Inside the Messy Race to Develop a COVID Vaccine
Clashing egos, logistical nightmares, political chaos. This is the exclusive story of how scientists and Washington power players overcame staggering odds to develop a historic shot. An excerpt from The First Shots
Esquire. October 2021
Bob Kadlec was standing in his Washington, D.C., office holding a dry-erase marker, the words Manhattan Project scribbled across the top of a whiteboard. Kadlec, who was known on Capitol Hill as Dr. Bob, was the former Air Force doctor and intelligence officer who ran an obscure division of the nation’s health department called the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. It was the afternoon of Friday, April 10, 2020, and Kadlec was surrounded by four of his most trusted associates—and a very large stack of pizza boxes. The novel coronavirus had overwhelmed hospitals in New York City to such a degree that the dead were piling up in refrigerated trailers in the parking lots. Recognizing that the country couldn’t shut down forever, Kadlec’s crew had assembled for a brainstorming session here inside the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, a blocky, eight-story structure that houses the Department of Health and Human Services.
At exactly 5:00 p.m., Peter Marks would be calling. A lanky man with tortoiseshell glasses, Marks was the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the referee who would make or break the fortunes of vaccine companies. He was nothing like your stereotypical regulator who said, No, no, no. He was more like, Maybe, huh, yes, eureka! He and Kadlec had a surprising chemistry. And Marks had relayed to Kadlec the conversations he’d been having with drugmakers, including Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, which to him seemed to have a “defeatist attitude” when it came to the Covid-19 vaccine timeline. Johnson & Johnson was talking about 2022 as a realistic target. Now the two men were setting their sights on a Manhattan Project for vaccines. Their program would be based inside the Humphrey Building, and like the original Manhattan Project, it would bring all the might of American industry and government to the table.