Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This is the story of what it took to create a coronavirus vaccine in record time - a feat that will likely eclipse the importance of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine in medical history. Barney Graham is not a household name, but it should be. Before the morning of January 11, 2020, when he learned about a novel coronavirus that had appeared in Wuhan, China, Graham was working on a vaccine for an obscure disease called Nipah, a brutal illness that had broken out in India in 2018. His mission, as he saw it, was to prove that the United States government could, if it absolutely needed to, produce a vaccine fast enough to stop a pandemic.
In Longshot, journalist David Heath writes the story of how circumstances conspired to put Graham's theory to the test. The book will narrate the race to create a vaccine for COVID-19 from the day the virus first appeared to the intense final stages of the vaccine's development. The author draws on hundreds of hours of interviews with key players in the story, describing how the race to create the vaccine sparked a revolution in medical science.
Synopsis
This is the incredible story of the scientists who created a coronavirus vaccine in record time.
In Longshot, investigative journalist David Heath takes readers inside the small group of scientists whose groundbreaking work was once largely dismissed -- but whose feat will now eclipse the importance of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine in medical history. With never-before reported details, Heath reveals how these scientists overcame countless obstacles to give the world an unprecedented head start when we needed a COVID-19 vaccine.
But the story really starts in the 1990s, with a series of discoveries that were timed perfectly to prepare us for the worst pandemic since 1918. Readers will meet Katalin Karik , who made it possible to use messenger RNA in vaccines but struggled for years just to hang onto her job. There's also Derrick Rossi, who leveraged Karik 's work to found Moderna but was eventually expelled from his company. And then there's Barney Graham at the National Institutes of Health, who had a career-long obsession with solving the riddle of why two toddlers died in a vaccine trial in 1966 -- a tragedy that ultimately led to a critical breakthrough in vaccine science.
With both foresight and luck, Graham and these other crucial scientists set the course for a coronavirus vaccine years before COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan, China. The author draws on hundreds of hours of interviews with key players to tell the definitive story about how the race to create the vaccine sparked a revolution in medical science.