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. The story really begins 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 Karikó, who made it possible to use messenger RNA in vaccines but struggled for years just to hang on to her job. There’s also Derrick Rossi, who leveraged Karikó’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.

Winners of the Paul Ehrlich Prize The dramatic story of the married scientists who founded BioNTech and developed the first vaccine against COVID-19. Nobody thought it was possible. In mid-January 2020, Ugur Sahin told Özlem Türeci, his wife and decades-long research partner, that a vaccine against what would soon be known as COVID-19 could be developed and safely injected into the arms of millions before the end of the year. His confidence was built upon almost thirty years of research. While working to revolutionize the way that cancerous tumors are treated, the couple had explored a volatile and overlooked molecule called messenger RNA; they believed it could be harnessed to redirect the immune system's forces against any number of diseases. As the founders of BioNTech, they faced widespread skepticism from the scientific community at first; but by the time Sars-Cov-2 was discovered in Wuhan, China, BioNTech was prepared to deploy cutting edge technology and create the world’s first clinically approved inoculation for the coronavirus. The Vaccine draws back the curtain on one of the most important medical breakthroughs of our age; it will reveal how Doctors Sahin and Türeci were able to develop twenty vaccine candidates within weeks, convince Big Pharma to support their ambitious project, navigate political interference from the Trump administration and the European Union, and provide more than three billion doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to countries around the world in record time. Written by Joe Miller—the Financial Times’ Frankfurt correspondent who covered BioNTech’s COVID-19 project in real time—with contributions from Sahin and Türeci, as well as interviews with more than sixty scientists, politicians, public health officials, and BioNTech staff, the book covers key events throughout the extraordinary year, as well as exploring the scientific, economic, and personal background of each medical innovation. Crafted to be both completely accessible to the average reader and filled with details that will fascinate seasoned microbiologists, The Vaccine explains the science behind the breakthrough, at a time when public confidence in vaccine safety and efficacy is crucial to bringing an end to this pandemic.

This book presents the principle, strengths and weaknesses, and progress of various vaccine technologies against COVID-19. Additionally, important terms such as clinical phases, efficacy and sterilizing immunity are explained. In this second edition, the already approved vaccines are also presented and the importance of viral variants is explained

As COVID-19 raged around the world in 2020, scientists undertook an unprecedented effort to create effective treatments and vaccines. Learn how medical professionals fought back against a deadly disease.

This highly topical edited book documents the community response to Covid-19 across national contexts, exploring the widespread development and mobilisation of community initiatives and groups. It provides rich analysis of case studies from the Global North and South, including South Africa, the USA, India, China, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Australia, the UK, Turkey, and Argentina. The Covid-19 pandemic motivated a significant community response globally, with the widespread development and mobilisation of "bottom up" community initiatives and groups. These community responses were an essential yet often unseen and unrecognised means by which people survived the pandemic. This book asks questions such as how were community responses to Covid-19 shaped by national, cultural and political processes and phenomena; how did community responses to Covid-19 interact with public policies, on health, education, and social welfare; and what are the likely political implications of the community response to Covid-19? Discussing the provision of abortion care in Latin America, the support to marginalized communities in Kolkata, and the mobilisation of carnival "krewes" in New Orleans, to give a few examples, the text adopts and develops a novel socio-cultural psychological approach, weaving together contributions from scholars working in diverse disciplinary fields. The text highlights the importance of integrating multiple levels of analysis, including psychological, sociological, and political/ideological, to investigate how communities respond to crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, and how they can plan for and manage future crises. This is essential reading for academics and students in psychology and the social sciences, as well as policy-makers, charities, and third-sector organisations.