Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one since
Speaker 1: coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story. The
Speaker 1: United States is on the doorstep of another tragic milestone,
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand deaths in the country. We're still unpacking
Speaker 1: everything that has happened in the eight months since the
Speaker 1: virus hid its shores and where we go from here.
Speaker 1: But first, here's what happened in virus News today. Coronavirus
Speaker 1: vaccine shots will be ready for public use as early
Speaker 1: as November or December in China. That's what the country's
Speaker 1: top bio safety scientist said this week. That timeline would
Speaker 1: make the country one of the first in the world
Speaker 1: to distribute a vaccine. In an interview with State television
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, Woo Greisen, chief bio safety expert at China's
Speaker 1: Disease Control and Prevention Center, said final stage clinical trials
Speaker 1: of several vaccine candidates had progressed smoothly. She said she
Speaker 1: had taken a vaccine shot in April herself and had
Speaker 1: felt nothing abnormal. With the economic devastation of containment measures
Speaker 1: becoming too much to bear for many governments, political pressure
Speaker 1: has grown on drugmakers to deliver vaccines quickly. London Mayor
Speaker 1: Sadiq Khan said further measures may be announced in the
Speaker 1: next few days and weeks to contain infections in the
Speaker 1: UK capital. The potential restrictions come as virus cases surge
Speaker 1: in the city. Estimates published on Friday suggest there were
Speaker 1: six thousand new infections per day in the city last week.
Speaker 1: That's up from thirty two hundred the week before. Boris
Speaker 1: Johnson's government extended coronavirus restrictions across northern England and the Midlands.
Speaker 1: For the UK, the so called r rate, or how
Speaker 1: many people each new COVID nineteen case infects, is now
Speaker 1: as high as one point four. The government said that
Speaker 1: suggests the spread is accelerating. Thailand reported its first death
Speaker 1: from coronavirus since June second, two weeks after the nation
Speaker 1: ended a streak of one hundred days without local transmission.
Speaker 1: With the latest fatality, Thailand's total death told from the
Speaker 1: pandemic rose to fifty nine. Thailand, which was the first
Speaker 1: country outside China to detect the coronavirus, is among a
Speaker 1: handful of nations in the region which have managed to
Speaker 1: contain the pandemic. And now for today's main story, the
Speaker 1: US will top two hundred thousand deaths from the novel
Speaker 1: coronavirus in the next few days. It's a devastating milestone
Speaker 1: that comes only weeks before a presidential election where the
Speaker 1: virus response is front and center. The US has only
Speaker 1: four percent of the world's population, but accounts for about
Speaker 1: twenty one percent of global coronavirus deaths. The disparity underscores
Speaker 1: America's failure to contain a virus that hit New York
Speaker 1: City hardest in the spring, then blazed through populous states
Speaker 1: like Texas, Florida, and California this summer. After New York
Speaker 1: contained its infection, I spoke with reporter em A Court
Speaker 1: about what COVID nineteen in the US looks like now,
Speaker 1: eight months after it was first found on American soil,
Speaker 1: and what we have learned about it since. So we're
Speaker 1: about to hit a pretty dark milestone in the US
Speaker 1: two deaths from COVID nineteen. I was wondering, could you
Speaker 1: maybe just give us a little color on this grim statistic.
Speaker 1: It's honestly a point I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: hoped we would never get to and I think the
Speaker 1: fear now is where are we going to be at
Speaker 1: the end of the year. You know, how many deaths
Speaker 1: are we going to be talking about in a couple
Speaker 1: of months time. I like to think of the pandemic
Speaker 1: in terms of phases. So earlier this year, we saw
Speaker 1: New York City get hit really hard. We saw New
Speaker 1: Jersey have really high numbers. We saw Seattle get hit
Speaker 1: really hard early in the pandemic, and more recently over
Speaker 1: the summer, the burden of the virus really shifted towards
Speaker 1: these you know, southern and southwestern states that dominated the news.
Speaker 1: Right We had you know, Texas, Arizona, Florida, California. Really
Speaker 1: the virus sort of blaze through those areas, and you know,
Speaker 1: fast forwarding to now to the fall. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about the fall as a time of
Speaker 1: great concern for months now because schools are reopening, we're
Speaker 1: seeing colleges reopening, um, you know many in several parts
Speaker 1: of the country, the temperatures are getting a lot cooler,
Speaker 1: people are moving their socializing indoors, where obviously there's a
Speaker 1: higher risk of the virus being transmitted. So when you
Speaker 1: think about these different phases of the virus right now,
Speaker 1: we're a little bit at a at an inflection point,
Speaker 1: and we don't really know what's going to happen. We're
Speaker 1: seeing those hotspots from the summer really dying down, and
Speaker 1: that's reflected in overall the case numbers declining. We've seen
Speaker 1: deaths decline as well. We have more understanding of the
Speaker 1: public health measures that are needed to try to stop
Speaker 1: the virus from spreading. But you know, whether we see
Speaker 1: all this happen for a third time again is really
Speaker 1: kind of up in the air now. Is it's a
Speaker 1: very grim number, but is there any doubt as to
Speaker 1: its accuracy? There's a lot of doubt. I think we
Speaker 1: can all agree that two hundred thousand is a floor
Speaker 1: for death. So we know, you know, when we hit
Speaker 1: this two hundred thousand number, it will be two official deaths.
Speaker 1: But we also know that our our system hasn't, through
Speaker 1: the course of the pandemic, been very good at recognizing
Speaker 1: all coronavirus deaths for a variety of different reasons um
Speaker 1: And so we know, for instance, looking at CDC data,
Speaker 1: that we have this marker called, you know, excess mortality,
Speaker 1: and basically you look at historically how many deaths you've
Speaker 1: had in a given year, and then you look at
Speaker 1: how many deaths you've actually had this year. And we
Speaker 1: know we've already seen more than two hundred thousand deaths
Speaker 1: occur this year than we were expecting, and so that
Speaker 1: might not all be COVID nineteen. By the way, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, people were avoiding medical care for a long
Speaker 1: time because they afraid of going to these virus written hospitals.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to get sick. We know people died
Speaker 1: of heart attacks things like that at home. Unfortunately, so
Speaker 1: this number isn't you know, it's not a hundred clear
Speaker 1: exactly how this pans out, but we do know that unfortunately,
Speaker 1: likely more than a hundred two hundred thousand people have
Speaker 1: already died from this virus. I was wondering, if you
Speaker 1: might go into how does perhaps this two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: number or where the US is right now with COVID,
Speaker 1: how does this relate to testing rates in the US.
Speaker 1: Testing has remained a challenge in the US, and it
Speaker 1: does obscure our view of the virus when we aren't
Speaker 1: testing enough. We actually know testing has been declining each
Speaker 1: week since the summer, and we're doing about you know,
Speaker 1: a million tests, uh, less than we were doing in
Speaker 1: July of the summer. So it's unclear whether when we
Speaker 1: see cases decline we can be certain that it's entirely
Speaker 1: because cases are declining and not because, uh, we're doing
Speaker 1: less testing. So as always, that remains kind of a
Speaker 1: fog through which we're viewing these numbers, and we can't
Speaker 1: be totally sure. We have some other metrics we can
Speaker 1: turn to to try to make sense of these numbers,
Speaker 1: like test positivity rates. If test positivity rates are pretty high,
Speaker 1: as we've seen, you know, just a couple of months
Speaker 1: ago in the US, we know for sure that we're
Speaker 1: probably not testing enough, but it's hard to know until
Speaker 1: you really see all this stuff pan out in terms
Speaker 1: of hospitalization and death rates. And of course the issue
Speaker 1: with that is these numbers come a lot down the road,
Speaker 1: and by the time you know you're having a problem,
Speaker 1: you're you're kind of late to be doing anything to
Speaker 1: really stop it quickly. Now you've mentioned that the US
Speaker 1: is really at an inflection point, and I was wondering
Speaker 1: if maybe we could talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: that in terms of the trajectory of the virus coming
Speaker 1: off the summer. As you were mentioning into the fall,
Speaker 1: what are the major concerns going into the next several
Speaker 1: months or even say into one in terms of what
Speaker 1: might be happening with the trajectory of the virus in
Speaker 1: the US. I think it can be really hard to
Speaker 1: get a sense of where the U S is in
Speaker 1: this outbreak because it's all relative, right So things appear
Speaker 1: to be on the upswaying from where they were the summer,
Speaker 1: but things were really quite bad this summer. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at you know, for instance, the Kaiser
Speaker 1: Family Foundation, which is an independent nonprofit, maintains this map
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen hot spots in the U S. If
Speaker 1: you look at the map today, you know, as of
Speaker 1: the time we take this, thirty three states were considered
Speaker 1: hot spots. I mean, the country is you know, a
Speaker 1: massive red right now if you look at this map.
Speaker 1: So it's important to note, like we are still in
Speaker 1: the trenches here. You know, things appear to be getting better,
Speaker 1: but it's all relative to where we were before. One
Speaker 1: of the big concerns about this fall again is more
Speaker 1: institutions are reopening. The weather in parts of the country
Speaker 1: is getting cooler. People meeting indoors. And then, of course
Speaker 1: there's the fact that you know, traditionally we can have
Speaker 1: really bad flu seasons, and the symptoms of flu are
Speaker 1: extremely similar the symptoms of COVID nineteen. And in a
Speaker 1: country where the medical infrastructure has already been placed under
Speaker 1: strain by COVID nineteen, the chances of having a bad
Speaker 1: flu season are are concerning, to say the least. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've seen from other parts of the world that the
Speaker 1: flu seasons have actually been milder in many cases because
Speaker 1: people are doing these things like social distancing and wearing masks.
Speaker 1: So we know these measures, if we undertake them, will
Speaker 1: not only prevent COVID nineteen from spreading, but also other
Speaker 1: concerns like flu. But again, it's it is a concerning
Speaker 1: time of year. There were beliefs that summer would be
Speaker 1: a better time for the coronavirus crisis, and that just
Speaker 1: didn't turn out to be true and and that's not
Speaker 1: what happened. So let's look big picture. What does this
Speaker 1: number two hundred thousand say. Do you think about the
Speaker 1: US is overall response to COVID nineteen throughout this year?
Speaker 1: It says we have done a very poor job of
Speaker 1: containing this virus. You know, we have four percent of
Speaker 1: the world's population and about of global coronavirus deaths. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is something that has to be taken really seriously,
Speaker 1: you know, especially considering where these deaths have occurred, who
Speaker 1: these deaths have affected. We know people with other medical
Speaker 1: conditions have disproportionately died from this virus. We know elderly
Speaker 1: people have died from this virus. We know people of
Speaker 1: color have disproportionately died from this virus. We also know
Speaker 1: geographically that the virus deaths have been, you know, especially
Speaker 1: concentrated in just about twelve states, and seventy percent more
Speaker 1: than seventy of virus deaths in the US happened in
Speaker 1: just twelve states, including some of the names that you
Speaker 1: might assume you know in New York, California, Texas. It's
Speaker 1: really striking when you think about this two number in
Speaker 1: more death I mean, that is a really that's a
Speaker 1: large number, and and it's an amount of deaths that
Speaker 1: weren't we didn't expect to happen this year, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a new pandemic um. I think it can
Speaker 1: be helpful to think about it in terms of even
Speaker 1: just cities in the U S. So, um, you know, Yonkers,
Speaker 1: New York has a population of two people. Huntsville, Alabama,
Speaker 1: has a population of two people. I mean, we're talking
Speaker 1: about an entire city die basically, if if you think
Speaker 1: about it in just geographic terms. Is there any good
Speaker 1: news for folks looking for some regarding COVID nineteen in
Speaker 1: the US. I think you can see good news in
Speaker 1: a couple of places. I mean, from a public health perspective,
Speaker 1: I would say the good news is we do know
Speaker 1: what the right thing is to do, even though it's
Speaker 1: hard to do and it's hard to sustain for such
Speaker 1: a long period of time. Where now eight months into
Speaker 1: a virus that was first confirmed on US soil back
Speaker 1: in late January, right, I think it's almost become a
Speaker 1: bit of a cliche at this point. We know you're
Speaker 1: supposed to wear a mask, we know you're supposed to
Speaker 1: social distance, wash your hands, all that good stuff. But
Speaker 1: we do know that we have that information and we
Speaker 1: have the ability. You know, most of us hopefully have
Speaker 1: the ability to adhere to these things, and not everyone
Speaker 1: because of their circumstances and jobs and things like that,
Speaker 1: but intrinsically that's positive because that's information that we can
Speaker 1: use and we can put to good use. There's also
Speaker 1: encouraging news, I think on the vaccine front, although it's
Speaker 1: still very much remains to be seen whether these experimental
Speaker 1: drugs are going to be effective and safe for Americans
Speaker 1: and for the global population. I think there's a real
Speaker 1: effort from the private sector to try to find a
Speaker 1: solution to this. But I think we've seen the public
Speaker 1: health response to this lag behind. And what does that
Speaker 1: say about America. I think it says a lot about
Speaker 1: you know, where we invest, where our priorities have been
Speaker 1: historically um and it gives us the opportunity to do
Speaker 1: better that was in the corps. And that's it for
Speaker 1: our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one
Speaker 1: bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus
Speaker 1: and if you like the show, please leave us a
Speaker 1: review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's
Speaker 1: the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting.
Speaker 1: The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Top for fourheads
Speaker 1: Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main
Speaker 1: story was reported by Emma Court. Original music by Leo Sigrin.
Speaker 1: Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesca Leavi
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.