Noubar Afeyan, Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, shared on LinkedIn:

“A Tale of Two Articles…

I read two articles last week that – taken together – brought to mind Charles Dickens’ opening line in A Tale of Two Cities: ‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.’

The first was a piece in Adam Tooze’s ChartBook referencing a Financial Times essay calling for a global vaccine push to usher in a ‘golden age in public health.’ The piece argues that ‘Vaccinations have been one of the unalloyed benefits of modernity,’ having eradicated smallpox, suppressed polio, and most recently, saved millions of lives otherwise lost to Covid-19. All in all, vaccines have saved more lives than any other medical invention in human history.

The second was a piece in The Texas Tribune reporting on a human case of bird flu in Texas – the second U.S. case of the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza. The transmission appears to have been caused by interaction with infected dairy cattle. The jump to humans may prove significant, and then may prove problematic. Time will tell.

While Flagship Pioneering is best known for founding Moderna, whose COVID-19 vaccine saved hundreds of millions of lives across the globe over the past three years – and, through boosters, is still protecting people from infection, long covid, severe disease, and death – Flagship companies Apriori Bio, Sail Biomedicines, and one of our stealth companies all have novel products, technologies, and global disease surveillance systems that could help arm the world against pandemic threats, if there was global will to do so. Other pharma and biotech companies stand equally ready to join this effort. But where is the global leadership call for such an effort to secure the health of people across the planet and protect them from disease?

The ‘best of times/worst of times’ quote is often cited and well known. The next line is less well known but does a good job of distilling our choices. It reads: ‘it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness’. When it comes to safeguarding the health of our citizens, will we be wise or foolish?”

Source: Noubar Afeyan/LinkedIn