The tRump regime--"administration" doesn't really describe it--loudly and openly beat up on immigrants and Muslims. Remember how one of the first things he tried to do was a blatant Muslim ban? He then had to scale it down and pretend it was not really a Muslim ban when it was.
During those dark days, social media--from the anti-tRump side--pointed out how Apple might not have happened if a certain Syrian immigrant had not come to the US. Steve Jobs' biological father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was an Arab Muslim from Syria, who came to the US to pursue a PhD.
Now, it is another Muslim immigrant to the rescue. Make that two immigrants. Not here in the US, but in Germany. But, it is also an American story.
Scientists have greeted with cautious optimism a press release declaring positive interim results from a coronavirus vaccine phase III trial — the first to report on the final round of human testing.
New York City-based drug company Pfizer made the announcement on 9 November. It offers the first compelling evidence that a vaccine can prevent COVID-19 — and bodes well for other COVID-19 vaccines in development.
Pfizer being a US-based company. But, the immigrants who provided the scientific breakthrough are not here. They are in Germany, born to Turkish immigrants.
Dr. [Ugur] Sahin, 55, was born in Iskenderun, Turkey. When he was 4, his family moved to Cologne, Germany, where his parents worked at a Ford factory. He grew up wanting to be a doctor, and became a physician at the University of Cologne. In 1993, he earned a doctorate from the university for his work on immunotherapy in tumor cells.
Early in his career, he met Dr. [Özlem] Türeci. She had early hopes to become a nun and ultimately wound up studying medicine. Dr. Türeci, now 53 and the chief medical officer of BioNTech, was born in Germany, the daughter of a Turkish physician who immigrated from Istanbul.
BioNTech is the firm that the couple founded.
BioNTech began work on the vaccine in January, after Dr. Sahin read an article in the medical journal The Lancet that left him convinced that the coronavirus, at the time spreading quickly in parts of China, would explode into a full-blown pandemic. Scientists at the company, based in Mainz, Germany, canceled vacations and set to work on what they called Project Lightspeed.
They partnered with Pfizer, whose CEO is Greek!
Albert Bourla was born and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece.[2] Born into a Jewish family, he earned his doctorate in the biotechnology of reproduction at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki's Veterinary School.[3] He left Greece with his wife when he was 34 and since then he has lived in seven different cities, in four different countries.
The tRump regime eagerly broadcast the Pfizer success as one that was made possible through its Operation Warp Speed. Controversies are in plenty on how much Warp Speed really made it possible. Whatever that might be, did the regime say anything about how it was immigrants who created this success? Did the regime say anything about the Turkish Muslim backgrounds of the two scientists in Germany?
I am glad that the fucking tRump regime is on its way out, though they will torch everything they possibly can during the exit. I can only hope that we Americans have inoculated ourselves against that kind of a political virus.
Meanwhile, I hope that the Pfizer vaccine and the others under development will deliver us from the global pandemic in a matter of mere months from now.
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