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The Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Race to Vaccinate Britain

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For our interview, Bingham has jotted down a preparedness pros and cons list, scrawled in red pen on a sheet of unruled A4. Her clarity of thought and action in a such a dark and turbulent time is a seam running through the book, and I know for certain that her efforts saved many lives. Meanwhile Matt Hancock launched an “extraordinary ambush… trading in Dr Jekyll for Mr Hyde”, as he questioned her competence in front of his cabinet colleagues at one meeting.

She ended up accepting the position, only to find that the science, including the unprecedented use of mRNA, was only part of the problem. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Dame Kate Bingham, the head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, said the former health secretary conducted an “extraordinary ambush” in a meeting in June 2020 and questioned her competence in front of cabinet colleagues and civil servants, despite having a “friendly” conversation beforehand.

It’s a vital record of a unique moment in history and an inspiration to support the next generation of scientists. Before the meeting, I’d asked Matt Hancock for advice about the questions likely to arise, and about how I should conduct myself.

Bingham is one of the new breed of VC that emerged from that wreckage, an investor altogether more interested in managing the companies she helps create than in driving start-ups into premature IPOs.Bingham and Hames’s accessible, edge-of-the-seat account of how British innovators vaccinated the UK and much of the rest of the world is also a quiet, compelling, non-partisan argument for dialogue between business and politics. An excellent read… Capturing the exceptional pace and energy of everyone involved in discovering and producing effective therapies against Covid-19. The health secretary was openly accusing me of a lack of ambition, questioning my competence, and doing so in front of his cabinet colleagues and key officials,” Bingham said, who told him he was wrong. To secure vaccines for the UK; to ensure shots were distributed equitably worldwide; and to make the country more resilient for next time. Some of the revelations about politicians were unsurprising given what we now know (shockingly, it turns out Matt Hancock isn't great to deal with, who'd have thunk it?

Lee Cain, former Downing Street director of communications, “briefed against” Bingham in the newspapers and banned her from speaking to the media when she was publicising the Vaccine Registry. There was no shortage of brilliant work to choose from, but little way of telling what innovations would pay off on time.

Bingham and Hames also look at how the effective application of science can solve the world’s problems if it is delivered with a sharp focus on outcomes. The Oxford Literary Festival was a special opportunity for me and certainly one of the highlights of my career – it was an honour I will never forget. Meanwhile there was a “near total ignorance” about what vaccine manufacturing actually entailed, and a National Audit Office’s investigation that began just two months after the VTF launched was a “foolish and expensive joke”, which wasted time and resources. But for half a million immunosuppressed people in the UK this is not always the case – a lab-made version can protect them instead.

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