The Pfizer CEO said people are likely to need a third dose of its COVID vaccine, but the public was not given this information for two weeks. CNBC, which moderated the discussion with the Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on April 1, finally released the exclusive news on Thursday. There was no explanation for the delay in reporting. 

CNBC’s Bertha Coombs asked Bourla if the Pfizer vaccine would work for  variants of COVID in the ironically titled “CVS Health Live” which was posted online April. 15. “A likely scenario is that there will be likely a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months. And then from there, there will be an annual revaccination,” Bourla repolied. “But all of that needs to be confirmed. And again, the variants will play a key role.”

As people make their own decisions about getting vaccinated or not and which one to get, they have the right to as much information as is available from the pharmaceutical companies and the government. So those who have gotten vaccinated in the last two weeks were not told about coming back for a third shot.

They only knew that Pfizer made the major announcement on April 1-- on the day this video was taped-- that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was was 91 percent effective for six months after the second dose. The good news was known, but not the possible future shots. 

“The COVID virus looks more like the influenza virus than the polio virus,” Bourla said in the video at the time. “The duration of immunity was unknown until yesterday. There was data only about the first 90 days. Now the first vaccine to come out with data all the way to six months… you can see still very high protection -- I think — it’s us. And this is very good news. Protection goes down by time but still in the six months, it’s extremely high.”

He was vague on how often people will need to come back for more Pfizer vaccines in the future. “If you’re asking me if there will be a need, based on this data, for revaccinations, we need to see what will be the sequence and how often we need to do that -- that remains to be seen,” he said. Pfizer has not made any updates to the CEO’s response since this recording. 

Bourla heavily promoted his vaccine get into every arm in the world. “It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people that can be susceptible to the virus because they are vaccinated with high efficacy vaccines because the pool of people is what defines how many replications the virus will do and defines if - or not - and how many variants will appear,” he said. 

Pfizer wants everyone to get the vaccine whether or not they can get very sick from the novel coronavirus.  “If they don't [get] the vaccine, it will not allow society to get to herd immunity.” He added that it is “extremely important that we convince everyone who has hesitations right now, who has concerns, that they should receive the vaccine.”

He said that Pfizer and CVS can’t encourage vaccinations because it may be perceived that they have a financial “interest” in it. 

Instead, he said the media and others should push the vaccine to those who are hesitant.

“This is about journalists, scientists, politicians, religious leaders, community leaders,” the CEO said. “Everyone has a responsibility to create the importance that an individual has to protect the society when it comes to vaccinations. This needs to be universal by all campaigns of good will.”

As I have written, it is possible that Pfizer  knew it had finalized trials for the COVID vaccine before the presidential election in November, but did not announce it until after the media determined that Biden had beaten Trump. 

Reporters want to get news first. Our goal is to get an exclusive and beat our competitors.

However, our editors and executives often want to “hold” the news until the timing is perfect to maximize ratings, clicks or readers for the advertisers. So we’ll have internal discussions about “how long will the news hold” before another outlet gets it. You may also strike a deal with your interview subject about keeping the exclusive under wraps until you can report it first. 

CNBC is the primary TV news outlet for investors and business leaders who need the most updated and detailed news to make financial decisions. It seems odd that the outlet would hold this information secret for weeks. If there was a deal with either CVS or Pfizer to hold it for one of their businesses’ needs, the TV network would have to disclose that agreement.

The federal government partnerships with the pharmaceutical companies in Operation Warp Speed has been highly effective in the last year to get treatments and vaccines for COVID developed in record time.

However, when big pharma has this much power, it needs to release all information about the vaccines at the time they know about them so we have every detail of what is — or is not — going into our bodies.

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