Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stenovic on Bloomberg Radio. So we talked
Speaker 1: earlier with our Cynthia Coons about how we need to
Speaker 1: be ready to deal with more COVID variants coming Jane
Speaker 1: sequencing is what we got into. Our Bloomberg Intelligence Farmer
Speaker 1: team has come out with some new research noting that
Speaker 1: the delta variant may warrant a new COVID vaccine to
Speaker 1: combat the higher infectivity and potentially worst disease outcomes of
Speaker 1: the variant. So let's get to it. Because when I
Speaker 1: read in this morning, and when I look at the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg right now, the most read stories in the past
Speaker 1: eight hours, seven out of twenty have to do with
Speaker 1: the delta variant and COVID. Six of them are related
Speaker 1: to this Bloomberg intelligence research. Let's get to it. With
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News is h Drew Armstrong. He's a senior head
Speaker 1: editor for US Healthcare and he joins us in our
Speaker 1: Interactive Broker studio. I can't read my own writing. That's
Speaker 1: really bad. It's been that kind of a day. This
Speaker 1: research is pretty phenomenal. Reading in um Drew I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised because we're all kind of nervous and trying to
Speaker 1: understand the delta variant. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: what we need to understand about it right now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you know a couple of kind of just
Speaker 1: fundamental points. We know that these viruses evolve over time,
Speaker 1: and some of these ways that they involve can be
Speaker 1: you know, not particularly consequential virus. Yeah, everything. These virus
Speaker 1: viruses are mutating every single time they replicate in your body.
Speaker 1: They are a highly highly highly you know, they muted
Speaker 1: very fast up until the time. Very few of these
Speaker 1: mutations actually matter. A lot of them make the virus
Speaker 1: so it doesn't even function properly, and you know it
Speaker 1: just you know, this is random chance. You're basically spinning
Speaker 1: the Roulette wheel every time from a genetic standpoint. But
Speaker 1: some of them do matter, and we have these things
Speaker 1: that are called variants of concern. The delta variant is
Speaker 1: kind of the the you know, one of the latest
Speaker 1: and greatest of these. And if you're a you know,
Speaker 1: viiologist or epidemiologists, one of the things you're talking about
Speaker 1: is this concept of vaccine escape. Does something about the
Speaker 1: virus change in a way that it makes it so
Speaker 1: that the immune response that's kind of sitting there in
Speaker 1: your body ready and waiting is no longer you know, effective,
Speaker 1: or is no longer as effective. And keep in mind,
Speaker 1: all this stuff is kind of on a spectrum, you know,
Speaker 1: against you know, a certain type of mutation of the virus,
Speaker 1: and then does that allow the virus to you know,
Speaker 1: that version that mutation and strain of the virus to
Speaker 1: kind of spread and be more fit and capable in
Speaker 1: a in a in a in a population. And so
Speaker 1: that's really what you're worried about now, you know. The
Speaker 1: good news when we talk about that is it. You know,
Speaker 1: just as viruses can evolve, so can vaccines. I mean,
Speaker 1: we come up with new flu vaccines every single year.
Speaker 1: You know, there's already been talking about will we need
Speaker 1: some kind of you know, variant booster for uh for
Speaker 1: for this particular coronavirus, And so I think that's a
Speaker 1: discussion that's underway right now. And looking you know, how
Speaker 1: good is the protection and do we need to tweak
Speaker 1: things in some way or another to attack this particular
Speaker 1: variant or what is the virus gonna look like in
Speaker 1: the future. Can a variant in a virus. You talk
Speaker 1: about a spectrum. So can someone who's gotten a vaccine, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, it can affect all of us differently, right,
Speaker 1: even as a mutation or is it can say this
Speaker 1: is the mutation, this is how it's going to affect you.
Speaker 1: That's that's exactly right. I mean, I think the way
Speaker 1: to think about it is that this is not a
Speaker 1: binary question where a vaccine either you know, works or
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. Um, It's more of a question of, well, okay,
Speaker 1: this vaccine, let's say, was protective you know, against symptomatic
Speaker 1: illness or you know, anything anything worse than mild illness
Speaker 1: in the original strain. Well, the strain evolves, and now
Speaker 1: that vaccine is protects still, which is still good, but
Speaker 1: you know, it may be less protective or it maybe
Speaker 1: that for example, hey, you have a larger number of
Speaker 1: people who you know, they get they get infected, but
Speaker 1: their infections are very mild. I just had a friend
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, he had both do as a fiser.
Speaker 1: Back in April, he got COVID. He doesn't know what
Speaker 1: varying it was, but you know, I mean it wasn't
Speaker 1: He was sick and it wasn't fun, but he was
Speaker 1: over written a week or something that wasn't in the hospital. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't not in the hospital. And so I think,
Speaker 1: you know, and and who knows if this is the
Speaker 1: variant or some original strain, But I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we really do have to think about this as a
Speaker 1: spectrum of protection where it's never going to disappear entirely,
Speaker 1: it's never gonna be perfect. And where are you on
Speaker 1: that on that range, you know, both against protecting against
Speaker 1: infection entirely, protecting against more severe diseases, and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. How quickly are they tracking all the
Speaker 1: data about the variant to understand whether or not the
Speaker 1: vaccines are going to kind of stand up against it
Speaker 1: as it continues to mutate, like well, they know instantaneously
Speaker 1: because they're tracking populations or will there be a lag
Speaker 1: or no, This stuff takes a while. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the real challenges here is that viruses mutate faster
Speaker 1: than vaccines evolve. And so one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: I think the flu vaccine tends to be relatively you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it works, but you know, it's obviously
Speaker 1: people still get the flu. It tends to be about
Speaker 1: sixty protective is something you're looking for generally with the flu.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what you can expect there. Part of
Speaker 1: the reason is that you know, when you're making vaccine,
Speaker 1: and you're making vaccine and a mass scale, as we
Speaker 1: saw with the covid vaccines, you're doing this months and
Speaker 1: months in advance. And so with flu vaccines, for example,
Speaker 1: you're trying to predict, hey, what strains of the flu
Speaker 1: are going to be circulating most predominantly by the time
Speaker 1: you know, we have to They have to guess a
Speaker 1: year or so out and say, okay, we think it's
Speaker 1: going to be these four strains. And sometimes they guess
Speaker 1: really well, and the flu vaccine is great. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: don't guess so well. Man, it's only moderately protective. The
Speaker 1: same dynamic may eventually come to play with this, but
Speaker 1: we don't want that miss on covid right right exactly,
Speaker 1: And so you know, I mean, listen, the flu and
Speaker 1: covid are very different viruses. It's it's worth keeping in mind.
Speaker 1: You know, this is you know, a virus that it
Speaker 1: may be that we you know that one. You know
Speaker 1: that a vaccine these m R and a vaccines, they
Speaker 1: might be very effective. It might be that, you know,
Speaker 1: if you end up doing a booster shot or something
Speaker 1: like that, you end up with very long lasting protection,
Speaker 1: you know, against almost all strains of US. I think
Speaker 1: this is a question that is one it's it's being
Speaker 1: looked at, but it's still an open one exactly on
Speaker 1: whether we truly will need a new type of vaccine
Speaker 1: or a slightly modified vaccine, if we'll need a booster,
Speaker 1: or if we'll just be you know, say, hey, we've
Speaker 1: got against all the strains out there with the MR
Speaker 1: and A vaccines. That's pretty good. We don't know if
Speaker 1: we can get any better by giving more shots or
Speaker 1: modifying the shots. So we don't know yet about a
Speaker 1: booster Like I keep thinking, do I have to circle
Speaker 1: some date on a calendar? No, I think we really
Speaker 1: don't know. I know, you know, Fiser has been talking
Speaker 1: it up, the US government has been talking it down.
Speaker 1: I think the reality is that, you know, the question
Speaker 1: is still out there from a data standpoint in terms
Speaker 1: of you know, how much does immunity wayne. The immunity
Speaker 1: has a lot of different parts to it, you know,
Speaker 1: is it just these antibodies which are kind of the
Speaker 1: like live active defenses that are circulating versus kind of
Speaker 1: the immune memory cells that are a little bit more
Speaker 1: deminant but a little bit more permanent. You know, I
Speaker 1: think we really do not know yet exactly what long
Speaker 1: term immunity for these vaccines looks like, because you know,
Speaker 1: they've not been out there for that long. They've only
Speaker 1: been in people's bodies for around a year. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, so, yeah, exactly, So we don't know, and
Speaker 1: I think that's very, very important. There's gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot of data that is going to come out over
Speaker 1: the next couple of months. Someone's to go in one direction,
Speaker 1: someone's going to go in another. What I would encourage
Speaker 1: people to do is, you know, try to take the
Speaker 1: totality this information as it comes out, because you're going
Speaker 1: to see headlines at the point one direction and then
Speaker 1: owns the point the other. It's not that it is
Speaker 1: changing back for it. This is the argument of science
Speaker 1: happening live in real time. You have been covering all
Speaker 1: of this stuff in real time, and I know how
Speaker 1: exhausted you must be over the past year and a half. Well,
Speaker 1: we start to see, though l A wear a mask.
Speaker 1: We have conversations here in the office, like throwing a
Speaker 1: mask it doesn't hurt. How are we as the general
Speaker 1: public supposed to read that when you also say these
Speaker 1: vaccines are really effective and they do protect us. I
Speaker 1: think the mask debate in this country is really interesting
Speaker 1: to watch. I don't think anybody really wants to go back,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, if you're listening, you know someone
Speaker 1: who's vaccinated, Like, I hate wearing a mask. It sucks.
Speaker 1: Do you wear it? I do on planes, on the
Speaker 1: subway and things like that. I wear where I have
Speaker 1: to wear it. Um and I wear in a couple
Speaker 1: of situations, you know, when I'm around people I don't know,
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, yes, but not very often,
Speaker 1: and like and I don't want to you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to have to go back to that. It
Speaker 1: is you, it is not. It's not something I want
Speaker 1: to keep having to do. And so I think and
Speaker 1: and and trust me, I'm very much on the like
Speaker 1: pro public health measure side. As I follow this stuff
Speaker 1: and I wore my mask diligently, I think it's going
Speaker 1: to be very hard from a political standpoint and a
Speaker 1: public health messaging standpoint to reenact mass mandates again because
Speaker 1: you know, like it's hard to go back to that
Speaker 1: world for people, especially if they've been vaccinated um, you know,
Speaker 1: and people are gonna have a reset risk calibration. I
Speaker 1: would expect a little bit and and figure out what
Speaker 1: their level of comfort is. I feel like we keep
Speaker 1: hearing um drew increasingly from global leaders that in order
Speaker 1: to get through this, we have to have a global
Speaker 1: solution and there's going to be sharing of information, sharing
Speaker 1: of data. It isn't really happening, is it. No? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I think one of the really challenging parts
Speaker 1: of the vaccine roll out within the context of the
Speaker 1: pandemic is that you've seen programs like COVACS that's the
Speaker 1: w h O and GAV organized program to kind of
Speaker 1: buy vaccines and distribute them, you know, equit will be
Speaker 1: across the globe, but really lead you know, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out a way of getting vaccines to lower incombinations.
Speaker 1: It has just abysmally, you know, it started, has been
Speaker 1: a busmoine has has not worked, has gotten very few vaccines,
Speaker 1: has done you know, has not been able to get
Speaker 1: them to lower income countries, particularly in Africa where you know,
Speaker 1: listen to people are complaining about a fifty percent vaccination
Speaker 1: rate in the United States. It's one percent in in Africa,
Speaker 1: and they're having death spike in those places. We need
Speaker 1: to be concerned about these hotspots. Like I think there
Speaker 1: are people listening, like that's far away from me, but
Speaker 1: I also remember back in December January, where like China,
Speaker 1: that's far away from me, it's never going to touch us,
Speaker 1: And here we are. Yeah, I mean, you know, listen,
Speaker 1: unvaccinated populations are pretty effective breeding grounds for new variants.
Speaker 1: And we've seen what happens when very you know, variant
Speaker 1: evolves that is successful and kind of leaping around a
Speaker 1: vaccine or is a very effective hitting you know, unvaccinated
Speaker 1: or vulnerable populations. And so yeah, I mean, just from
Speaker 1: like a purely selfish standpoint, it's a good thing. Like
Speaker 1: we all get on airplane to travel around the world
Speaker 1: and you know, go to these places or people come
Speaker 1: from these places, and you know, virus doesn't really care
Speaker 1: about income or borders or anything like that. We've got
Speaker 1: the delta variant is much more contagious, right, That's certainly
Speaker 1: something we hear. I was talking with a doctor yesterday
Speaker 1: and they said, yeah, but it's not like your outcome
Speaker 1: is worse, meaning if you've got the vaccine, you're likely
Speaker 1: to get through it. Are we likely to get to
Speaker 1: a stage, especially since a big part of the world
Speaker 1: is still not vaccinated, they are available hosts to continue
Speaker 1: the variations uh in covid. Are we likely to get
Speaker 1: to a mutation that is not only more contagious but
Speaker 1: more a killer. It's hard to know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think one of the general rules of viruses, you know,
Speaker 1: in a big picture sense, is that like a very effective,
Speaker 1: a virus that kills its host very quickly is not
Speaker 1: a very good virus because it makes it harder for
Speaker 1: you know, it makes it harder for her to spread.
Speaker 1: I mean, a bola is really really scary, but as
Speaker 1: a virus attends to the reason it tends to say
Speaker 1: relatively self contained is because it kills people too quickly
Speaker 1: before they can, you know, end up walking around and
Speaker 1: spreading it to lots and lots of people. It's very
Speaker 1: scary for healthcare workers. Is very scary if it's happening
Speaker 1: in your village, you know, but there's much less risk
Speaker 1: that you know, someone gets a bowla and then has
Speaker 1: a mind you know, you don't have a mild case
Speaker 1: of a bowla that you're walking, you know, walking around
Speaker 1: with infecting lots and lots of other people. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I mean this this, this question of
Speaker 1: you know, the global issue is a is a real one. Um.
Speaker 1: And and you know the failure of of richer nations
Speaker 1: to effectively contribute to kovacs in other ways, you know,
Speaker 1: and really help push vaccinations in in in other places.
Speaker 1: I mean that is that is meaningful. And then you
Speaker 1: mentioned some of this data sharing stuff. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think another real issue that is going to come up
Speaker 1: over and over again and is going to be I
Speaker 1: I hope a point of consideration after this, you know
Speaker 1: pandemic ends is you know, we do need probably a
Speaker 1: better system of surveillance and monitoring and fast action from
Speaker 1: a global standpoint, because I think you really saw and
Speaker 1: have seen over the course of this pandemic. You know
Speaker 1: what happens when information when countries don't share information um
Speaker 1: as as rap with lye as they might otherwise. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and now we're trying to track variants and
Speaker 1: you know, I mean that is still system that's kind
Speaker 1: of in its infancy in terms of you know, growing
Speaker 1: up and having global genetic surveillance of these viruses. When
Speaker 1: you wake up every morning and there's a ton of
Speaker 1: headlines when it comes to COVID and the vaccines and
Speaker 1: the variants, I mean, what is it that you're always
Speaker 1: looking for? Top of mind? I think, you know, we're
Speaker 1: kind of at the point in this where it's you know,
Speaker 1: I personally am really more thinking about the kind of
Speaker 1: the long outcome here. I think there's you know, there's
Speaker 1: new fresh headlines every day, you know, really, but though
Speaker 1: you know, the main thing I think we're keeping an
Speaker 1: eye on right now is, you know, where are people
Speaker 1: getting sick and why are they getting sick? Um? You know,
Speaker 1: and be they vaccinated or unvaccinated? What do we really know? Um?
Speaker 1: And what can we find out more to learn and
Speaker 1: add information about, you know, how effective these vaccines are,
Speaker 1: how the virus is evolving. I mean, those are the
Speaker 1: things that we're really paying attention to because all that
Speaker 1: points to a time when you know, what is the
Speaker 1: you know, hopeful end point of this of this pandemic mick,
Speaker 1: you know, if there is one, or do we just
Speaker 1: end up kind of in a long tail endemic situation
Speaker 1: where we're dealing with this virus and living with it
Speaker 1: in some way or another for the rest of our lives,
Speaker 1: which is very possible. Yes, all right, gonna leave with her.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. It's what I wanted to do today.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much. I know you're a busy guy,
Speaker 1: Drew Armstrong. He's our senior editor for US healthcare right
Speaker 1: here at Bloomberg News. Check him out his work on
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Terminal, also at Bloomberg dot com. To thank
Speaker 1: you so much.