Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has recently said that people who spread COVID vaccine misinformation are “criminals,” according to NBC News.
In an interview Tuesday with the Atlantic Council, Bourla slammed the “very small” number of professionals who “circulate, on purpose, misinformation so that they will mislead those that have concerns.”
He said, “Those people are criminals. They’re not bad people – they’re criminals. Because they have literally cost millions of lives.”
Comparing the vaccinated with anti-vaxxers, Bourla said, “Both of them are afraid.”
“Those that are getting the vaccine, they are afraid of the disease, and they believe that because people are not getting vaccinated, they are increasing the risk to them, they are increasing the exposure,” he said.
He went on to say, “Those that don’t get the vaccine, they’re afraid of the vaccine, and they are mad with the people that are pressing them to get it,” adding that they are “decent people, that they have a fear, and I understand it.”
Bourla also spoke about the development of the company’s Covid vaccine, recalling that former President Donald Trump would communicate with him directly about speeding up the process.
He said, “He [Trump] would reach out to me to ask about how we are doing and if there is anything he can do to help us accelerate, etc., etc. Which I told him, there is nothing.”
Bourla said he told Trump, “I just need to let my people work without worrying about politics.”
“And, eventually, we did it,” he added. “We brought it very early, and I know that President Trump would like to see it before the elections. It came after the elections, has nothing to do with politics. It is just, that was the speed of science.”
Bourla predicted that people will need annual Covid vaccine boosters, but he said he saw an end to the pandemic, stating, “I think we believe that life will go back to the way that we knew before.”
On Tuesday, Pfizer asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to authorize boosters for everyone aged 18 and above. In October, the company won emergency use authorization (EUA) for pediatric doses of its vaccine for children aged between 5 and 11.
Last week, Pfizer announced that a combination treatment of its experimental drug and an old HIV antiviral drug reduced the risk of COVID hospitalizations and deaths by 89%.
Bourla said last week that if the treatment gets FDA approval, it could “eliminate up to nine out of ten hospitalizations.”
