Albert Bourla and other healthcare CEOs talked about the efficacy of vaccines and how public health could take a big turn for the worse if the incoming Trump administration veered away from accepted norms regarding vaccines.
The post Pfizer CEO At JPM Issues Clear Warning To Kennedy On Vaccines appeared first on Above the Law.
Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla did not mince his words at the 43rd annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco on Monday regarding the controversial positions that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken on vaccines. Kennedy is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services but needs to be confirmed by the Senate.
Bourla, whose company is synonymous with the Covid vaccines in the mainstream American consciousness, was asked by Chris Schott, a J.P. Morgan analyst, about how he believes things might change on the vaccine front.
“Clearly, the things that he has said for the vaccines in the past are in complete contradiction with what we believe and what the medical community believes, and what the scientific community believes and what regulators all over the world believe. And vaccines are the most effective, cost-effective health care intervention that have existed since clean water,” Bourla said, according to a recording of the session.
While reiterating that he has already engaged with the President-elect and his team and would like to work with Trump on areas of mutual interest, Bourla issued a clear warning
“On the vaccines, if he [Kennedy] does some of the things that he has spoken in the past, I think he will find in front of him, not [just] us, but the entire medical community, the entire scientific community, the entire health care [community] — in terms of insurance companies because they know that this is very cost effective. And also the employers who are really believing that by using vaccination, they are reducing their health care costs rather than increasing it,” Bourla declared.
The rate of childhood vaccinations has been dropping in the United States, and Bourla warned that this might lead to the worsening of diseases should Kennedy act on his beliefs.
“And even worse, if he does some of the things, because already … we are losing some vaccinations in [chicken] pox and … polio, in terms of how many people are vaccinating. If we go below a specific threshold, we will start having an epidemic, and that will be detrimental for him and for the administration. So I think we made that very clear,” he said.
In fact, vaccination rates in kindergarteners have declined since 2020. According to the CDC, “After 10 years of near 95% nationwide vaccination coverage, coverage with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR); diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP); poliovirus vaccine (polio); and varicella vaccine (VAR) declined to approximately 93% over the 2020–21 and 2021–22 school years and remained essentially unchanged during the 2022–23 school year.”
After painting the picture of a worst-case scenario in the U.S., Bourla struck a more conciliatory tone by saying how he can work with the Trump administration on areas of mutual interest.
“He has seen a lot of his friends and people that he knew dying from cancer, and he keeps asking every time I meet — ‘What are we doing with cancer?’ and ‘Can we cure it?’ And I think that’s an opportunity to try to build programs that will accelerate the cancer development,” Bourla said.
Aside from Pfizer, other companies were also asked if they expect any changes from the incoming administration on vaccines. The CEO of Moderna, which created the mRNA Covid vaccine, and has other vaccines in its pipeline said that it is too early to know what the Trump administration is going to do in terms of vaccines. But Stéphane Bancel went on to add the following in more detail:
The piece that we are confident in, I think, is that every elected leader and every public health leader in those agencies — FDA, CMS, CDC and so on — want to protect the American people, want to make America healthy again. And so vaccine is a very important tool. If you think about vaccines in the elderly, if a recommendation was to be changed, the impact will be seen in the same season — in which you might see in increase in costs … in the same season because we know that [if] a 70-year-old person is hospitalized, [that person] is of course going to cost much more that same year by being hospitalized with very high cost. And so there’s a lot of doctors, scientists in all those agencies that know the facts and will be able to provide to the new elected leaders those facts so that they understand the benefit and the risk-benefit [ratio] in terms of vaccinations that has been known and demonstrated for a long time.
And so we’re going to collaborate with the new administration, like we’ve always done with every administration in every country where we operate. We believe that focusing on the data and the risk-reward ratio will be the right way to do it.
The CEO of GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) wasn’t asked specifically about the prospect of vaccines under Trump, but Emma Walmsley did sing their praises.
“The reality is there is no better return on healthcare budget investments than investing in vaccines that stop disease before it starts. That’s why you’re seeing a regulatory environment that, in the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act], has been removing copays,” she said according to a transcript of her session at JPM.
Photo: WhataWin, Getty Images
