The Wall Street Journal - 21.03.2020 - 22.03.2020

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wrote there’s “a great deal of ruin in

a nation.” Especially a very great and

prosperous one with a brilliant sys-

tem and a creative citizenry.

And see this: We are surrounded

by nobility.

Mike Luckovich had a cartoon this

week of the Marines raising the flag

on Iwo Jima. Only it wasn’t Ma-

rines—it was a doctor, a scientist, a

nurse and a first responder anchor-

ing Old Glory in this rocky soil. It

was hokey and beautiful and true. In

the next few weeks and months

they’ll get us through and we should

thank them every way possible. That

includes everyone who can’t work at

home, the cops and firefighters, the

garbagemen and truckers, the people

who stock the shelves and man the

counters. A nurse told me Thursday

that hospital workers all see them-

selves as sitting ducks for infection,

but no one’s calling in sick. A jour-

nalist friend said maybe this will re-

order things and we’ll start to pay

people according to their real impor-

tance to society.

A personal note. As this is written

I have been sick for two weeks. It

started when I was finishing a column

on Rep. Jim Clyburn—I got a chill and

noticed the notepad on my knee was

warm. The next night more chills,

took my temperature: 101.

It may be a poorly timed ordinary

virus, one of the dozen floating out

there in America on any given day, or

it may be the more interesting one.

But everything you’ve heard about

the difficulty of getting a test is true.

“There are none,” said my doctor. If

he sent me to the emergency room, I

wouldn’t meet their criteria. You can

have every symptom, but if you an-

swer no to two questions, you won’t

be tested. The questions are: Have

you traveled internationally? Have

you recently been in contact with

someone who tested positive?

My doctor instructed me to go

home, self-quarantine, rest, report

back. A week in, the fever spiked up,

the headaches were joined by a

cough and sore throat, and I called

the local government number, where

they couldn’t connect me to anyone

who could help.

Everyone I dealt with was com-

passionate and overwhelmed. On

day 12 my doctor got word of test-

ing available at an urgent-care

T

his is a quick piece that
touches on where we are,
where we may be going,
and an attitude for the
journey.
The screenwriter Lawrence Kas-
dan once said the films of Akira Ku-
rosawa were distinguished by this
dynamic: The villain has arrived
while the hero is evolving. That’s
what made his films great, the
sense of an implacable bad guy en-
countering a good guy who is alive,
capable of changing, who is in fact
changing because of and in order to
beat back the bad guy and make
things safe again.

The villain is here in the form of
an illness. A lot of the heroes of this
story are evolving every day into
something we’ll look back on months
and years hence and say, “Wow,
LOOK what she did.” “What guts that
guy showed.” People are going to
pull from themselves things they
didn’t know were there.
But now, at this stage in the
drama, most of the heroes are also
busyabsorbing.Weareallofusev-
ery day trying to absorb the new re-
ality, give it time to settle into us.
It’s all so big. We are discovering
the illness as we experience it. We
don’t know its secrets, how long it
lasts, how long its incubation,

Everyone is thinking

through the reality of the

coronavirus pandemic and

how to rise to the occasion.

We Need Time to Absorb All This

whether you can be reinfected.

As for the economics: As the

month began we had functional full

employment. By the time it ends we

will not, not at all. In the past week

layoffs and let-gos have left state un-

employment claim websites crashing.

This is not “normal job disruption”;

it is a cascade. The Treasury secre-

tary reportedly said unemployment

could hit 20%.

The market gains of the Trump

era have been all but wiped out. In-

vestors are sellinggold.From this

paper’s editorial Thursday: “Ameri-

can commerce is shutting down right

before our eyes with no end in

sight.” Flights are empty, hotel occu-

pancy plummeting.

Where we are is a hard, bad place,

stupid to deny it. Where we’re going

looks to be difficult.

It’s a cliché to say we haven’t ever

had a moment like this (a plague, a

crash), but it’s true. As for New York,

twice in 20 years we’ve been ground

zero, epicenter of a national tragedy.

Will we get through it? Of course.

But it will change things, and change

us, as 9/11 did.

The governmental instinct is

right: stabilize things while every-

one’s absorbing. Whatever is done

will probably be an unholy mess. Do

it anyway and see where we are. In

the long term the best plan—the only

plan—is one that attempts to keep

people in their jobs. Meaning look to

European models on how to help

businesses hold on to their people.

There are a million warnings out

there on a million serious things. We

add one: Everything works—and will

continue to work—as long as we

have electricity. It’s what keeps the

lights on, the oxygen flowing, the in-

formation going. Everything is the

grid, the grid, the grid.

A general attitude for difficult

times? Trust in God first and always.

Talk to him.

Every time America’s in trouble I

remember Adam Smith’s words. He

storefront on First Avenue. When I

called I was connected to a woman

in Long Island. She asked for my

symptoms. Then: Have you traveled

internationally? Have you had re-

cent contact with anyone who’s in-

fected? No and no. She said, “It’s

OK, I’m sure they’ll accept you.” I

could hear her click “send.” She

paused and said, “I’m so sorry, you

don’t meet the criteria.” By now we

had made friends, and she was dis-

appointed for me.

I said, “Let’s think together.

Twelve days sick, almost all the

symptoms, part of an endangered de-

mographic.” Silence. Then a brain-

storm. At this point Ihaveknown a

person who’s tested positive; I saw

him a while back; no one has defined

“recently” because no one knows the

incubation period.

I said: Can we do the interview

again? She said, “Let’s go.”

She went down the list of ques-

tions, and when she said, “Have you

recently had contact.. .,” I said, “I

believe I can say yes.”

She said, “Allright.” Silence as I

listened to her tap the keys. “You

meet the criteria,” she said, with the

sweetest excitement.

And so Tuesday night I made my

way (mask, gloves) to the urgent-

care storefront, where I was tested

by a garrulous physician’s assistant

who said his office, or New York

health authorities, or the Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention, will

get back to me with results in three

to seven days. (Yikes.)

At this point I suppose it’s aca-

demic. If it’s positive, they’ll tell me

to continue what I’m doing. But if

hospitalized it would save time—pre-

sumably I wouldn’t have to be tested

again. Also it would be nice to think

I wasn’t just home sick, I was home

developing fighting Irish antibodies

spoiling for a fight.

I just want to get out and help in

some way. Isn’t that what you feel?

We all just want to pitch in.

A sign of the times in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Friday.

ANDREW KELLY/REUTERS

DECLARATIONS

By Peggy Noonan

OPINION

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The History of Pfizer and Penicillin, and Lessons for Coronavirus

O

ften lost in election-cycle di-
atribes against Big Pharma—
which come from all sides—
is the power of industry to come
together in times of crisis and save
lives.
Stories of battlefield heroism
during World War II are well
known. Lesser known, but relevant
for today’s fight against the novel
coronavirus, is the story of Pfizer’s
Jasper Kane and John McKeen.
Kane and McKeen pioneered the
mass production of penicillin. Their
breakthrough, together with others
made by scientists and engineers at
the nation’s industrial labs, helped
reduce the death rate from diseases
in the U.S. military to 0.6 per 1,
in World War II from 14.1 per 1,
in World War I. That 96% reduction
translated into 200,000 lives
spared.
There are lessons for today.
First, calls by political candidates
to make future Covid-19 vaccines
free run contrary to the national
interest. Low prices for vaccines
and anti-infectives have clipped
revenue for startups and led many
to file for bankruptcy. Investment
has plummeted, leaving the U.S. un-
prepared to fight off bad bugs.
In times of crisis, however,
American industry has shown a
willingness to invest, as biopharma-
ceutical companies around the
country are doing today. In the
1930s, Pfizer was a small Brooklyn-
based chemical company known
mostly for making vitamins and the
citric acid used in Coca-Cola. In Oc-
tober 1941, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt convened academic and
industry leaders, including Jasper
Kane, in Washington. Their charge:
Solve the penicillin production
problem.
Alexander Fleming’s discovery
in 1928 that a penicillin mold
killed bacteria lay dormant for a
decade because he couldn’t isolate
the active ingredient and make
enough of it for testing. In 1939 a

group led by Howard Florey at Ox-

ford University revived Fleming’s

work with some spectacular evi-

dence: The first person to receive

penicillin, an Oxford policeman

with a serious infection, recovered

in 24 hours. But Florey’s supply

ran out, and the policeman died a

few weeks later.

The U.S. supply was similarly

limited. In March 1942, half the na-

tion’s stock was used to treat a sin-

gle patient suffering from blood

poisoning. Kane and McKeen came

up with the idea of using deep-tank

fermentation to make bulk penicil-

lin, a process they had used for cit-

ric acid.

Working out of an old ice factory

near Pfizer’s offices in the Wil-

liamsburg neighborhood, they built

a commercial-grade manufacturing

plant in four months. A year later,

every Allied soldier who landed on

the beaches of Normandy on D-Day

carried the antibiotic in a penicil-

lin-injection kit. Nearly all of it

came from Pfizer.

The lesson for industry is that

civic duty comes first, rewards

come second. Based on its success

with penicillin, Pfizer transformed

from manufacturing vitamins to de-

veloping new therapeutic drugs.

That path led to its global expan-

sion and forms the core of its $

billion business today.

Modern scientists have tools

that were inconceivable years ago.

The novel coronavirus’s DNA was

sequenced within weeks. Companies

are moving at blazing speed to de-

velop new vaccines. Philanthropists

are funding therapeutic accelera-

tors. This is all reason for opti-

mism. Public-private partnerships

have the potential to save lives and

reduce damage to the economy.

What’s missing? A strong scien-

tific leader in Washington who can

clear the hurdles scientists and

companies will face in developing

a Covid-19 treatment or vaccine.

That effort must be spearheaded

by a person—a “scientist gen-

eral”—who is respected by both

academia and industry and experi-

enced in working with, rather than

against, Washington.

There’s a precedent. In June

1940, the former dean of engineer-

ing at the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology talked his way into a

meeting with President Roosevelt.

It took FDR only 10 minutes to de-

cide to give Vannevar Bush the au-

thority to unite scientists from in-

dustry, academia and federal

agencies in a singular push to pre-

pare the nation for war. The re-

sults: microwave radar, jet-powered

aircraft, long-range radio naviga-

tion (forerunner of the Global Posi-

tioning System), blood-plasma

transfusion, the antimalarial drug

chloroquine and penicillin. Bush

brought together Pfizer, Howard

Florey and ultimately more than

300 labs and 6,000 scientists to

win a race against time with mil-

lions of lives at stake.

A handful of scientific leaders

today seem to have been born to

play a similar role. Biologist Eric

Lander is a mathematician and ge-

neticist who is president of the

Broad Institute of MIT and former

co-chairman of the President’s

Council of Science Advisers under

President Obama. Sue Hellman is a

former head of research at Genen-

tech and president of the Gates

Foundation. Either would do justice

to Vannevar Bush’s legacy.

Whomever the president ap-

points, the need for a strong scien-

tist general is urgent. The clock is

ticking, and millions of lives are

again at stake.

Mr. Bahcall is a physicist, a for-

mer biotech CEO and author of

“Loonshots: How to Nurture the

Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure

Diseases, and Transform Indus-

tries.”

By Safi Bahcall

A ‘scientist general’ to

coordinate private and

public efforts can lead

the medical response.

What Victory Looks Like in the Coronavirus War

A telling moment

came on CNBC

Thursday. A host

gently shushed the

learned Jim Grant,

editor of Grant’s

Interest Rate Ob-

server, saying dis-

cussion of trade-

offs was not

encouraged.

On TV, deliver-

ing up unpleasant choices is bad for

the brand. Unfortunately policy dis-

cussion is about trade-offs, espe-

cially in the hardest of circum-

stances. Fortunately, the dam would

break on CNBC a day later, thanks in

part to an editorial in this paper.

In our coronavirus quandary, the

cure may not only be worse than

the disease. The cure is likely no

cure at all. We might hold off an ex-

pected surge in coronavirus cases

for two or three weeks with the

kind of extraordinarily destructive

economic lockdowns seen in Califor-

nia, New York and elsewhere. But

unless warmer weather is coming to

our rescue, Americans probably

won’t accept the social devastation

that would be inflicted by a five-

month or 18-month campaign of vi-

rus suppression of the sort pro-

moted, variously, by the U.K.’s

Imperial College London, Germany’s

Robert Koch Institute and other

public-health think tanks.

Mandatory social distancing

might well break down. (Look for

speakeasies to re-emerge in New

York and other shut-in cities.) The

government might well face a

choice of coercion or seeing its au-

thority collapse. I’m not being

alarmist.

This is a lesson the World

Health Organization’s Bruce Ayl-

ward brought back from Wuhan.

People with flulike symptoms had

to be isolated in dormitories, hos-

pitals and stadiums. Asking them

to self-isolate voluntarily didn’t

work. “After a couple of days peo-

ple get bored, go out for a walk

and go shopping and get other

people infected.”

And he was talking about people

who knew they were sick. We would

be asking apparently healthy Ameri-

cans to surrender much of what

makes life interesting and meaning-

ful for an indefinite period.

Bad decision making, as shown in

research, often begins with reduc-

ing a complex problem to the single

variable with the biggest emotional

wallop. That’s what’s happening

here. All of us sense the oppro-

brium and disgrace that would de-

scend on our elites if Italy-like

scenes of a health-care system

meltdown played out on our TVs.

But we may get the bad result any-

way and worse if we overtax the

willingness of Americans to isolate

themselves indefinitely.

We also may be underestimating

their ability to adopt effective vol-

untary distancing even as they pro-

ceed with their economic lives. Each

of us knows our own situation in a

way no top-down directive can. This

is a virtue to leverage.

I respect those experts who say

we should suppress the virus until a

vaccine arrives in 18 months or two

years even at the cost of a global

depression. Their job is to save

lives, while the larger trade-offs are

the province of voters and elected

officials.

When experts predict that 70% of

people will get the virus, they are

estimating at what point the virus

no longer finds enough uninfected

people to sustain its transmission in

aworld where behavioral change is

not restricting its access to fresh

hosts.

The epidemic stops. People who

aren’t yet infected but susceptible

are spared (at least this time). We

can make this work for us. We want

three curves: a flattened curve for

the elderly, a steeper one for the

young, and a third curve showing

the virus’s infectivity being reduced

by isolating those who test positive

and by encouraging everybody else

to take care with their sneezes,

hand-washing, etc.

Inconveniently for my argument,

the U.K., a pioneer of such thinking,

is now shifting to an accept-a-de-

pression-and-wait-for-a-vaccine ap-

proach. The medical experts and

their priorities are hard to resist.

Resisting their wisdom doesn’t come

naturally in such a situation.

Happily, I have confidence in the

American people to let their leaders

know when the mandatory shut-

downs no longer are doing it for

them. Strange to say, I have confi-

dence in our political class to sense

where the social fulcrum lies. A

reader emails that Donald Trump

could declare victory at the end of

15 days, say the blow on the health-

care system has been cushioned,

and urge Americans, super-

cautiously, to resume normal life.

This idea sounds better than wait-

ing for spontaneous mass defections

from the ambitions of the epidemi-

ologists to undermine the authority

of the government.

Because—make no mistake—

there are things worse than the cor-

onavirus. You think our politics are

irrational now? You haven’t seen

anything. The 1918 flu was far

worse medically than what we’re

about to experience, slaughtering

even young people with strong im-

mune systems. Yet we can end up a

far more damaged society as a re-

sult of the 2020 coronavirus. The

America of 1918 won a world war

and launched technological and

commercial revolutions that created

the modern world. We may not be

saying anything as flattering about

the America of 2020 if we handle

this badly.

We can try to stop time

until a vaccine is ready,

but the result might be

identical to defeat.

BUSINESS

WORLD

By Holman W.

Jenkins, Jr.

wsj_ 20200321 _a 015 p 2 jw 081000 8 a 01500 1 ____xa 2020 .crop.pdf 1 21 - Mar- 20 06 : 02 : 52