Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca is leading the charge against the coronavirus behind the pandemic suspending the Boston Celtics’ NBA season and much else about our usual quotidian lives.
As part of his non-sports work as head of Bain Capital (a major investment firm), Pagliuca teamed up with a group of a dozen esteemed scientists — including a Nobel laureate — along with several other high-profile businesspeople to create “Scientists to Stop COVID”.
The group, a Manhattan Project-like organization dedicated to combat COVID-19 and get the economy going again with the hopes of functioning as an advisory board to the federal government.
“I think we’re all cautiously optimistic,” said Pagliuca via the Boston Herald’s Mark Murphy. “America’s a great place, and with the technology we have and people working together – that’s why we’ve named this presentation the war on COVID. It’s been a great partnership between government, science and business – a real team effort.”
The business people involved have been using their contacts to gain access to the White House while scientists worked to identify potential treatment options while a vaccine is developed.
"We're cautiously optimistic." Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca has joined an elite group of scientists and businessmen with a plan to fight COVID-19. https://t.co/gX3yPvULdn
— Mark Murphy (@Murf56) May 2, 2020
Work by the group helped speed development of experimental drugs such as Remdesivir through lowering regulatory hurdles with the help of FDA connections.
“Remdesivir is a treatment,” explained Pagliuca. “It would hopefully act like Tamiflu acts for the flu. Therapeutics would soften the blow of the disease, that prevent you from getting pneumonia.”
Even the pace of vaccine development has been a pleasant surprise to date, with things advancing ahead of schedule in the early stages of its development in several trials around the world.
“Some of the scientists here acknowledge there is a possibility that it can be done quicker – that would be almost miraculous … That’s why I say cautious optimism – it took four years to do a mumps vaccine, we still don’t have an AIDS vaccine, there’s never been an mRNA vaccine developed to date, and this is an mRNA vaccine. There’s a lot of hurdles, but today’s technology has changed dramatically from five years ago with all the genome research.”
“People are saying late this year, which would be miraculous progress, because it’s never been done that quickly before. But there’s been some optimism,” he added.
Boston's Brad Stevens part of committee guiding return to play https://t.co/yRtyJtbnbe via @thecelticswire
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) May 2, 2020
“You can hope for the best, but prepare for a longer period of time which would be 18 months to two years.”
The latter outcome is unfortunately even optimistic for historical examples, as Pagliuca notes, but that even early results are producing such positive returns is heartening in a season of loss and despair.
While there’s still plenty of heart-rending news out there saturating the media, it’s a welcome change of pace to see a smidgen of positive developments in the fight against the pandemic coming from a most familiar — if unexpected — corner.
[lawrence-related id=33613,33591,33580,33554]