How US pulled off ‘impossible’ with vaccines

“Within 24 hours of receiving authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, we’ll be shipping millions of safe and effective vaccines to the American people.” This was the promise General Gus Perna, then the head of the Army’s Material Command and leader of Operation Warp Speed’s vaccine distribution effort, made to the American people months before that authorization was granted.

Two words describe the eventual outcome: Mission accomplished.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of Operation Warp Speed’s initial shipments of millions of safe and effective vaccines. Late in the evening of Dec. 11, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration granted its first COVID-19 vaccine emergency use authorization.

On Dec. 12, millions of vaccine doses began their journey from factories headed for UPS and FedEx shipping hubs. On Dec. 13, those doses were flown and driven to thousands of vaccination sites across 64 public health jurisdictions throughout the United States and as far away as Guam.

On Dec. 14, the first vaccine doses were administered to our front-line healthcare heroes and many others.

During the subsequent 12 months, Americans have been the beneficiaries of nearly 500 million vaccine doses, delivered under stringent storage and transport requirements.

Operation Warp Speed was the most successful public-private partnership since World War II. It reduced the typical timetable for vaccine development of 5 to 10 years to 10 months.

The National Institutes of Health released a report in the summer of 2021 asserting that in the first six months alone Warp Speed vaccines saved 140,000 American lives. Former leaders of the Trump administration’s Council of Economic Advisers estimated it saved the economy $1.8 trillion, translating into tens of thousands of businesses and millions of jobs saved.

As we reflect on this one-year anniversary, it is appropriate to recount what a small group of dedicated Trump administration officials, military leaders and pharmaceutical industry experts, working on behalf of the American people, did to make this happen.

They enabled America’s private sector to deliver more vaccines, faster than ever before, and in quantities substantial enough to vaccinate every eligible American by the end of April 2021 — scarcely 15 months after the initial genetic characterization of the COVID-19 virus.

There is no doubt that Warp Speed drew upon spectacular scientific prowess and long-standing investments in novel vaccine development technologies, but its success was much broader than this. It rapidly mobilized the extraordinary industrial dexterity, innovative spirit and adaptive capacity of the American economy.

We never let the federal government’s “reach exceed its grasp.” Our philosophy was simple: The government should engage only in those activities the private sector cannot do better. We provided the resources, the regulatory context, and the coordination necessary for success. American industry mobilized, innovated and executed.

So, amid all of the daily political strife, divisiveness, intolerance and criticisms of our country, pervasive across traditional and social media today, we hope that Americans will take time on this one-year anniversary of Operation Warp Speed’s unique achievement to take pride in the fact that, when challenged, we can still come together and accomplish the seemingly impossible.

Paul Mango was deputy chief of staff for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2019-2021, serving as Secretary Alex Azar’s liaison to Operation Warp Speed. His forthcoming book is “Warp Speed: Inside the Operation that Beat COVID, the Critics, and the Odds.” (Republic Book Publishers, March 15, 2022)