Speaker 1: If you're actually successful at preventing a pandemic, it looks
Speaker 1: like you're not doing anything because nothing happens. That pandemic
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. It's the big take from Bloomberg News and
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. I'm West Gasova today. How we're preparing or
Speaker 1: not preparing for the next global pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic
Speaker 1: may not be over, just look at the deadly surge
Speaker 1: in China right now, But in the US and many
Speaker 1: other parts of the world, it's no longer as front
Speaker 1: of mine. And if we're all breathing a tentative side
Speaker 1: of relief, virologists and public policy officials are already starting
Speaker 1: to look ahead to the next pandemic and making sure
Speaker 1: we don't get caught so flat footed when, not if,
Speaker 1: it happens again. So how do we prepare to fight
Speaker 1: off a possible threat we know nothing about when we're
Speaker 1: still struggling to keep on top of the one that's
Speaker 1: right in front of us. Here to answer that question
Speaker 1: is Dr Angela Rasmussen. She's a virologist at the University
Speaker 1: of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, and she has
Speaker 1: spent years studying the emergence of Avian flu ebola and
Speaker 1: of course COVID nineteen. Dr Esmuson, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: being here, Thanks so much for having me, Wes, and
Speaker 1: she has someone who thinks about pandemics a lot. I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask you, maybe an unfair question just to start.
Speaker 1: We're not done with this one yet, but where do
Speaker 1: you think the next one comes from? Well, I mean
Speaker 1: I think the next one probably comes from someplace similar
Speaker 1: to where this one came from, and that is, are
Speaker 1: increasing interactions, increasing encroachment on animals on wild spaces, in
Speaker 1: places where people either haven't been before, or in places
Speaker 1: where we're using the land potentially in different ways, interacting
Speaker 1: with nature in different ways. Now, this pandemic started likely
Speaker 1: due to zoonotic spill over at a market in Wuhan, China,
Speaker 1: where live animals were being sold, but this can happen
Speaker 1: in many, many different scenarios, so where people are in
Speaker 1: contact with animals um whether that be through animal sales,
Speaker 1: raising animals, farming those types of activities, or just clearing land,
Speaker 1: disrupting ecosystems, driving animals from where they live into new
Speaker 1: places and coming into contact with people. I really do
Speaker 1: think that that is where the next pandemic is going
Speaker 1: to come from, and that's really where all of the
Speaker 1: pandemics that we've been experiencing are coming from. So we
Speaker 1: are seeing viruses increasingly emerging. You use this expression zoonotic transmission,
Speaker 1: Can you explain exactly what that is? Zoonotic transmission or
Speaker 1: zoonotic spillover refers to a virus or any kind of
Speaker 1: infectious disease being transmitted from an animal host into a
Speaker 1: human host. Now that's probably how this pandemic got started.
Speaker 1: Myself and other colleagues have been involved in research that
Speaker 1: really that's the only explanation that fits the evidence that
Speaker 1: we have. But zoonotic spillover really refers to that virus
Speaker 1: which was not previously in humans, coming from its animal
Speaker 1: host and getting into the human population and spreading from there.
Speaker 1: You know, we think about pandemics as being these fairly
Speaker 1: rare things. Pandemics are actually fairly common. Certainly in virus
Speaker 1: emergence and epidemics are very very common, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: not always novel viruses that is sort of infrequents compared
Speaker 1: to other viruses that we know about. But for example,
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, we had an H one N
Speaker 1: one influenza pandemic. We have influenza pandemics roughly every ten
Speaker 1: to thirty years, so they have been a lot more
Speaker 1: frequently than people realize. They can be less disruptive than
Speaker 1: this particular pandemic has been really globally an epidemic can be.
Speaker 1: It might not spread around the world, but it can
Speaker 1: still be incredibly disruptive regionally, um and it actually can
Speaker 1: cause global disruption. So stars coronavirus one when it emerged
Speaker 1: was for the most part restricted to East Asia, and
Speaker 1: then it did come over here to Canada, but nonetheless
Speaker 1: caused huge disruptions and things like global travel cost a
Speaker 1: lot of money, harms the global economy. So certainly something
Speaker 1: doesn't even have to be technically a pandemic to cause
Speaker 1: problems around the world and to really impact the global community.
Speaker 1: So you've described how the next pandemic is likely to emerge.
Speaker 1: Do you anticipate that it could be a deadlier pandemic,
Speaker 1: a deadlier virus than the one that we've you know,
Speaker 1: just lived through. I mean, that's certainly possible. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think that this pandemic has shown us that a
Speaker 1: virus doesn't actually have to have a catastrophically high case
Speaker 1: fatality rate to still kill millions and millions of people
Speaker 1: and to cause tremendous harm globally to people, to communities,
Speaker 1: to economies. It doesn't have to be something that is
Speaker 1: like ebola, where you know, you see a majority of
Speaker 1: people who get sick die from it. And actually viruses
Speaker 1: like that they can cause big epidemics for sure. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's not a lot of viruses that are
Speaker 1: transmitted by the respiratory route, which is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why the COVID pandemic has been so destructive and
Speaker 1: it has impacted so many people. It's a lot easier
Speaker 1: to control viruses that aren't being transmitted in the air
Speaker 1: that you breathe. There's also viruses that are not coronaviruses
Speaker 1: that don't necessarily even cause primarily respiratory disease, like NIPA virus.
Speaker 1: It's in another family of viruses, but it can have
Speaker 1: as much as mortality rate. Can you see more about
Speaker 1: that one, because I think people aren't as familiar with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So NIPA virus is actually transmitted from bats and from pigs.
Speaker 1: Pigs get it from the bats and they can transmit
Speaker 1: it to people. It also can be spread person to person,
Speaker 1: but fortunately it's not as efficiently transmitted, and NIPA is
Speaker 1: spread by the respiratory route, but it is primarily deadly
Speaker 1: when it causes encephalitis, so it actually causes a brain disease.
Speaker 1: If anybody's familiar with the movie Contagion, that fictional virus
Speaker 1: was based on a more transmissible version of NIPA virus
Speaker 1: out NIPA virus keeps me up at night as well
Speaker 1: as as its cousin Hendra, because they do have such
Speaker 1: a high mortality rate and they can potentially be transmitted
Speaker 1: by the respiratory route. A more transmissible mers coronavirus Nipa
Speaker 1: hendra H five N one highly pathogenic avian influenza, which
Speaker 1: also is not very efficiently transmitted from person to person,
Speaker 1: could be potentially catastrophic. And I'm not exaggerating by saying
Speaker 1: that a virus like that that spread light covid around
Speaker 1: the world could potentially have civilization ending consequences. I mean,
Speaker 1: can you imagine what would have happened if of the
Speaker 1: people who got stars coronavirus two died from it? If
Speaker 1: we were having problems with at the highest two to
Speaker 1: three percent case fatality rate, our hospitals are overwhelmed. Even
Speaker 1: now with vaccines and the mortality rate is even lower.
Speaker 1: We're still seeing so much transmission that we're still seeing
Speaker 1: huge burden on our health care system. Imagine what that
Speaker 1: would be like if we were talking about a virus
Speaker 1: that was as transmissible but killed up to half the
Speaker 1: people that get it. That would be absolutely catastrophic and
Speaker 1: potentially an existential threat to our civilization. So you're not
Speaker 1: speaking metaphorically when you say it keeps you up at night.
Speaker 1: As a virologist, it actually keeps you up at night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think about it sometimes if I want to sleep. Well, that,
Speaker 1: I guess raises a question. If this is a concern
Speaker 1: to you, as a scientist and other scientists looking at
Speaker 1: what could come down the road, how do we prepare
Speaker 1: for that, how do we protect against it should it arise? Well,
Speaker 1: this is why I'm glad to be a virologist, actually,
Speaker 1: because even though I know about all of these really
Speaker 1: scary viruses that are out there, we also do this
Speaker 1: work so that we can develop countermeasures, and that means
Speaker 1: developing new anti viral drugs, developing new ways to treat
Speaker 1: these emerging viruses. And one thing I think that is
Speaker 1: going to be very impactful is we know what a
Speaker 1: lot of these virus families are. So like I said
Speaker 1: Nip ben Hender, the Hannup of viruses, and there's many,
Speaker 1: many other viruses. There's twenty five families of viruses I
Speaker 1: think that can cause disease and humans. You know, some
Speaker 1: of them have known pathogens, but any of them could
Speaker 1: potentially produce a virus that would infect people, be capable
Speaker 1: of human to human transmission and cause a pandemic. The
Speaker 1: problem is trying to figure out which of those viruses
Speaker 1: are the threat. Here at my own research institution and
Speaker 1: many other virologists around the world are working on this too.
Speaker 1: There's a push to make vaccines that can recognize viruses
Speaker 1: based on which family they're in, rather than working on
Speaker 1: individual viruses. So, for example, people are developing pan influenza
Speaker 1: vaccines that would cover any influenza that you would get
Speaker 1: exposed to, and not just the three strains that are
Speaker 1: in this year's flu shot, or pan coronavirus vaccine that
Speaker 1: could protect against Stars one and stars too, as well
Speaker 1: as maybe mirrors and any other novel coronaviruses that might emerge.
Speaker 1: And I think that this is one really powerful way
Speaker 1: to approach countermeasures, because if you can vaccinate people who
Speaker 1: are at risk of being exposed to these viruses, you
Speaker 1: have a stockpile of these vaccines ready to distribute should
Speaker 1: an outbreak happen. You could contain that very early before
Speaker 1: it became a pandemic, and you could potentially contain viruses
Speaker 1: that we don't even actually know about yet. What is
Speaker 1: the timeline do you think for something like that to
Speaker 1: be developed, produced, and stockpiled. Certainly not overnight. Many of
Speaker 1: these vaccines are currently still in development. There are some
Speaker 1: clinical trials however, going on. And one of the challenges
Speaker 1: I think that people don't always appreciate is that it's
Speaker 1: not just developing the vaccine and then testing it. You
Speaker 1: have to get it all the way to the point
Speaker 1: where it has regulatory approval, and you have to be
Speaker 1: able to fund manufacturing so that you can actually make
Speaker 1: the vaccine in large enough numbers. So it's really important
Speaker 1: that we not only develop these things as scientists, but
Speaker 1: that we actually also follow through to make sure that
Speaker 1: we're doing the right kind of testing. We're doing safety testing,
Speaker 1: and we have processes in place that can allow us
Speaker 1: to actually manufacture vaccines that could be used in an
Speaker 1: emergency immediately. And when you make the case for this
Speaker 1: with policy makers, politicians are in charge of spending the
Speaker 1: money on this, do you find that there's urgency to
Speaker 1: do it in the absence of an emergency. So this
Speaker 1: is one of the great challenges to doing any type
Speaker 1: of pandemic prevention or preparedness work. If you're actually successful
Speaker 1: at preventing a pandemic, it looks like you're not doing
Speaker 1: anything because nothing happens, that pandemic doesn't happen, and it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to maintain, you know, from one Congress to
Speaker 1: the next, from one president to the next, it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to justify spending lots and lots of taxpayer money
Speaker 1: on something that seems like it's not doing anything. And
Speaker 1: things are probably worse than they've ever been right now
Speaker 1: because it has been so politicized. Public health itself, pandemic prevention,
Speaker 1: and virology research have all been sort of uniquely politicized
Speaker 1: and in many cases demonized, and that also makes it
Speaker 1: very difficult to make the case that we need continued funding.
Speaker 1: We need continued support for this type of work, and
Speaker 1: we actually need a lot more of it than less.
Speaker 1: When you know, people are kind of over the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and people aren't dying in the same numbers that they
Speaker 1: were at the beginning of or during some of the
Speaker 1: subsequent ways before we had vaccination and there was a
Speaker 1: lot more population immunity, it's really hard to make the
Speaker 1: case that we should continue to be investing in this.
Speaker 1: But what people, I think really need to know, what
Speaker 1: politicians need to know, is that this is an investment
Speaker 1: in our future, not only the future of our country
Speaker 1: and our public health, but also the future of our economy.
Speaker 1: And because we do live in a global world, this
Speaker 1: is really an investment in the future of the entire
Speaker 1: global population of the human race, and I think that
Speaker 1: people really need to be reminded of that as well
Speaker 1: as educated on what the benefits are of doing this
Speaker 1: type of work. Dr Angela Erasmus, and thanks so much
Speaker 1: for talking to me today. Thanks for having me, Wes
Speaker 1: anytime when we come back. What the US government has
Speaker 1: learned from the COVID nineteen pandemic. I'm here with Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: bio Security reporter Riley Griffin and White House reporter Josh
Speaker 1: wind Grove. Riley and Josh, thanks much for being here,
Speaker 1: Thanks us, thanks for having us. We just heard from
Speaker 1: virologist Angie Rasmussen who talks about the increasing threat of
Speaker 1: virus transmission from animals to humans. Riley, when you talk
Speaker 1: to scientists and policymakers, what do they say worries them
Speaker 1: most about how the next global pandemic might go? So
Speaker 1: I actually want to take you back to twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: when BARDA, which sits within the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness
Speaker 1: and Response which is now the Administration for Strategic Preparedness
Speaker 1: and Response, presented on biological threats. They called it the
Speaker 1: Wheel of Misfortune, and it was like the Wheel of fortune,
Speaker 1: but instead of numbers, you had biological threats. And on
Speaker 1: it were things like anthrax, smallpox, plague, bautual is um, ebola,
Speaker 1: sudan ebolas, i hear Marburg virus, some things that you
Speaker 1: may have heard come up. The World Health Organization also
Speaker 1: releases its own list of priority pathogens, and you know
Speaker 1: on it are similar things Marbur Glass of fever, mers
Speaker 1: and stars, those relatives of COVID nineteen zica. So I
Speaker 1: can name specific pathogens for us, but I think partly
Speaker 1: what scares me is the unknown pathogens, those that we
Speaker 1: don't have names for, or might be new iterations of
Speaker 1: viruses we may have seen before. And the way to
Speaker 1: deal with that is something we like to call in
Speaker 1: this world biosurveillance. Think of it as like a weather map.
Speaker 1: We're forecasting for infectious disease. And what we need to
Speaker 1: get to is really taking a pathogen agnostic approach to
Speaker 1: pandemic preparedness. What does that mean? That means not preparing
Speaker 1: for one individual threat. One of the big shortfalls of
Speaker 1: our preparedness for COVID nineteen is that all these years
Speaker 1: we've been preparing for pandemic influenza. Think the eighteen flu
Speaker 1: also sometimes called the Spanish flu that killed up to
Speaker 1: a hundred million people. We've been preparing for that for
Speaker 1: years because that was really the last big epic pandemic.
Speaker 1: All of our presidents, going back to Bill Clinton, he
Speaker 1: actually in the late ninety nineties he read a fictional
Speaker 1: book about a bio terrorism attack called the Cobra Event,
Speaker 1: and it spurred him to create the Strategic National Stockpile,
Speaker 1: which stockpiles all of our medicines and ppe and so forth,
Speaker 1: and so it's a protective gear that we all started
Speaker 1: wearing dandemic and every president since then has had their
Speaker 1: own kind of plan. But many of these plans haven't
Speaker 1: been implemented, and a lot of them have been geared
Speaker 1: at pandemic influenza. So I think we need to think
Speaker 1: a little bit broader because these are all aimed at
Speaker 1: fighting the last pandemic instead of looking forward to the
Speaker 1: one we don't know about exactly. And the Biden administration
Speaker 1: they released their own plan. First it was the American
Speaker 1: Pandemic Preparedness Plan, and now it's transformed into the National
Speaker 1: bio Defense Strategy. They lay out their own strategy for
Speaker 1: combating naturally occurring, accidental, and man made biological threats. So
Speaker 1: it's quite comprehensive, but what we're still seeing missing is
Speaker 1: real implementation and resources put to this. They've requested eighty
Speaker 1: eight billion in mandatory funding, but they're not necessarily likely
Speaker 1: to get it, and so what do you do with
Speaker 1: all these documents but not a lot of action. What
Speaker 1: was made so clear early in the pandemic is that
Speaker 1: we did not really have a system for this or
Speaker 1: a plan for this, and I think those are two
Speaker 1: separate things. And the plan question is now hanging over
Speaker 1: is what can we do to prepare for the next one.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the things that really hobbled the
Speaker 1: response in the US, in particular, which namely a patchwork
Speaker 1: of fifty different systems, one for each state that isn't
Speaker 1: going away, and that will continue to hobble whatever we
Speaker 1: decide as a country to do about COVID, which right
Speaker 1: now is not a lot, and whatever the country decides
Speaker 1: to do for the next thing. Riley, you mentioned man
Speaker 1: made biological threats. What exactly are those and what is
Speaker 1: the concern there? The concern there is that viruses, bacteria,
Speaker 1: other pathogens could be weaponized and used, either inappropriately or
Speaker 1: for nefarious intent, or that legitimate research done in academic
Speaker 1: and private sector laboratories and in government facilities might have
Speaker 1: accidental consequences. And so I actually just got back from
Speaker 1: Geneva from going to the Biological Weapons Convention, a review
Speaker 1: conference for this international treaty that bans a class of
Speaker 1: weapons of mass destruction. This is an ever present threat
Speaker 1: and an increasing threat as biology and our understanding of
Speaker 1: it advances. And as a lot of these tools become
Speaker 1: cheaper and more accessible, and when scientists look at their
Speaker 1: best guesses about what to prepare for, you know, like
Speaker 1: every year there's the flu vaccine and they take the
Speaker 1: best guess of which strains might be the ones that
Speaker 1: hit us all, and we hope that we hit a
Speaker 1: year where they guessed right. When they don't, we got
Speaker 1: a bad flu year. When they're preparing for the future,
Speaker 1: how do you guess you just named like fifteen different
Speaker 1: things that could kill us all, how do you know
Speaker 1: which is the one that we should be preparing for
Speaker 1: most in which one would be a little bit further
Speaker 1: down the list. Science, sometimes, I think is an art.
Speaker 1: You know, scientific stakeholders convene in the u N and
Speaker 1: they sometimes have to resort to their best guests. If
Speaker 1: we had had this conversation in the middle of nineteen
Speaker 1: and we'd asked ourselves then what we needed or what
Speaker 1: was around the corner, I do think we now have
Speaker 1: clarity and more information and pathways than we did before.
Speaker 1: That is a silver lining of the few years that
Speaker 1: we've been through. One is that we didn't really know
Speaker 1: how the early warning system would work right and with
Speaker 1: China really didn't work, and that will be the focus
Speaker 1: of congressionally hearings with Republicans holding the House in the
Speaker 1: next couple of years. But like it did work with Omicron,
Speaker 1: and so now there are systems in place where public
Speaker 1: health agencies can sound the alarm and it's taken seriously.
Speaker 1: When you say the early warning system, you mean they
Speaker 1: saw it coming and were able to act in timely fashion. Right,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden started talking about OMICRON. I think it was
Speaker 1: like a Thanksgiving vacation in Nantucket a year ago, you know,
Speaker 1: like because South Africa and countries in Southern Africa had
Speaker 1: picked it up, and the sound of the alarm. Now
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff is critical and you know, is
Speaker 1: a carry over the COVID experience. Another thing, for example,
Speaker 1: is like Kovacs and how they got vaccines that that
Speaker 1: was totally unprecedented and if we, god forbid ever have
Speaker 1: to go through that again, there is now a system
Speaker 1: because it is actually really annoying and legally thorny to
Speaker 1: shove vaccines out across international borders with dueling regulatory agencies,
Speaker 1: and what happened. So there are silver linings to having
Speaker 1: gone through this questions that we would have had in
Speaker 1: this exact conversation. Pre COVID do have answers now, but
Speaker 1: so many others do not have answers now. And to
Speaker 1: Riley's point, it's like, have public health experts sort of
Speaker 1: shot their shot? Like have they sapped or worn thin
Speaker 1: the patients of the public, many of whom couldn't tell you,
Speaker 1: for instance, what the CDC recommendations are right now because
Speaker 1: it's changed so much and they tuned out. So there
Speaker 1: is a silver lining on the one hand, But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, I wonder whether even though we have
Speaker 1: a playbook, that might not help as much if people
Speaker 1: are willing to listen to it. Riley and Josh tell
Speaker 1: us about the planning happening for the next pandemic when
Speaker 1: we return. Josh, you said that if we had the
Speaker 1: benefit of foresight in when this was coming down in December,
Speaker 1: maybe things would have been different. Riley was talking about
Speaker 1: how every president had prepared or tried to prepare for this,
Speaker 1: so those preparations actually didn't work. How then, does the
Speaker 1: administration do all of the agencies involved in this sort
Speaker 1: of work figure out how to prevent what Riley is describing. Well,
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of them who are doing
Speaker 1: that work right now. The question I have is whether
Speaker 1: they'll have the money to do anything about it right
Speaker 1: like early on, just to go back west to those
Speaker 1: early days of COVID. You know, Trump really did take
Speaker 1: it seriously for a while. There was not enough ppe,
Speaker 1: there was not enough supplies, there are non enough ventilators.
Speaker 1: There were hospital ships outside in New York, remember this,
Speaker 1: And like that was all under Trump. I think we
Speaker 1: sort of like forget you know that there was a
Speaker 1: dilection of this, uh, and then he stopped really caring
Speaker 1: to that extent for rajuries. And so now what we
Speaker 1: have is this question of like what's left over and
Speaker 1: where to go from it. As we stand here, the
Speaker 1: administration is begging for money from Congress that they are
Speaker 1: not getting for COVID response, and that is for stuff
Speaker 1: to deal with developing vaccines. You mentioned the flu shot
Speaker 1: that we get yearly. That's what they want to do
Speaker 1: with COVID. The first version of that has had really
Speaker 1: abysmally low uptake, and there's not really money in the
Speaker 1: system right now to develop next year's annual COVID type
Speaker 1: flu shot because they just haven't allocated anything. They also
Speaker 1: have no money to buy more vaccines or you know,
Speaker 1: buy more packs of it, which we give to more
Speaker 1: severe cases when they get it to minimize your symptoms.
Speaker 1: And so the current question of what are we gonna
Speaker 1: do about the next pandemic I'm kind of worried about
Speaker 1: we're gonna do about the current pandemic we're still in.
Speaker 1: There is just simply no appetite in Congress as of
Speaker 1: now to fund anything for it, and that at some
Speaker 1: point you have to think is going to start being
Speaker 1: a problem. Riley. It's kind of an important point. If
Speaker 1: we can't get enough money to pay for a pandemic
Speaker 1: that's still happening right now, where is the resolve to
Speaker 1: pay for something that we can't see, you don't know
Speaker 1: which it is, and don't know when it's going to come.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give an answer you might not expect.
Speaker 1: I think it's coming out of the Defense Department. I
Speaker 1: think you're seeing an increase in interest from other stakeholders
Speaker 1: beyond the obvious ones at the Department of Health and
Speaker 1: Human Services take up this mandate. I think the intelligence
Speaker 1: community has an increased focus and appetite, partially at the
Speaker 1: direction of the Biden administration, and I think the Defense
Speaker 1: Department does as well. And what does that look like?
Speaker 1: How does when the Pentagon takes over the preservation of
Speaker 1: the human race, what does that look like? Well, I'll
Speaker 1: give you one example. Recently, my colleague Madison Muller and
Speaker 1: I broke a story where the Department of Defense had
Speaker 1: cut a deal with Maderna for messenger RNA vaccines for
Speaker 1: EBOL viruses and other threats. This wasn't a function of
Speaker 1: congressional funding for pandemic preparedness. This was d O D
Speaker 1: saying this is something that affects troops, and we have
Speaker 1: the money to deploy, and we don't need to go
Speaker 1: through all those layers of bureau oocricy and approval to
Speaker 1: get this done. They just did it. I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot more work like that happening. If you look
Speaker 1: to the intelligence community, they're developing tools for bio attribution,
Speaker 1: that is actually to look at a pathogen, to look
Speaker 1: at its genome, to sequence it, to look into the
Speaker 1: DNA and say can we see human signatures? Meaning can
Speaker 1: we look at the DNA of a virus and determine
Speaker 1: whether or not it was naturally occurring or that this
Speaker 1: was a function of a human touch. These are quiet
Speaker 1: things that are happening outside of the Department of Health
Speaker 1: and Human Service enterprise that are in the name of
Speaker 1: bio defense biosecurity. And so I am watching this closely
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of that work. If it's
Speaker 1: going to get done, it's going to shift in that direction.
Speaker 1: Josh is a political matter, I suppose as a policy
Speaker 1: matter too. I don't know. It feels kind of weird
Speaker 1: to let the Department Defense and the Intelligence Committee lead
Speaker 1: the way in this sort of thing. Is that how
Speaker 1: say the Biden administration wants this to play out, how
Speaker 1: any White House wants it to play out. Getting funding
Speaker 1: for d D is often a lot easier than getting
Speaker 1: funding for HHS, So d D can be the fig
Speaker 1: leaf for funding for this. The Biden administration will, I think,
Speaker 1: probably be okay with that. They could sleep at night
Speaker 1: and that's the case. But d D has been a
Speaker 1: battleground on this already. I mean, we just saw a
Speaker 1: big throwdown fight over the NDAA, which is a defense
Speaker 1: funding bill, and one of the concessions made in that
Speaker 1: was eliminating the vaccine requirement for service members. I mean,
Speaker 1: this has been a partisan fight until now. And you know,
Speaker 1: what is the goal here? Right? I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a question that gets different answers these days around COVID,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of public health experts would like the
Speaker 1: numbers to be a lot lower than they are now. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sitting here, you know, a positive COVID case,
Speaker 1: working from home, talking to you guys with relatively mild symptoms,
Speaker 1: dedication to the cause. Josh, we wish you were here. Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling thank you. I've dodged it for you know,
Speaker 1: however many years and time they got me. But like
Speaker 1: cases like mine are probably in the eyes of like
Speaker 1: the Biden people kind of what they want if you're
Speaker 1: going to have a COVID case having and someone who
Speaker 1: has mild symptoms because they got vaccinated and they stay
Speaker 1: away from others and that's it. And so when it
Speaker 1: comes to the question of other pandemics and ending this one,
Speaker 1: there is disagreement on like what the victory line is,
Speaker 1: where the goal line is. You know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: be optimistic when you're thinking about doomsday threats like this.
Speaker 1: And Josh and I have been in the trenches together
Speaker 1: covering COVID since the very beginning. Politics are at play,
Speaker 1: They've always been at play, But there are public health
Speaker 1: officials that have made this their life work and they
Speaker 1: have been at the CDC for decades. They were thinking
Speaker 1: about COVID well before COVID happened. Coronaviruses have been on
Speaker 1: the radar. We've seen coronaviruses before. The CDC is undergoing
Speaker 1: a reorganization right now and overhaul, if you will, to
Speaker 1: become more of a responsive agency, and there will be
Speaker 1: workforce changes and structural changes that will potentially outlive the
Speaker 1: tenure of Director Wilenski, who currently runs the CDC. And
Speaker 1: you interview Dr Wilenski back in November of last year,
Speaker 1: Let's hear what she had to say about some of
Speaker 1: those changes. So one of the things that we learned
Speaker 1: is that we need to be more nimble about how
Speaker 1: we develop and deliver our science. We have to communicate
Speaker 1: that not to necessarily only public health officials and to scientists,
Speaker 1: but we need to communicate it to the American public.
Speaker 1: We need easy to understand, easy to implement policies that
Speaker 1: are dedicated and science devoted and and based on science,
Speaker 1: but that we can really convey in a simple policy message. Riley,
Speaker 1: you said there are structural changes happening at the CDC
Speaker 1: to minimize the threat of the next pandemic. What are they.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a really simple example. I don't know
Speaker 1: if a lot of people know this, but over at
Speaker 1: the CDC, the folks working on COVID had to volunteer
Speaker 1: to do so. They actually raised their hand right they
Speaker 1: were working potentially on HIV or birth defects. People had
Speaker 1: to raise their hand to go over and work on COVID,
Speaker 1: and that cost a lot of issues in terms of
Speaker 1: the speed of the response. If you needed three epidemiologists
Speaker 1: work on something, you had to scan the agency and
Speaker 1: find them. One change that they're making is that you're
Speaker 1: going to deploy CDC staff like troops. They're going to
Speaker 1: give their availability months in advance, and if a crisis emerges,
Speaker 1: the CDC will readily deploy them. So that's a readiness change.
Speaker 1: There are other changes we can outline, but the point
Speaker 1: is there are these cultural and operational things that are
Speaker 1: just gonna be flipped if you will, to make it
Speaker 1: more of a responsive agency rather than the academic, bureaucratic,
Speaker 1: scientific kind of guidance entity that it's been for so long, Josh.
Speaker 1: One of the things we saw in the pandemic was
Speaker 1: how in the U S there's fifty different states, so
Speaker 1: fifty different responses, some better than others. Another thing we
Speaker 1: saw was every country had its own response. Have governments
Speaker 1: learned from COVID that there's value to coordinating and cooperating
Speaker 1: from the beginning, or are we going to see something
Speaker 1: similar the next time sort of hell breaks loose. The
Speaker 1: optimistic answer is yes, some things worked better. KOVACS exists.
Speaker 1: KOVACS is the system that we set up to help
Speaker 1: get vaccines to low and lower middle income countries when
Speaker 1: rich countries jammed to the front of the line. Like
Speaker 1: if you think Ticketmaster is bad, like the COVID vaccine
Speaker 1: process buying was insane and rich people got it and
Speaker 1: poor countries did not. And so we now have a
Speaker 1: system to at least get some vaccines to poor countries,
Speaker 1: but countries fundamentally responded in kind of everyone for themselves way.
Speaker 1: I don't know, No, I don't think it's a Kumbaya moment.
Speaker 1: I think one of the real benefits of God willing
Speaker 1: not having a new pandemic to new something, a new pathogen,
Speaker 1: a new plague over the next couple of years will
Speaker 1: be to take the temperature down so that if and
Speaker 1: when we do face another one and we do hear
Speaker 1: these warning systems from the people whose job it is
Speaker 1: to tell us, and who have gone to school for
Speaker 1: years and years and years and years to be able
Speaker 1: to say no, this is the one that when they
Speaker 1: say that warning that the broad public, you know, is
Speaker 1: willing to hear it. And at the international level. Two,
Speaker 1: I think there will be some basic learning lessons. Like
Speaker 1: travel bands, they're not very effective. Just because you're blocking
Speaker 1: flights from one country doesn't mean a virus is going
Speaker 1: to enter through another. So there have been some successes
Speaker 1: and some obvious failures throughout the pandemic. And you gotta
Speaker 1: think that those very equipped public officials that Josh is
Speaker 1: describing are taking note of what didn't work. Riley, When
Speaker 1: you look down the road, which is your entire job,
Speaker 1: what are you watching for? What should people listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast be looking at for. I'll give you a
Speaker 1: present answer in a little bit down the road. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we're still grappling with a lot, Josh said.
Speaker 1: He alluded to some of the issues with the lack
Speaker 1: of funding for current pandemic response. We've got COVID, we've
Speaker 1: got polio, we've got ebola, we've got RSP, we've got empox.
Speaker 1: Our hands are full right now, and I think there
Speaker 1: might be some pandemic fatigue, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: there aren't active threats that demand active response. So I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about that quite often. Down the road. I'm following
Speaker 1: this question of biosurveillance. What are the tools that are
Speaker 1: cropping up out of the public and private sector to
Speaker 1: better detect these threats right and there are a number
Speaker 1: of companies that are working on this. The technology is
Speaker 1: fascinating and it's accelerating really quickly. Even if the government
Speaker 1: isn't investing in it, the private sector seems to see
Speaker 1: market opportunity here. This looks like wastewater surveillance. It looks
Speaker 1: like putting in detection in airports, which are these hubs
Speaker 1: of global travel where a lot of disease comes through.
Speaker 1: And so seeing what sticks and what continues to have
Speaker 1: investment beyond this cycle of panic and neglect, I think
Speaker 1: will be a really telling portrait of the future. If
Speaker 1: we can continue to buy into these technologies, we will
Speaker 1: be better equipped those early warning signals are the most
Speaker 1: important thing. You can't catch it late, You've got to
Speaker 1: catch it early. And so where government, academia, and the
Speaker 1: private sector will rise to that opportunity and create a
Speaker 1: better weather map for infectious disease, That's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave us too sad. You know
Speaker 1: I'm a Debbie downer parently right now, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, you know, I'm trying to be up. Like
Speaker 1: the price of unfortunate threats and the distrust that has
Speaker 1: stewed up with medical professionals is that lives are saved.
Speaker 1: Right The recent study showed three million lives are saved
Speaker 1: in the US because of the COVID vaccines. They got
Speaker 1: a vaccine to development production into pharmacies in incredible time,
Speaker 1: that stretched over two administrations that agreed on virtually nothing else.
Speaker 1: There is positive that comes from that, and you would
Speaker 1: hope that God forbid we deal with something else like
Speaker 1: this again, that all that would be true as well.
Speaker 1: So you know, as we deal with the fallout, like,
Speaker 1: it's those lives saved, it's those cases avoided, and as
Speaker 1: a result, those long COVID cases avoided. That is the
Speaker 1: reason that these health professionals who are getting heckled and
Speaker 1: like bullied on social media, get up every day. Riley Griffin,
Speaker 1: Josh wynd Grove, thanks for taking the time to talk
Speaker 1: to me today. Thanks for having us. It's fun to
Speaker 1: be with you. Josh, Thank you, Wesh. Riley swimming in
Speaker 1: a wake as always, but West I try to bring
Speaker 1: some optimism. You can check out more of Riley and
Speaker 1: Josh's reporting about preparations for the next pandemic at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com. Thanks for listening to us here at The
Speaker 1: Big Take, the daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more shows from my Heart Radio, visit the Heart
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Speaker 1: Original music by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Cosova. We'll be
Speaker 1: back tomorrow with another big take, Don Don Don b