A Shot to Save the World
The Remarkable Race and Ground-Breaking Science Behind the Covid-19 Vaccines
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A Shot to Save the World
Buy Now for $19.89
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Narrated by:
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Jack Armstrong
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
You know what went wrong.
This is the untold story of what went right.
Few were ready when a mysterious respiratory illness emerged in Wuhan, China, in January 2020. Politicians, government officials, business leaders and public-health professionals were unprepared for the most devastating pandemic in a century. Many of the world's biggest drug and vaccine makers were slow to react or couldn't muster an effective response.
It was up to a small group of unlikely and untested scientists and executives to save civilization. A French businessman dismissed by many as a fabulist. A Turkish immigrant with little virus experience. A quirky Midwesterner obsessed with insect cells. A Boston scientist employing questionable techniques. A British scientist resented by his peers. Far from the limelight, each had spent years developing innovative vaccine approaches. Their work was met with scepticism and scorn. By 2020, these individuals had little proof of progress. Yet they and their colleagues wanted to be the ones to stop a virulent virus holding the world hostage. They scrambled to turn their life's work into life-saving vaccines in a matter of months, each gunning to make the big breakthrough - and to beat each other for the glory that a vaccine guaranteed.
A number-one New York Times bestselling author and award-winning Wall Street Journal investigative journalist, Zuckerman takes us inside the top-secret laboratories, corporate clashes and high-stakes government negotiations that led to effective shots. Deeply reported and endlessly gripping, this is a dazzling, blow-by-blow chronicle of the most consequential scientific breakthrough of our time. It's a story of courage, genius and heroism. It's also a tale of heated rivalries, unbridled ambitions, crippling insecurities and unexpected drama. A Shot to Save the World is the story of how science saved the world.
***LONGLISTED FOR THE FT MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021***
'Thrilling, inspiring and informative page-turner.' Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker
© Gregory Zuckerman 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
Critic Reviews
It traces the growth and development of scientists who put their faith in this technology since the 90’s and those that wanted to use it to treat cancer, and other untreated diseases. They have been vindicated.
The struggles and the personal sacrifice and constant failures and minor success that allowed this technology a miracle of human ingenuity to become not just theory but reality. These scientists are heroes.
This book is essential reading for the vaccine skeptics the misinformed and also just the generally curious about how much actually went into creating these vaccines. It was not done quickly but pain stakingly over so many years.
And how revolutionary this is. Later in the books looks directly at Pfizer, Moderna and Oxford and novavax and wow the insight into the companies is unprecedented.
This will be an important book to best analyse this period of how we got here and how these scientists saved millions.
Wow
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