Pfizer’s Albert Bourla on how the pandemic ends

ALBERT BOURLA: Yes. At the time, it was President Trump, and I had met President Trump before the pandemic and we had discussed… health policy, mainly. But, of course, the pandemic and the vaccine were very high on his agenda. He would reach out to me to ask about how we are doing and if there’s anything he can do to help us accelerate, et cetera, et cetera, which I told him that there is nothing.

We [were] moving full speed anyway ourselves and I just [needed] to let my people work without worrying about politics, and eventually we did it. We brought it very early. I know President Trump [would have liked] to see it before the elections. It came after the elections. It has nothing to do with politics. That was the speed of science.

FREDERICK KEMPE: Tomorrow evening when you receive the award, before you receive yours President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen will receive our Distinguished International Leadership Award, but she’ll also introduce you for your award. So that shows the sort of respect that can be shared between a political leader and a business leader. 

ALBERT BOURLA: Well, I can tell you that President von der Leyen [is] one of the most knowledgeable leaders. She knew details about the disease, and she knew details about the technology, and I was very impressed. A lot of our discussions were going really, really to the bottom of what is happening and what would be the best way to address them. And because there were, again… so much stress that creates a bonding experience for both leaders, me from a small company, her the president of a big company, Pfizer, but compared to what she is doing, the president of European Commission, clearly, she has way bigger responsibilities. But that created a bonding with her as well…

FREDERICK KEMPE: There was some fake news during this period of time about the vaccines, you know, all sorts of conspiracy theories. How did you deal with that and how did you navigate that and where do you feel the primary source of this sort of fake news was? How damaging was this to us?  

ALBERT BOURLA: I’m afraid it [caused] quite a lot of damage and particularly with us, we were targeted by a lot of, let’s say, dark organizations that you don’t really know [who owns them]. You suspect that there are some countries behind. We were getting a lot of briefings from CIA, from FBI, about cyberattacks that may happen to us, but also about the spread of misinformation.

You know, there are two groups of people: There are the people that they are vaccinated. There are people that are skeptical about the vaccination, and both of them are afraid. Those that are getting the vaccine, they are afraid of the disease, and they believe that because people are not getting vaccinated, they are increasing the risk to them. They are increasing the exposure. So they are mad with them that they don’t get the vaccine. Those that don’t get the vaccine, they’re afraid of the vaccine and they are mad with the people that are pressing them to get it.

Those I understand. They are very good people. They are decent people. But they had a fear, and I understand it, and they don’t want to take chances. But there is a very small part of professionals [who] circulate, on purpose, misinformation so that they will mislead those that they have concerns [with the vaccine]. Those people are criminals. They’re not bad people. They are criminals because they literally cost millions of lives.

FREDERICK KEMPE: You’ve also come to see close up the inequities in the global health care system, which also has influence on recovering from COVID-19. Have you learned anything during this period of time about whether and how one can overcome them and how did you have to work within them to navigate this period?  

ALBERT BOURLA: Oh. That was a very, very big issue from day one for me, and I realized that if we have this polarization within the country, for example, I could only imagine what will be between countries when the vaccine would become available if we don’t have available for all.

So to make sure that the vaccine is available for all, there were two things that we had to do. The first was to have a price that would not become an obstacle to any country, and that was easy to resolve. We set up a price, that it is the cost of a takeaway meal in the developed world. But when we are moving to middle-income countries, not in the high, we charge half of this price almost. And when we went to the low-income countries, we gave them a… price at cost. So that was easy.

Then the second thing that we needed to have it is we need to have enough vaccines for all. It is clear that when you start from scratch, in the first month you will have fewer doses than the month after. We went to all the countries, and we asked to place orders, and I saw the orders that were coming and most of them were coming from high-income countries.