Early on, when we were doing our rubric and we were looking at the assessment, supply chain, and the reliability of the supply chain, played a very large role. We are fortunate to have some people who have been involved in the manufacturing and the science of vaccinology, immunology, virology. A number of people have been involved with supply chain.
The vaccine business, from a manufacturing perspective, is extremely difficult in normal days. This was just exacerbating it. Frankly, we did look at the robustness of the supply chain. We had thoughts about American nationalism, so we looked at European supply chains: What were the companies that worked with these suppliers? What were the underlying supply chains like, and what were those companies like? We made qualitative judgments and assessments on that in providing our recommendations.
In many other industries, the supply chain is fairly routine. It is not with any sorts of vaccines. We've had our issues, and there have been disappointments—two-week delays. People have focused on that, and rightly so, because of the nature of COVID-19. However, in the scheme of vaccine supply chains, things have gone remarkably well.
