MixedNatureBorrell’s book shines in his absorbing account of how, against the odds, the government-backed public–private vaccine-development plan — Operation Warp Speed — arose from the primordial sludge of pandemic policymaking inside the Trump White House ... t is in covering these global angles that First Shots comes up short. Borrell’s stateside characters, such as Michael Callahan, a US doctor who travelled to Wuhan in mid-January to witness the devastation in the local hospitals, or vaccine designer and public-engagement star Kizzmekia Corbett are well-drawn and metaphorically square-jawed. That the rights to the book were sold to television channel HBO in July 2020 might have coloured the way the story is told. British scientists, for example, appear as a \'standoffish bunch\'.
