This would be the definition of pure passion and what it takes to accomplish something like this.
These people are a totally different breed compared to people I know. Kudos to them for their achievements.
I think it is great and I hope they get acknowledged for their work. Or anyone that tries to find solution to the current sorry state.
This probably won’t fly over very well on hacker news but the academic literature on CEOs and their work ethic, even down to physiological changes in their blood/saliva related to cortisol, suggests they work hard in general and make many sacrifices.
Sure credit goes to both but this "Dream Team" is BioNTech.
The exception is underdog stories.
It seems this is another sign of inequality. The already famous get even more fame.
In Germany, where BioNTech is based, news articles (or rather: German-language articles) either mention BioNTech exclusively or cite them as the primary player in the BioNTech / Pfizer partnership.
I would rather say nationalistic bias.
Because the fine German press never put a bombastic headlines like "Migrants invented Covid vaccine", or "Scientists of Turkish origin to save millions of German lives".
Somehow these facts are conveniently ignored, but when a person with migration heritage do something bad, it's vocally mentioned in all media, including the mainstream.
And this is to not downplay BioNTech's role. Proving that your idea works in biotech takes some massive cohones. No doubt they took a ton of shit on their way to this point.
If I’m not mistaken the reason for the partnership is the sheer size of the clinical trials needed (very different from cancer therapies) and the speed at which they need to be run due to the pandemic. Only big pharma can do that.
For a particularly ridiculous example, see athletes in Northern Ireland; the British press often refer to them as British when they win, and Irish when they don't!
DW (German government news) refers to both companies in communication.
It's a lovely city.
In this time of open racism and public hostility to immigration, this needs to be pointed out and repeated.
It was children of Turkish immigrants to Germany.
So if anything the German media needs to do a way better job of highlighting this.
It is very valuable for both immigrants (+descendants) and natives to see such a nice example of success far outside of typical immigrant roles.
Edit: To be clear: I am proud that it was Turkish immigrant's children who did this, and that Germany made it possible for them to do it.
Edit: I would upvote parent comment as well as grandparent.
Edit: I think it would be fair to this at some kind of ratio (e.g. spend 10 karma to for each upvote or something).
It seems like an exception because the news paints a less rosy picture of the aggregate. Stupid.
Do you want to have race based discrimination and murders? go with the selectively pointing out the crimes committed by immigrants are committed by immigrants. This will give the illusion of causation(Immigrants do this because they are ).
If you want to have a society where people are judged by merit but you still have people arguing that it’s the race we should be looking for, go with pointing out the success of the immigrants. This will break the "Turks commit crimes because they are Turks" claim and inspire people to look to replicate the success of the successful ones.
That group is highly visible because all the others basically blend in with the natives, which creates the illusion that they are representative of all Turks. That's why pointing out successful individuals who are clear counterexamples to the antiprogressive time capsule is highly relevant. It can help natives to stop assuming that everybody with a Turkish sounding name is a time capsule victim until proven otherwise and it can inspire those at risk of growing up to be the next generation of time capsuleers.
On the other hand, we know that Covid is killing a large number of people right now. We have enough data to confidently state that the long term adverse effects are overall less bad than Covid.
What we can say is that we need this pandemic squashed and it’s a risk we as a global population are ready to take.
What are "old worries"? This is a new type of vaccine.
> They have a lot of data from previous forms of this type of things suggesting it is safe.
How does this make sense, given this is the first mRNA vaccine? The expression "previous forms of this type of things" is as blurry as it can get.
> We know the that injected "things" break down very quickly in the body, which again makes us believe there won't be any long term problems.
Heavy metals are "things", and when you inject them in the body, they don't break down, but stay there and slowly kill you.
> Of course in the end who knows. There could be something, and we may not know for 10 years.
This is not the attitude I'd take on something that potentially hundreds of millions of people will be subjected to. I'm aware that you can't ever prove something to be safe. I want to know if the specific risk brought about by mRNA vaccines are well understood or not, and why.
> On the other hand, we know that Covid is killing a large number of people right now.
It doesn't.
> We have enough data to confidently state that the long term adverse effects are overall less bad than Covid.
Splendid, I'm not going to ask for sources then, because I like the tone of your voice so much.
There are two risks at hand here: (a) using the novel mRNA vaccine technology, and (b) using it with the SARS-CoV2 virus. While I can not say anything about the former, the aforementioned researcher in my network mentioned that as with Human papillomavirus (HPV) and other cancerogenic viruses, the SARS-CoV2 family might have tumor generating effects. Using it with a vaccine could be risky - getting infected could be risky, too.
> How worried should I be (...)
This is why we have multi stage clinical trials. Fast tracking a trial does not necessarily mean that it less testing will be done. On the contrary, the amount of resources behind these vaccine candidates are enormeous. Of course, long term effects are hard to catch. But the same applies for the long term effects of an SARS-CoV2 infection. Time and experiments will tell. Let's hope for the best.
But with the huge financial and credibility boost I hope the team can follow their passion to solve other medical issues.
Quite an insight to switch from cancer therapy to COVID-19 vaccine, and quite the opportunity to be able to deploy 500 researchers onto it at such an early stage.
I hope this bolsters their original search for cancer treatment.
Actually not at all. BioNTech's entire platform was customized RNA therapeutics that target the immune system to a particular patient's tumor. Basically cancer vaccines.
If there is some slightly incorrect mRNA it will result in cells producing wrongly folded protein and if there's enough of it you'll get additional immunity to something slightly different.
Cells that produce the protein are to be killed by immune system anyways and natural viral mRNA is probably not perfectly replicated 100% of the time.
More stories like these might help moderate some of the borderline right wing anti-immigration folks
> The Pfizer/BioNTech Vaccine has been tested on over 40,000 volunteers and interim results suggest it is proving 90 per cent effective at protecting people against the virus.
> But we haven’t yet seen the full safety data, and these findings also need to be peer-reviewed.
> So we have cleared one significant hurdle but there are several more to go before we know the vaccine can be used.
> [...] If the Pfizer vaccine passes all the rigorous safety checks and is proved to be effective then we will begin a UK-wide NHS led programme of vaccine distribution.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-state...
general efficacy is not everything anyway. according to https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... the best vaccine is one that prevents serious disease and death, which can't be shown in stage 3.
This is a monster, monster opportunity and just 'existing' won't leverage it to the extent they can - it will help them fund, hire more, expand more, do more of what they are doing.
The fact that Pfizer can spin this story on their name is disturbing and dangeruous behaviour that should not be the norm.
The world works on information, if you don't take a seat at table, it will be taken by someone else.
The notion that 'communicating' and 'lab work' would be somehow 'competing time and/or resource pressures' overall at the company is nonsense. They are mostly separate activities.
Pfizer doesn't have to 'spin' anything, they are a legit partner in the deal, they can do the release in the US, they will have their brand up there, their name, do the interviews - and they don't have to do anything tricky, they can surely mention their 'no name partner' and win $1 Billion worth of free PR.
A tiny Germany company, knowing nothing about communications, will miss the opportunity to tell the world who they are, to tell their story, to make their name known to another generation of researchers and scientists who might want to work with them, to a generation of bankers, business people who will be 2x more likely to want to 'take the call and or do the deal' because of their reputation.
1/2 of business is communicating, the only successful businesses that don't understand this are the one's that hit on it accidentally.
Pfizer is already a global brand, this is the moment of a lifetime for 'the name of the company I already forget' (see what I mean?) - I had to re-look it up - 'BioNTech' - it's very much make-or-break. If this vaccine is legit they need to start talking about themselves now.
Also, it's a vaccine - what do you need marketing for? It's not like you are going to buy it in a convenience store.
Every serious investor is a human being - when the become more aware of an issue or person, it becomes more material to them.
The Saudi sovereign wealth assets probably are somewhere near a Trillion dollars, that's a ton of money they need to invest, same for Norway. When they see this on TV, and BioNTech wants to do a $3 Billion raise next year for expansion, then the CEO, already known to the bankers, will be a powerful figure to have on the roadshow. Brand matters far beyond just consumer appeal and marketing.
