In fact, its starting point was "utter failure." But before they got to that failed trial run at a Pfizer plant outside Kalamazoo, Mich., came the March 20, 2020, decision to go with that Kalamazoo plant as the place that would "formulate doses, fill vials and ship boxes of vaccine packed with dry ice," explains Rowland, who writes that happened in a quarter-mile long building that didn't initially contain the sizable machines needed to combine lipid nanoparticles and then filter the result—because they didn't exist.