Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's stayed two and
Speaker 1: nineteen since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story.
Speaker 1: The NBA Championships this week were caused for celebration for
Speaker 1: Lakers fans, but they also marked a victory over the virus.
Speaker 1: The league's bubble strategy resulted in not a single COVID
Speaker 1: infection among players or staff. So how well do bubbles
Speaker 1: work and what can we learn from them? But first,
Speaker 1: here's what happened in virus news today. Vizer said it
Speaker 1: could seek emergency use authorization for its COVID nineteen vaccine
Speaker 1: in the US as soon as late November. That's if
Speaker 1: the shot is shown to be effective in a large
Speaker 1: late stage trial. That timing squelches any notion that a
Speaker 1: vaccine could be cleared in the US before election day.
Speaker 1: The timeline will be dictated by safety reviews, with the
Speaker 1: Food and Drug Administration requiring that at least half the
Speaker 1: study participants be watched for side effects for two months.
Speaker 1: That milestone should be achieved in the third week of November.
Speaker 1: According to an open letter published on the company's website
Speaker 1: today from viser chief Executive Officer Albert Boula. Residents in
Speaker 1: London and Paris are bracing for tighter curbs on social
Speaker 1: activity starting tomorrow. Governments across Europe are attempting to get
Speaker 1: a new wave of coronavirus infections in check without crippling
Speaker 1: their economies. Cases are heading daily records around the region,
Speaker 1: and Britain and France are two of the worst affected nations.
Speaker 1: Londoners will be banned from mixing with other households indoors,
Speaker 1: while the residents of Paris and eight other major cities
Speaker 1: in France will be confined to their homes at night
Speaker 1: for four weeks. Finally, a new study that has not
Speaker 1: yet been peer reviewed suggests the drug m desevie has
Speaker 1: no substantial effect on a patient's chances of survival. A
Speaker 1: clinical trial by the World Health Organization that studied rum
Speaker 1: desevere and several other anti viral treatments, including hydroxy chloroquine,
Speaker 1: opinevere and interferon, found that none substantially affected mortality reduced
Speaker 1: the need for ventilators. According to the Financial Times, results
Speaker 1: also showed that the drugs had little effect on how
Speaker 1: long patients stayed in the hospital and now for today's
Speaker 1: main story. The Los Angeles Lakers took home the NBA
Speaker 1: championship this week, but the close of the season also
Speaker 1: marked a bigctory for the league itself. The NBA played
Speaker 1: its finals in a unique environment that came to be
Speaker 1: known as the Bubble. Players were frequently tested and social
Speaker 1: distancing was heavily enforced, and the experiment worked. The NBA
Speaker 1: did not report a single positive coronavirus case from players
Speaker 1: or staff. I spoke to reporters am A. Court and
Speaker 1: Brandon catch cod In about what's next for the league
Speaker 1: and whether other organizations can replicate its success. The NBA
Speaker 1: kept teams on the Disney World grounds and used wearable
Speaker 1: technology like the Aora ring, which claims to detect early symptoms.
Speaker 1: They were also tested nearly every day using highly sensitive tests.
Speaker 1: Have any other sports leagues used similar measures? Yeah? I think.
Speaker 1: I think there's been debates about whether the or ring
Speaker 1: actually works in terms of determining the early onset. What
Speaker 1: was picked up on by other leagues though, UM, the
Speaker 1: NFL and UH the Southeastern Conference in college football were
Speaker 1: a similar technology called these connects on devices, and that
Speaker 1: was it was basically, UM, you know, a wearable contact
Speaker 1: tracing device, and so it would you know, it like
Speaker 1: lights up when people get within six ft of each other.
Speaker 1: It keeps track of whether people are able to enter
Speaker 1: certain parts of a building or the stadium, and then
Speaker 1: obviously attracts who were you close by. So certain elements
Speaker 1: of this are found, um, like I said, in the
Speaker 1: NFL and in college football. But whether the or ring
Speaker 1: was able to actually detect early on set of symptoms,
Speaker 1: I think that's still up for debate and sort of questionable.
Speaker 1: And this is like the Holy Grail, right, We're talking
Speaker 1: about figuring out if people are sick, tracking people who
Speaker 1: are sick using technology. This is something that would be
Speaker 1: really widely applicable if we can figure out that it works.
Speaker 1: And I think what's interesting about why you're seeing these
Speaker 1: groups being used to test out the technology is that
Speaker 1: other parts of society aren't being tested nearly as much. Right,
Speaker 1: we don't have this kind of data on on you know,
Speaker 1: less valuable athletes for instance, are regular people walking around
Speaker 1: in the US. Yeah, that's a great point. I'm with.
Speaker 1: You know, this is one of the things the NBA
Speaker 1: has kind of consistently tried to put out there is
Speaker 1: that you know, in the wake of the controversy around
Speaker 1: should athletes testing be prioritized in this issue of you know,
Speaker 1: whether they're daily testing regiment was taking up you know,
Speaker 1: valuable laboratory capacity from the general public. Their argument has
Speaker 1: always been, we're in a sense of laboratory and we're
Speaker 1: you know, kind of not that they've used the term,
Speaker 1: but in a sense guinea pigs for some of these
Speaker 1: technologies and strategies. And you know, we saw that with
Speaker 1: their they're teaming up with the Yale Laboratory around the
Speaker 1: saliva testing, which you know, the NBA has been very
Speaker 1: proud and sort of tout that advancement. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to piggyback off of that, which is a really good point, Brandon.
Speaker 1: And actually a new kind of coronavirus test was pioneered
Speaker 1: using the NBA. It's uh, you may have heard of it.
Speaker 1: It's affiliated with Yale as well. Um and this test
Speaker 1: uses saliva to detect um COVID nineteen. And what's really
Speaker 1: interesting about it, and we've seen some other, um, you know,
Speaker 1: versions of this test being used at the University of
Speaker 1: Illinois at Champagne Urbana for instance, is that this test
Speaker 1: lets you kind of skip a step as you process
Speaker 1: the test, so it allows for much faster turnaround time.
Speaker 1: It's easy to collect, right you spit into a tube
Speaker 1: UM and it's really quite cheap. And it also allows
Speaker 1: you to use different kinds of brands of testing equipment
Speaker 1: UM in your while processing it in the lab, so
Speaker 1: you don't need to be reliable on a single source
Speaker 1: for these chemicals called reagents for instance. It kind of
Speaker 1: hacks the traditional PCR test model and makes it a
Speaker 1: lot cheaper, easier to process, and you know, more accessible.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, continuing on that topic, it does
Speaker 1: seem that with all this technology, all this kind of
Speaker 1: investment in testing, the NBA didn't report one single positive
Speaker 1: coronavirus case. I mean, what do you think what made
Speaker 1: the bubble so successful? I mean, if I think it's
Speaker 1: mostly that they had control of their environment, and you
Speaker 1: know they had the daily testing, but you know, people
Speaker 1: from Disney coming in, coming out, they were tested. You know,
Speaker 1: the contact with other people was limited. The NBA took
Speaker 1: very seriously that when people left the bubble they had
Speaker 1: to go into Attende quarantine. So they were super strict
Speaker 1: about these things. And you know, they did something that
Speaker 1: everyday Americans can't do. And that's you know, totally control
Speaker 1: the environment. And they had access to resources that, as
Speaker 1: you point out, many Americans don't have access to, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to quarantine before you go to work, for instance,
Speaker 1: or as you leave work and go into the community,
Speaker 1: Like that's pretty amazing. And um, I think also the
Speaker 1: access to testing is a big one. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: seen that overall picture change a lot. In the US,
Speaker 1: there's a lot better access to testing, especially if you're
Speaker 1: symptomatic person. But you know, testing people, you know, as
Speaker 1: frequently as every other day, that's not something that's even
Speaker 1: close to the reality for most people in the United States.
Speaker 1: Most people in the United States maybe they've been tested once,
Speaker 1: if at all. And let's think about it also in
Speaker 1: terms of other sports leagues, you know, other sports other
Speaker 1: um safe professional college sports are having a real tough
Speaker 1: time with preventing outbreaks, preventing positive cases. Is it possible
Speaker 1: for other leagues to create their own bubbles that are
Speaker 1: as successful as the NBA's has been. Well, we saw
Speaker 1: the NHL do a similar bubble. They just had it
Speaker 1: on across two cities in Edmonton and Toronto. So there's
Speaker 1: a parallel there. But with regard to things like baseball
Speaker 1: in the NFL, you know, there are disadvantages that the
Speaker 1: NBA didn't have, and and some of those are just
Speaker 1: you know, bigger roster sizes mean many more people that
Speaker 1: you know would have to be included in a bubble. Um.
Speaker 1: Baseball plays sixty games. I mean, the the NBA and
Speaker 1: the NHL had an advantage where they were very close
Speaker 1: to their playoffs, so this wasn't something where they would
Speaker 1: have to play, you know, in the NFL's case, like
Speaker 1: a regular season of four or five months. Um. And
Speaker 1: the other thing is just you know, Disney took the
Speaker 1: prime real estate here. I mean, you couldn't have hoped
Speaker 1: for anywhere better than than Disney, where you have all
Speaker 1: these hotels, you have the capacity to have the many
Speaker 1: people on site. Um. For someone like baseball, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just no there was no equivalent place to go.
Speaker 1: I mean some of the early talk was about putting
Speaker 1: all these teams in Arizona. Well, they would have been
Speaker 1: playing the season in July and August in Arizona and
Speaker 1: there's only one temperature controlled stadium there. So you know
Speaker 1: the idea of having a bunch of these uh, these
Speaker 1: games held when temperatures are a hundred hundred five ten degrees. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, quickly sort of becomes inconceivable. And then with
Speaker 1: the NFL, I mean again, it's just the sheer size
Speaker 1: of these rosters and the idea of where are you
Speaker 1: going to find enough football fields? I mean, just just
Speaker 1: thinking about it in terms of the size of a
Speaker 1: football field versus a basketball field. Um, there's just there's
Speaker 1: nowhere else that you could create a bubble like this,
Speaker 1: and there's really just not there's not another sport where
Speaker 1: where there's this many fields available. Has the NBA announced
Speaker 1: anything in terms of its plans for the next season,
Speaker 1: if it's going to go the bubble route or any
Speaker 1: other any other logistical plan. They haven't yet. And and
Speaker 1: they haven't even set when the start date for the
Speaker 1: new season will be. It was initially expected like maybe
Speaker 1: it would be on Christmas Day, um, and now it's
Speaker 1: looking closer towards January. And a lot of this has
Speaker 1: to do with the fact is, you know, let's be
Speaker 1: serious here, the NBA lost a ton of money because
Speaker 1: of this. I mean, they lost all of the fans
Speaker 1: and attendance. They don't want to do this again. That
Speaker 1: this isn't something where this is a proof of concept
Speaker 1: and hey, you know, if we have to, we'll go
Speaker 1: back to it. There's a significant amount of money on
Speaker 1: the line here. There was a significant cost of a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million was was what was reported for this,
Speaker 1: and you know, they don't want to play another season
Speaker 1: without fans, So the idea of doing a bubble again
Speaker 1: to me just seems like a non starter. So, as
Speaker 1: you both have mentioned, you know, this was a scenario
Speaker 1: that was fairly unique, fairly expensive, and not something that
Speaker 1: maybe a will to be replicated, either in another sport
Speaker 1: or in general. But is there anything that we can
Speaker 1: take away from what we've seen in the NBA bubble?
Speaker 1: Is there something that the public can take away from
Speaker 1: how the NBA handled the virus, either when it comes
Speaker 1: to testing or the social distancing rules that they were enforcing.
Speaker 1: I think to start, it's quite hopeful to have an
Speaker 1: example of where things did go well, because we haven't.
Speaker 1: We haven't had a whole lot of that lately. And
Speaker 1: um I note that the NBA bubble was conducted, you know,
Speaker 1: it started in the summer, and it was conducted in Florida,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about it happening also in a state
Speaker 1: that at the time was a real you know, becoming
Speaker 1: a real hot spot and so their success, you know,
Speaker 1: it really does say something that was Emma Cord and
Speaker 1: Brandon catch coded. And that's it for our show today.
Speaker 1: For coverage of the out from one D and twenty
Speaker 1: bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus
Speaker 1: and if you like the show, please leave us a
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Speaker 1: the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting.
Speaker 1: The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topha foreheads Jordan Gaspore,
Speaker 1: Magnus and Rickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story
Speaker 1: was reported by Emma Court and Brandon Cotch Cooden. Original
Speaker 1: music by Leo Sidran. Our editors are Francesca Levi and
Speaker 1: Rick Shine. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.