[HN Gopher] Operation Warp Speed: A new model for industrial policy
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Operation Warp Speed: A new model for industrial policy
Author : gok
Score : 18 points
Date : 2022-01-30 21:44 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (americanaffairsjournal.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (americanaffairsjournal.org)
| tomohawk wrote:
| > In April 2020, Kadlec and Marks wrote a proposal for HHS
| secretary Alex Azar, who in turn took it to Jared Kushner and
| others in the White House, who were enthusiastic. President Trump
| supported it and signed off on it. Azar brought in the DoD as
| well. (The bureaucratic history of OWS, like everything to do
| with it, is complex and contested.) Azar, Kushner, and others
| then made two hiring decisions that were crucial to Warp Speed's
| success, recruiting Moncief Slaoui, a pharma executive, and
| Gustave F. Perna, a general, as its leaders. Slaoui, OWS's chief
| adviser, had been chairman of global vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline
| (GSK) and brought pharma knowledge. General Perna, OWS's chief
| operating officer, had overseen the global supply chains for the
| U.S. Army and brought logistical expertise.
|
| It's really not possible to overstate what an accomplishment this
| was. To stand up an organization like this outside of the normal
| departments and to give it the political backing it needed. And
| the accomplishment of not only getting multiple vaccines ready in
| record time, but also solving the distribution logistics problems
| in parallel.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Wait, getting multiple vaccines ready but none were from the
| US.
|
| The most used one is a partnership from Pfizer and was created
| by Biontech. The vaccine was practically ready on day 2 of
| COVID due to mRNA. Pfizer even declined Warp speed funding (
| but pre-orders were accepted in December during phase 3 trials)
|
| So I'm not sure why Warp speed is considered a success?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Wait, getting multiple vaccines ready but none were from
| the US.
|
| Wasn't the Moderna vaccine developed entirely in the US?
| SR2Z wrote:
| And while the Pfizer one was majority developed by
| BioNTech, they lacked the expertise to actually produce it
| at scale.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| And that happened at the existing Pfizer facility in
| Puurs ( Belgium).
|
| As far as I'm aware, no existing facilities were
| upgraded/expanded?
| https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-town-puurs-
| spotlight...
|
| A big up for Belgian pharma facilities. But I'm unsure
| about the role of operation Warp speed on this all.
|
| As far as I'm aware, Pfizer/BionTech explicitly avoided
| any funding through operation Warp Speed. They received
| an order in phase 3 of the clinical trials.
| yzmtf2008 wrote:
| > As far as I'm aware, no existing facilities were added?
|
| Nowhere in your linked article indicates that "no
| existing facilities were added".
|
| > As of January 2022, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19
| vaccine is manufactured between 11 sites across five
| countries, including the U.S., Germany, Belgium, Ireland,
| and Croatia, and engages more than 20 suppliers.
|
| https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/vaccine/manufa
| ctu...
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I'm from Belgium and i did follow up on Puurs and i
| hadn't encountered any news that they needed to upgrade
| facilities there.
|
| That's what you should have copied my whole sentence: "as
| far as I'm aware, no existing facilities were added".
| Which in retrospect should be upgraded actually. Didn't
| notice that mistake.
| tomohawk wrote:
| > ready on day 2
|
| That's like some person in SV saying they had a great idea.
|
| Who cares?
|
| The level of execution in operation warp to get this past the
| FDA processes was enormous. The industrial mobilzation to
| create refrigeration units and transportation, and get all of
| the logistics alligned in a few months. That is the stuff of
| legend.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| And that seems to me as patting themselves on the back.
|
| Every country in Europe did this exact thing without
| patting themselves on the back or calling it "Warp speed" (
| eg. For Refrigerator units/logistics)
| yzmtf2008 wrote:
| > Wait, getting multiple vaccines ready but none were from
| the US.
|
| See sibling comment on Moderna.
|
| > The vaccine was practically ready on day 2 of COVID due to
| mRNA
|
| No. "ready" as in we can produce a vile in a lab? Sure. Ready
| as in tested in the general population, mass production
| facilities, distribution networks? Absolutely not.
|
| > So I'm not sure why Warp speed is considered a success?
|
| Producing _a_ vaccine is about the easiest part of warp
| speed. Having the supply chain needed to vaccinate the whole
| population in such a brief time? That 's the success. Also,
| it's literally the entire point of TFA.
| dnautics wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken the mRNA production is kind of bonkers,
| it's outsourced to a bestiary of third party small contract
| manufacturers. I could be wrong, but I don't think that any
| newly released drug has rolled out like that at such a
| scale in the past (usually it's one/a few plants all
| controlled by the big pharma that gets certified by the
| FDA). It's REALLY impressive that the bureaucracy figured
| out exactly where to bend the rules and shepherded all of
| the small contract manufacturers into compliance to get
| reasonable batch-to-batch consistency and safety for these
| vaccines.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Nooo. There was a ton of logistics. The military was a key
| part of the last mile distribution initially and for some
| time.
|
| Trump is a loathsome character, but OWS was a well executed
| initiative.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| mRNA was an accomplishment to be sure. It's a necessary but
| not sufficient condition. If you look at the stories for the
| rollout, the logistics challenge posed by mRNA vaccines were
| quite substantial, particularly refrigeration but also supply
| chain logistics in general were complicated. Warp Speed
| definitely was run competently by all accounts.
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