Also, the Appendices are probably the most readable appendices I've ever encountered in a book. There's even the full list of ingredients of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine with explanations in Appendix C. This “plug and play” approach of a platform technology meant it took just 65 days to make the first batch of Sars-CoV-2 vaccine, an unprecedented achievement.

Not every day that you get to read an entire book about the novel vaccine that was administered into your arm 6 months earlier. The book is written with each author taking a chapter apiece and alternating between the two, talking about their own involvement in vaccine development, both before the pandemic and against COVID-19 specifically, as well as those of their colleagues and the teams around them. They don’t just touch upon their own work, but their personal lives and how they have had to deal with the pandemic in respect of their own family, with one finalising arrangements following a divorce and both having to deal with the media in a much greater way than ever before, such was the interest in their work. Finally, the average vaccine takes ten years to be created, the world record before Covid-19 was 4 for the mumps vaccine. These two superstars and their team of superheroes did it in a year.Further learning included finding out that the control group in the UK trials received a meningitis vaccine because it created symptoms that were most similar to the covid-19 vaccine.

Like many I suspect, my knowledge of vaccines and the development, design and how they are tested, was less than basic. I now have a much better understanding of the approach, the work, the ingredients, testing and certification and steps, including various terms used to describe types of vaccines and how they are designed. I also have even more trust - and my trust levels were high - in how safe these are based on the steps involved and the way these were explained by Sarah and Cath. One theory attributes growing vaccine hesitancy to the rise of misinformation and conspiracy theories emanating from the anti-vaxx movement. In 1840, when the Vaccination Act was introduced in the UK, the now familiar arguments were aired: vaccines cause harm; the alliance between medical science and government is driven by profit; vaccinations are an infringement of basic civil liberties; healthy lifestyles and homeopathic medicines provide better alternatives. I found fascinating the details about vaccine production, and also how the authors' research enlaced with their personal lives. Unfortunately, especially in the second half the book began to feel rather dumbed down and repetitive—particularly the pleas for funding, and defense of science. Perhaps that is understandable in the context of vaccine hesitancy and vaccine politicization. But it seemed I wasn't in the target audience. I wanted more details, not pablum. What an enthralling tale of toil, tenacity and triumph this is. The authors' intelligence, idealism and sheer, bloody-minded grit shine through. The world needs all the Sarah Gilberts and Catherine Greens it can get. Just brilliant.'- Rachel Clarke Those who invent wild inaccuracies about vaccines – some politically funded – are a problem because they make a much larger number of normal people uncertain about life-saving jabs. There have been too few vaxxers explaining how real people, not faceless elites, devise and make the things. Few can explain that better than these two, and this book is the tale of how the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine was designed, grown, purified and produced, reliably and in millions of doses, under the extreme pressure of a pandemic. It’s a gripping yarn.Seselesainya baca buku Moonshot: Inside Pfizer's Nine-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible, rasanya saya akan menyesal kalau belum mengulas buku sejenis yang jauh lebih bagus dari buku tersebut. Buku ini, yang juga ditulis oleh pelaku langsung, membahas vaksin Oxford-AstraZeneca, berbeda dengan buku di atas yang membahas vaksin Pfizer/BioNTech. What did you do in the pandemic, Mummy and Daddy? Memoirs by battered veterans of the Covid-19 wars are likely to be a growth industry in the coming year. These two, among the first, are both revelations in their own way. Vaxxers, by the two women who led the development of the AstraZeneca vaccine, is a tale of hard work and victory against steep odds, a unique insight into vaccines generally – especially eye-opening, I suspect, for anyone worrying that Covid jabs were made too fast, or that we don’t know what’s in them (the book includes a list of ingredients, with explanations). Excellent and readable ... Vaxxers is so good that the book will be read for long after the pandemic is over. - Financial Times This is the story of a race - not against other vaccines or other scientists, but against a deadly and devastating virus.

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Vaxxers, written by two of the lead members of the (large) team who brought the Oxford-Astra Zeneca Covid-19 vaccine through design, development, trial, testing & verification and then production, is very readable.

Without an engaging and persuasive communications plan, the scientific progress made in developing the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine and those to come will have been for nothing.

Recombinant: means that the DNA sequence for the Covid-19 spike protein was made in a lab. That is they looked at the 28,000 letters of the Covid-19 virus genetic code and identified the 3,819 letters that encode the spike protein (this was made easier by having already done it on MERS, so they knew what they were looking for). Once the sequence had been identified they recreated it on a piece of computer software and then did a process called codon optimisation. That process involves changing certain letter sequences to correlatives that are more efficient or better recognised by the human body. For example the amino acid arginine is more likely to be AGG than CGT and so you would put the former into the sequence. Once they had their spike protein design complete they sent it off to a lab to be created.Berman, an assistant professor of basic science at an osteopathic medical school, explores the history of anti-vaccine movements and how best to counter them. Such movements, he finds, share beliefs and features: wariness of government control, distrust of the medical establishment and its products, false claims about vaccines (often made by people with economic interests), and unfounded fears of harm, spread by misinformation and social media. Those most vulnerable to such claims are often parents trying to decide what is best for their children’s health. Rather than learning from reliable sources why childhood vaccines are necessary to protect both individuals and the population as a whole from infections, they may receive unreliable information from others in their community who oppose vaccination . . . Berman’s advice on how to talk with people who are uncertain about vaccinating their children is enlightening and practical.”