > Science's COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation
Earlier this week, Moncef Slaoui received the fruits of his labor: the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, from Moderna. “I feel a joy I am sure every person that has been vaccinated has felt—a form of liberation,” says the former scientific head of Operation Warp Speed, the crash U.S. program that invested $11 billion in developing vaccines for the pandemic and purchasing hundreds of millions of doses.
The Moroccan-born immunologist recently resigned from his post, but is “very supportive” of the new Biden administration—he's a Democrat—and has agreed to help its transition team into February. Talking with Science from his home in Pennsylvania last week, he reflected on his time with Warp Speed. He described working with former President Donald Trump as challenging, but said he was not subject to political interference and suggested how to better prepare for a future pandemic.
Slaoui refuses to say “I told you so,” but about 6 years ago, while head of vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), he tried to create a nonprofit Biopreparedness Organization (BPO) that would design and make vaccines to prevent pandemics. GSK even bought a defunct drug manufacturing plant, but the U.S. government and others passed on supporting the idea and it died—a mistake, Slaoui says.
Deeply proud of what he and the Warp Speed team accomplished, Slaoui is chagrined that President Joe Biden has called the vaccine rollout a “dismal failure.” Although “sad” and “reflective” about the problems administering the doses, and aware that manufacturing challenges have kept supplies severely limited so far, he attributes most of the troubles to state and local public health systems overwhelmed by the pandemic. This interview was edited for clarity and brevity; a longer version is at .
> Q: Would the BPO have made a difference with COVID-19?
> A: Absolutely. The whole concept—after we went through the flu pandemic, the Ebola outbreak, the Zika outbreak—was to say, “Listen, the problem is always the same, which is there are no manufacturing facilities sitting there idle, waiting to be used. Even if we had one, we would have trouble because we would have to stop manufacturing other vaccines.” So why don't we take a dedicated facility and have them work on discovering vaccines against known potential outbreak agents, one after the other? They would become incredibly skilled and trained at going fast, discovering vaccines.
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> I have already started discussing this with the new administration. This pandemic is costing $23 billion a day to the U.S. economy. Investing $300 million to $500 million a year into such a facility is peanuts and would save countless lives.
> Q: What did you think of Trump?
> A: I completely disagree with the values that he projects, as a person, in terms of respect, in terms of capacity to listen, accepting diversity. Many of the policy decisions that ended up politicizing this pandemic were wrong, particularly around wearing the mask. But at the same time I do think that Warp Speed was absolutely visionary, to put together science, government, the military, and the private sector and just give us full empowerment.
> Q: Trump asserted that Pfizer [the first company to report a successful vaccine] delayed its announcement until after the election to hurt him. What was your reaction?
> A: He asked me. And I said, “No, this is not how it works.” It would be the end of the company if they did that.
> Q: How did you learn the Pfizer data?
> A: [Pfizer CEO] Albert Bourla emailed and then called. I was in my hotel, very close to the White House. I was expecting high efficacy, but it was an unbelievable joy. It may have been 5 a.m., and I remember telling myself, I'm not going to scream. I just realized, oh my God, we're going control this pandemic.
> Q: Warp Speed has been heavily criticized for not getting vaccines into more arms. What do you think about that?
> A: There has been a huge misunderstanding. Between May 2020 and now, we've moved five vaccines into phase III trials, two have been authorized, two are completing phase III—and one of those could be approved imminently. One other vaccine is in phase IIb. By all standards, this is absolutely exceptional. Our second mission, with my co-leader Gen. [Gustave] Perna, was to distribute the vaccines, take them from point A to the point of immunization. Indeed, the [rollout] definitely is not working appropriately. Overall, we're failing, because the objective is to immunize.
> Q: The Trump administration said it would help, but the rollout is up to the states and local jurisdictions. The Biden administration comes in and says the federal government can coordinate this?
> A: Frankly I've been caught in the middle of that. But if I am [a state or local official] who is deciding how many doses I need, I should at least say, “Hey guys, I don't have the resources to immunize.” We have never been told that.
> Q: Do you think Trump's failure to concede made it more difficult to transition vaccine information to the next team?
> A: For sure. It was at least very, very unfortunate, to use a polite word.
> Q: The Biden administration plans to rename Warp Speed. What do you think of that?
> A: I'm surprised we got an email yesterday saying that as of tomorrow, you cannot use the name Operation Warp Speed anymore. I asked myself, why? This is probably why I'm not a politician. It just escapes rationality and understanding. Because in a way, everybody that works under Operation Warp Speed feels like, what did we do wrong? I would redo it in the blink of an eye. But next pandemic virus, please, do not come during an election year. |
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