Israeli Vaccine Scientist Knocks Prize for Bourla

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla did not deserve the prestigious Genesis Prize he was awarded on Wednesday for his company’s development of a vaccine for the coronavirus, an Israeli scientist charged.

Prof. Shmuel Shapira, the former head of the Defense Ministry’s Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR), which has been working on its own vaccine, called the decision “pathetic” and described the Pfizer vaccine “mediocre” and effective only in the “short term.”

“There are much more prominent Israeli scientists,” Shapira told Channel 12, suggesting that one of them would have been more deserving of recognition than Bourla.

“It is a mediocre vaccine — I was vaccinated three times and got sick. A lot of people got infected after they were vaccinated. Calling the vaccine moderately effective is pretty generous.”

“There are other vaccines that are far more effective. There are countries with lower vaccination rates that bore [the pandemic] just fine,” he said.

Asked if his criticism was possibly due to over Israel not fully backing the Biological Institute’s vaccine, Shapira replied that the vaccine was proven to be good, but “it was the bureaucracy that did us in.”

“The institute’s vaccine was very successful and even now it is being tested,” he said. “The latest testing shows it is also effective against the Omicron variant. The bureaucracy has failed us repeatedly.”