What an inspiration! I loved this true story of how two Turkish immigrants living in Germany found each other, and set out on a quest to cure cancer with their company BioNTech. On their journey, in January 2020 they stopped their cancer work to focus on a new and more pressing threat, that of the Coronavirus. They started working on a vaccine before the rest of the world even knew what Covid-19 was, before it had even moved out of China – what foresight they had. It was risky to stop their ground-breaking work on cancer and pour all of their energies into something that may not even be needed; but thank God they did, because this was my vaccine, BioNTech/Pfizer, and not just me but 53 million people in the UK have had a COVID vaccine, and all those under 40 had to be administered the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine because there were blood-clot risks with the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine.
I digress, this audiobook explains the entire process that the couple went through, from the first idea through to administering the first doses and beyond to adapting the vaccine for new variants. It was fascinating to learn about the science behind vaccine development and production, I learned much from this book, including what mRNA is and why no-one took it seriously but in the end this was one of the methods that has managed to combat this deadly virus. It is astounding that the usual timeframe for vaccine development is about 5 years, but they managed it in less than one year.
This has a great rating on GoodReads – 4.31 out of 5. You should enjoy this book if you like true-life medical non-fiction and/or if you are fascinated by Covid-19.
I can also recommend Duty of Care, if you enjoy this book, which is Covid told from the point of view of a doctor in the UK, working throughout the pandemic.
Reading with Kat 
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