[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 155 (Wednesday, September 9, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5490-S5492]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            COVID-19 Vaccine

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this morning, our Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions Committee had a hearing, and one of the members 
came up to me on the floor and said: That was the most civil hearing I 
have attended in the Senate in a while. The truth is that most of our 
hearings in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee are 
civil. We have Senators of widely different points of view.
  I thank Senator Murray, the Senator from Washington State, who is the 
ranking member of our committee and a member of the Democratic 
leadership, for the way that she and the Democratic members of the 
committee worked with the Republican members so that we can have the 
Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Adams, and Dr. Francis 
Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, who is one of 
our country's most esteemed scientists and the man who headed the human 
genome project, there for 3 hours and we can ask questions. Virtually 
every Senator participated, and we got some good answers.
  I would like to report to the other members of the Senate about that 
hearing. I began it by saying: I have been rereading the book ``Guns, 
Germs, and Steel,'' a book by Jared Diamond, written in 1997, which is 
as relevant today--maybe more relevant today--than it was when he wrote 
it.
  Mr. Diamond, who won the Pulitzer Prize and is a professor of 
geography in California, said: There is nothing new about mass 
epidemics that causes deaths and social upheaval that we are witnessing 
today, and there is nothing new about where most of those epidemics in 
history have come from. Diseases that caused those deaths for the last 
10,000 years, he says, have come mostly from animals that transmit them 
to humans, and during most of history, there were three ways to deal 
with these epidemics.
  One was to isolate the infected, as in, for example, leper colonies 
to deal with leprosy. One was, according to Mr. Diamond, that over 
thousands of years, there have been genetic changes in the human 
population in response to the infectious diseases that have gone 
through those populations, and they have produced a resistance to the 
infectious diseases, as in the case of smallpox. Of course, that didn't 
do much to help the Native Americans in this country when European 
settlers, who had some resistance to smallpox, arrived here and gave 
blankets to the Native Americans that were infected with smallpox or 
contained smallpox and wiped out 90 percent of the tribes who received 
them because they didn't have that resistance.
  There is a third way of dealing with epidemics. Throughout most of 
history, the most common way was to let the epidemic run through the 
population until everyone had been either killed or recovered and 
developed some resistance to the disease. Diamond says that the Black 
Death killed about one-third of Europe's population between 1347 and 
1351 as it ran through the population killing people.
  Now, what is new about dealing with epidemics is modern medicine. 
Modern medicine has given us ways to diagnose these diseases and to 
create treatments to make it easier to recover from these diseases, but 
the true miracle of modern medicine is the vaccine--a vaccine that can 
prevent humans from acquiring the disease at all. The Senator from 
Tennessee and I have actually worked together on that issue 2 or 3 
years ago to encourage people, and, in her words, talk to your doctor 
if you have a concern about a vaccine. That is what we want to talk 
about today.
  Today, in all 50 States and the District of Columbia, school children 
are required to take vaccinations for a series of diseases--diphtheria, 
tetanus, whooping cough, measles, rubella, and chicken pox--before 
entering school.
  That vaccination will protect the child from getting the disease, 
which in turn prevents the child from infecting someone else--a pattern 
that eventually causes these diseases to disappear.
  Americans of my generation remember how polio terrified our parents 
in the early 1940s and into the 1950s. Many saw their children die of 
polio. When I was very young, I can remember classmates who were 
strapped into iron lungs so they could breathe and were destined to 
stay there for the rest of their lives. The lucky ones were like 
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was left only with a limp after 
having polio in the 1940s.
  The disease terrified Americans until Dr. Jonas Salk discovered the 
polio

[[Page S5491]]

vaccine in 1955. After the vaccine was developed, the United States 
undertook a large-scale vaccination campaign, and polio was declared 
eradicated from the United States by 1979.
  The purpose of the hearing we had this morning was to explore the 
remarkable progression that science is making toward a COVID-19 vaccine 
and to remind parents to have their children get their childhood 
vaccinations and to encourage as many Americans as possible to take the 
flu vaccine this fall.
  First, the progress toward the COVID-19 vaccination--Dr. Collins, the 
Director of the National Institutes of Health, talked about that. He 
talked about the vaccine research and development, including Operation 
Warp Speed, which is working to develop, manufacture, and distribute 
safe and effective vaccines as rapidly as possible.
  He told us there are six vaccines currently under development. He 
reminded us that the Federal Government, using taxpayers' money, has 
helped accelerate this by providing money to manufacture these vaccines 
before they are deemed safe and effective and that he does not 
necessarily expect all of the vaccines to work. And if they don't work 
or if they are not safe, they will be thrown in the dumpster. They will 
not be distributed to anyone to use.
  He pointed out that AstraZeneca announced today that 1 person in its 
clinical trial--which probably has 30,000 people in the UK--had 
developed an illness and they had paused the trial. In other words, 
they stopped giving shots to the volunteers in the clinical trial until 
they could see whether the illness is related to the vaccine.
  Some people believe that Operation Warp Speed means cutting corners, 
but it does not. It refers to the extraordinary investment in research, 
development, and manufacturing scale-up for the COVID-19 vaccine.
  Perhaps most significantly, the Biomedical Advanced Research and 
Development Authority--we call it BARDA--has taken the unprecedented 
step, as I mentioned earlier, to speed up manufacturing for hundreds of 
millions of doses early in the process by buying those doses in advance 
so they can be ready to distribute as soon as the vaccines are approved 
by the Food and Drug Administration.
  Several of our Senators on both sides of the aisle asked Dr. Collins 
and Dr. Adams, the Surgeon General, whether they intended to let 
politics play a role in the decision about whether a vaccine is safe 
and effective and ready for distribution. They answered absolutely no, 
that they would be no part of such a decision.
  The same has been said by Dr. Stephen Hahn, who is the Commissioner 
of the FDA charged with making that judgement. ``This is going to be a 
science, medicine, data decision,'' he said. It ``is not going to be a 
political decision.'' That means if it is not safe, it will not be 
distributed.
  At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control is working on a 
plan to distribute the vaccine as soon as they are authorized or 
approved, prioritizing vaccines for healthcare workers and vulnerable 
populations. The CDC says its plan will be a fair system informed by 
nonpartisan health experts from the National Academies of Sciences, 
Engineering, and others.
  Some have suggested--of course, this is a political season; we have 
an election in 2 months--that the reason we are rushing, as a 
government, to create the vaccine is so it will help President Trump 
before the election in November, or that the reason the Centers for 
Disease Control said to the States: Get ready now to distribute the 
vaccine when it is effective and safe--that that is a political move.
  Of course, I said that if Dr. Collins and Dr. Adams had come in and 
said it would be 5 years before we had a vaccine, we would probably ask 
the President to fire them, because people are dying, and we need 
vaccines. We don't want the alternative, which is to run the disease 
through millions of Americans until everybody either dies or is 
infected and recovers, and we don't want to have happen again what 
happened before with the H1N1 virus, where the vaccine was ready, but 
the States weren't ready to distribute it. So we were pleased to see 
what the response was
  Americans are saying that they might not take the vaccine. The first 
question people ask is, Are they safe? They are safe because they are 
reviewed by the FDA, which is the gold standard for safety. Vaccines 
are routinely given to children. They are specifically recommended by 
an advisory commission that looks at it carefully, consisting of 
doctors and physicians and scientists.
  In a 2015 article for the Scientific American, a distinguished 
scientist wrote:

       By age two, most children will receive almost 30 shots 
     designed to boost a child's natural defenses against disease. 
     Yet at the same time, parents who take their children for 
     those recommended vaccinations might be inundated with Web 
     site and celebrity-espoused rumors making false claims that 
     shots are not necessary or cause autism.

  This distinguished scientist wrote:

       At best, navigating this landscape can be confusing. But 
     when weighing the risks of encountering life-threatening 
     disease against the benefits of receiving a vaccine there's 
     no contest. The vast majority of children do not experience 
     anything worse than short-lived redness or itching at the 
     spot of the injection.

  I asked Dr. Collins this question, which I think is confusing to some 
people: When you take the COVID vaccine, you don't get COVID? There was 
a time in the old days when to get a smallpox vaccine, you, in fact, 
got a little smallpox. But that is not what happens. As Dr. Collins 
explained it, he said the vaccine creates a sort of machine within your 
body and your immune system to fight the COVID. It doesn't infect you 
with the disease.
  Then there is the question about whether the vaccines are effective. 
I talked about how polio is now eradicated. The number of polio cases 
since the vaccines has fallen rapidly to less than 100 in the 1960s and 
less than 10 in the 1970s thanks to the successful vaccination program. 
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the United States has 
been polio-free since 1979. Diphtheria was a terrifying prospect for 
parents in the 1920s, but according to the scientific agencies and the 
government, there are only a few of those a year.
  Then there is the concern about whether the doctor's office is safe. 
I have heard that from people, but the studies have shown that the 
pediatricians--and we heard that testimony today--have made great 
efforts to try to make their offices the safest places that a parent 
can go with their child in order to get a vaccination.
  Finally, I started my comments this morning with comments from Jared 
Diamond, and I concluded with a warning he wrote for the Wall Street 
Journal. He said in effect that the main thing that is different about 
this disease, COVID-19, is not that it is more infectious; the main 
thing that is different is the jet plane--the plane that can carry 
people all over the world, all over our country, spreading whatever the 
infection is. He said that as a result of that, the next pandemic could 
be next year.
  That is why I have introduced in the Senate legislation that would 
help prepare for the next pandemic. It has support on all sides. 
Senator Frist from Tennessee, the former majority leader; Senator 
Daschle, the former majority leader on the Democratic side; many 
experts--all say we have a problem in this country going from panic to 
neglect to panic. While we have taken some important steps, as Senator 
Burr pointed out today, to create the authority for the government to 
build manufacturing plants, to manage stockpiles better, to be prepared 
for pandemics, as soon as the epidemic is over, we move on to something 
else. So the time to deal with the next pandemic is now.
  There is specific legislation to make sure that we sustain funding 
for onshore manufacturing so we are not relying on China, India, and 
other countries to make our vaccines for the next pandemic. There is 
money to make sure that the stockpiles are filled with protective 
equipment so we don't have the kinds of delays that some people 
experienced in this pandemic.
  Former Governor Mike Leavitt said to our committee that we have 
underfunded public health for the last 30 to 40 years, and when we 
underfund public health and the next pandemic comes, we are not as 
ready for it as we should be.
  Fortunately, thanks to an unprecedented effort by scientists around 
the world, preparation by Republican and Democratic administrations 
over the

[[Page S5492]]

last 20 years and several Congresses, we have done a lot to be well 
prepared for this pandemic, and we are moving more rapidly than we ever 
have to create new diagnostic tests, new treatments, and new vaccines. 
Some of the challenges that remain are how to distribute them, to whom 
they should go first, and how to persuade Americans they are safe to 
take.
  But while we are in the midst of dealing with all of this, it would 
be wise to remember that any legislation that we pass in Congress this 
year dealing with this pandemic should also take steps to make sure 
that our stockpiles are filled, that our manufacturing plants can stay 
functioning, and that public health State by State is well funded, 
because, as Jared Diamond said, the reason to do that now, while our 
eye is on the ball, is because the next pandemic could be next year.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  (The remarks of Mr. Hawley pertaining to the introduction of S. 4543 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. HAWLEY. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cramer). The Democratic leader.