Thread by @Wes_Andrews

“In the last quarter century—there’ve only been seven truly new vaccines introduced globally into clinical practice.”—@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/#Harvard Business School’s @tsedal on the grave disservice done to the public w/over promising a #COVID19 vaccine

“You’re one of four African American CEOs in the #Fortune500—does it make a difference to ‘our ppl’ that you’re in the room?”—@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/#Harvard Business School’s @tsedal discussing the issue of race in America post-#GeorgeFloyd
nb: @wkamaubell @staceyabrams

@tsedal: What does it take to find a reliable vaccine?
@Merck’s Frazier: It takes a lot of time—(I think) the record for the fastest vaccine ever brought to market was Merck in the mump’s [#MMR #MMRV] vaccine, it took about 4yrs; our most recent vaccine for Ebola took 5.5yrs.

“We’re starting w/a spiked-protein as the antigen—what we’re hoping w/these different approaches is create a [#COVID19] vaccine that we can study quickly, that can be both safe & effective, and can be durable.”
—@Merck CEO Frazier
nb: @Laurie_Garrett @DrTomFrieden @HelenBranswell

“What worries me the most is the public is so hungry to go back to normalcy, that they’re pushing us to move things faster & faster—but ultimately if you’re going to use a #vaccine in billions of ppl you’d better know what that vaccine does.”
—@Merck CEO Frazier w/#HBS @tsedal

“There are a lot of examples of vaccines in the past that have stimulated the immune system, but ultimately didn’t confer protection; unfortunately in some cases [they] actually helped the virus invade the cell—so we have to be very careful.” —@Merck CEO Frazier w/#HBS’s @tsedal

We’ve been trying to get an AIDS vaccine since the 1980’s & we’ve been unsuccessful.” —@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/#Harvard Business School’s @tsedal on the difficulty of getting to a durable #COVID19 vaccine
nb: @DrTedros @NEJM @cmyeaton @DrEricDing @DreJoanneLiu @apoorva_nyc

“I think when ppl tell the public there’s gonna be a vaccine by the end of 2020 for example—I think they do a grave disservice to the public. At the end of the day, we don’t want to rush the [#COVID] vaccine before we’ve done rigorous science.”—@Merck CEO Frazier w/#HBS’s @tsedal

“When we tell ppl that a vaccine is coming right away, we allow politicians to actually tell the public not to do the things that the public needs to do—like wear the damn masks.”—@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/#Harvard’s @tsedal #WearAMask 😷
nb: @jaketapper @AprilDRyan @weijia

“We were so unprepared for this [#COVID19] pandemic—it’s not even funny on so many levels. Generally speaking, we’ve done a bad job in being prep’d—from disease surveillance, to the PPE, and testing & tracing we need to have.”—@Merck CEO Frazier w/HBS’s @tsedal #TrackTraceIsolate

“Right now, it’s critical for ppl to understand that while we hope to have a vaccine post-haste—they’re the protection against the spread of this virus now—by good hygiene, using your mask, social distancing etc.”.
—@Merck CEO Frazier w/#HBS @tsedal
nb: @billmaher @StephenAtHome

@tsedal: What are barriers to distributing vaccines globally?
@Merck’s Frazier: Two big issues—we’re living in a time of ultra-nationalism—where countries want to use whatever is avail in their pop 1st vice pop’s at greatest risk & manufacturing at scale for 7.5Bppl
OP #WarpSpeed

“Even if you have a vaccine, scaling it up to mft it at those kinds of numbers—then distributing it to those areas of the world where ppl can’t afford the vaccine, where the last-mile challenge is greatest—that’s gonna be a huge issue for us.”—@Merck CEO Frazier w/#HBS’s @tsedal

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1283168173588721670

“No matter where you are in the world, you should have access to this vaccine b/c it is a global pandemic & unless all of us are safe, none of us are safe.”—@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/@HarvardHBS’s @tsedal on the need for broad equitable affordable access to any #COVID19 vaccine

“When you think about the world we live in w/#ClimateChange, ecosystem disruption & human mobility—this pandemic is just the 1st of many that we could experience as a species—b/c those conditions are only going to get worse going forward.” —@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/#HBS’s @tsedal

“We Americans, we value liberty—liberty’s been a strong theme in our politics—b/c historically, we’ve had 2 oceans protecting us from the ROW—so we could say it’s all about my liberty, it’s not about security—well this virus doesn’t really care about that.”—@Merck CEO Ken Frazier

If you’re going to exercise your liberty at my personal expense, then we can’t control the pandemic.”—@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/#Harvard’s @tsedal on the EU #EU decision to bar travel from the US, based on American behaviors
nb: @ianbremmer @tomfriedman

“We need politicians with the will & integrity to tell ppl the truth, reality of the world is that this time next year it very well might look like what we’re experiencing now.”—@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/#Harvard’s @tsedal
nb: @Trevornoah @gtconway3d @jimmykimmel @SethAbramson

“This whole pandemic—what it’s done is unmasked the huge disparities that exist in our society; huge structural elements of racism that have existed in this country for a long time & we need to step up [as they] determine the lives of so many.”—@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/@tsedal

@tsedal: [Given] George Floyd’s death, what can corporate leaders do?
@Merck’s Frazier: ‘Act’—it’s really important we don’t engage in platitudes; time to take action. Reality is anytime you try to change status quo you’re going to get resistance—that’s what leadership is about.

“Look at the leadership teams—it’s pathetic. There’s almost no African American rep at the top; there’s 4 of us in #Fortune500. We have to talk about the subtleties of racism; like the belief: blacks as a group aren’t as capable as whites are.”—@Merck CEO Frazier w/#HBS’s @tsedal

“If an African American is trying to move fwd in a corporation b/c he/she belongs to that disadvantaged group, they have to be better in order to get to the same place—and ppl don’t want to admit that, esp companies w/a merit system.”—@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/#Harvard’s @tsedal

“If we’re not racist, we need to challenge a process, a system, a custom that allows African Americans to advance not at the same rate as everybody else—if you’re complacent w/the status quo, you’re complicit in the racism [it] hides.”—@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/#Harvard’s @tsedal

“Companies need to re-examine how they hire—according to an @HarvardHBS study 30% of new jobs are for skill sets that don’t require a bachelor's degree, which [when req] excludes ~70% of African Americans.”
—@Merck CEO Frazier w/#Harvard’s @tsedal #Hiring hbr.org/2019/01/how-or…

“Within companies, you see that at middle management there’s a ceiling—and [blacks] don’t progress beyond that ceiling. So CEOs need to actively intervene to bring ppl in.”
—@Merck CEO Frazier w/#Harvard’s @tsedal
nb: @BarackObama @MichelleObama @chrisrock @hasanminhaj

“Only reason—I’m CEO of #Merck is b/c while I was minding my business practicing law in #Philadelphia, my predecessor called me into his ofc & said: I’m 2yrs from retirement, I can’t get my colleagues to promote any African Americans—guess what? I’m going to make your career.” 🤯

“I’m pleased 30% of my sr team’s #AfricanAmerican—you aren’t going to find that anyplace else. [ATST] TBH, we’re not perfect at #Merck—when I look at ppl 2-3 grades ⬇️ sr team; representation is terrible—we put ppl on the slate for hiring—they don’t get hired.” —@Merck’s Frazier

“Of the top 10 in the company, white males are only 4 of that 10—we have 3 African Americans, 1 Asian American & 2 women. So we’ve done a good job on #diversity at the top—but we haven’t had the ‘pull through’ at the levels below.” —@Merck CEO Ken Frazier w/@HarvardHBS’s @tsedal

@tsedal: What advice do you have for prof POC?
@Merck Frazier: First advice is from my Dad (born 1900), which was to “not listen to what society was saying to me about my own abilities.” There are all these subtle msgs prof [POC] get that tell them they’re not quite good enough.

“We have to have the psychological armor to defend ourselves against the racism that’s all around us.”—@Merck Ken Frazier w/@HarvardHBS Prof Tsedal Neeley @tsedal
nb: @blacktokyo @CharlesMBlow @FareedZakaria @KingJames @mavcarter @TheRock @donlemon @soledadobrien @ValerieJarrett

“You really can’t plan your career—you have to take advantage of all opportunities you have before you—in my own instance, what helped me was that I wanted a certain level of autonomy+accountability—when you do that you get more responsibility.”
—#Merck CEO Ken Frazier
@MSDFrance

Simply a #mustwatch honest, open discussion about #COVID19 vaccine challenges facing the world along w/many of the #diversity challenges our nation faces. Interview w/@Merck CEO Ken Frazier by #Harvard’s @tsedal
nb: @klakhani
#racism #business #HBAP #HBS

@threadreaderapp please unroll this thread!