Alone in the spot­light, Pfiz­er CEO Bourla swears pure in­ten­tions in the rush to de­vel­op a Covid-19 vac­cine. But will the pub­lic be­lieve it?

Now that Mod­er­na has shift­ed ex­pec­ta­tions on piv­otal da­ta for its Covid-19 vac­cine to some time just af­ter the elec­tion and As­traZeneca has been stalled by a safe­ty is­sue, the sole play­er that can de­liv­er a shot through an emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion this month is Pfiz­er.

And Pfiz­er CEO Al­bert Bourla wants no part of the po­lit­i­cal furor that has swelled around that top­ic.

In an open let­ter, Bourla lament­ed the spot­light that Pres­i­dent Trump di­rect­ed at Pfiz­er dur­ing the first chaot­ic pres­i­den­tial de­bate. Trump — who has just test­ed pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus, push­ing the pan­dem­ic back in­to the head­lines — is shov­ing Pfiz­er in­to gale force po­lit­i­cal winds by in­sist­ing that a vac­cine could be OK’d in the next few weeks. And the CEO in­sists that pol­i­tics has noth­ing to do with the crash R&D project Pfiz­er has mount­ed with BioN­Tech to get an mR­NA jab on­to the mar­ket as soon as pos­si­ble.

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