• by Les Luchter , May 11, 2023

 

As the federal COVID-19 public health emergency ended on Thursday, Pfizer chief executive officer Albert Bourla decried the assault on science taking place globally despite the fact that “science is what saved us” from the pandemic.

Bourla noted that undermining the authority of the Food & Drug Administration –--“the most iconic regulatory body in the world” -- in deciding the safety and effectiveness of medicines (as a Texas judge recently did vis a vis the abortion pill) “undermines the whole system of trust that you need to have.”

While saying that this assault on science is more than just an anti-vaccine reaction, Bourla expressed sympathy with the “very vocal, very passionate, very good people, perhaps 15% to 20% of the country, who mistrust COVID vaccines because they’re “victims of a small minority of people making disinformation.”

“Those people know what they are saying is wrong, and they know that they will have an impact on human lives,” Bourla said, but are spreading their misinformation “because it’s serving political or financial agendas.”

Bourla made his comments during a live-streamed Reuters Newsmaker Interview with editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni.

.Noting that Pfizer “stands out from the other pharmaceutical companies” in two aspects: its “extremely high recognizability” (90+% in the U.S. who “know it’s a company making vaccines and treatments”) and the “very, very high” percentage of people who trust the company, Bourla said the company can’t dismiss the minority of people who “are afraid of the vaccine,” but rather needs to “talk to them and explain” with data and conviction what the situation actually is “and slowly, slowly we will be the ones that convince them to listen to (us) rather than this very small minority of people” spreading disinformation.