Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one and
Speaker 1: forty since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main
Speaker 1: story the virus is surging in the US, but we
Speaker 1: still don't have good accessible data about the outbreak. That's
Speaker 1: left the public in the dark about how bad things
Speaker 1: really are. But first, here's what happened in virus news today.
Speaker 1: The United States is about to reach one fifty thousand
Speaker 1: coronavirus deaths, and things continue to get worse in COVID hotspots.
Speaker 1: Florida posted a wreck gird number of virus deaths for
Speaker 1: a second straight day, Arizona's infection rate jumped, and in Texas,
Speaker 1: Hurricane Hannah came ashore Saturday and knocked out power to
Speaker 1: more than three hundred thousand homes and businesses. New coronavirus
Speaker 1: guidelines for line crews, along with flooding are complicating efforts
Speaker 1: to turn the lights back on. Some in the region,
Speaker 1: maybe without power for a week. Russia plans to register
Speaker 1: are coronavirus vaccine as soon as August ten. That would
Speaker 1: clear the way for what would be the world's first
Speaker 1: official approval of an inoculation The drug, developed by Moscow's
Speaker 1: Gamalaya Institute and the Russian Direct Investment Fund, may be
Speaker 1: approved for civilian use within three to seven days of
Speaker 1: registration by regulators. The information comes from a person familiar
Speaker 1: with the process who asked not to be identified because
Speaker 1: the information is in public. Finally, in most places, so
Speaker 1: called herd immunity won't be achieved before a vaccine is
Speaker 1: widely available. But in some of India's largest slumps, around
Speaker 1: six and ten people have antibodies for the novel coronavirus,
Speaker 1: indicating they had the virus and recovered. That means the
Speaker 1: country's poorest areas have one of the highest population immunity
Speaker 1: levels worldwide. And now for today's main story, more than
Speaker 1: a month into a resurgence of the novel coronavirus that
Speaker 1: has besieged Sun Belt states, flooded hospitals, and strained public
Speaker 1: health infrastructure, the US still lacks a complete picture of
Speaker 1: the reality on the ground. That's because the US doesn't
Speaker 1: have any official real time system to track the virus
Speaker 1: is spread. At times, even the federal government has had
Speaker 1: to rely on third party databases. I talked to reporter
Speaker 1: and a court who explained the danger of a COVID
Speaker 1: data black hole. What are some of the problems we're
Speaker 1: seeing with the US specifically with regard to tracking virus data.
Speaker 1: The reality is that the United States doesn't have a
Speaker 1: good national, real time public picture of COVID nineteen in
Speaker 1: the country even today. It's sort of staggering when you
Speaker 1: say it out loud, but for the people who are
Speaker 1: monitoring this crisis every day, this is just a reality
Speaker 1: of the situation. There isn't a accessible real time system
Speaker 1: to track the virus is spread in this voy. A
Speaker 1: lot of other tools have cropped up from third parties
Speaker 1: and things like that. You know, JOHNS Hopkins has become
Speaker 1: a big source of a lot of coronavirus data. But
Speaker 1: the real issue, and you know, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of attribution of failures during this crisis to the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: and they've certainly played a role in this. But I
Speaker 1: see this as confluence of different factors. We've had decades
Speaker 1: of neglect of the technological public health infrastructure in this country,
Speaker 1: and there's this history of federalism, of states taking their
Speaker 1: own approaches to different things, including public health data, and
Speaker 1: the result is this sort of crisis that's been exacerbated
Speaker 1: in many ways by the strategy taken by the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: which has been each state is going to do their
Speaker 1: own thing, and data is such an essential component of
Speaker 1: whether you can reopen, whether it's advisable to reopen. The
Speaker 1: government admits that they have big gaps in data reporting.
Speaker 1: A lot of experts have turned in the void of
Speaker 1: really reliable federal system to the different state dashboards. So
Speaker 1: I think many of us have become familiar with this.
Speaker 1: You can log on I'm in New York. You can
Speaker 1: log on and see what New York's numbers are that day,
Speaker 1: how things are changing. But each state also reports data
Speaker 1: very differently, and so you can't necessarily cobble together all
Speaker 1: of these fifty different state dashboards, for instance, and get
Speaker 1: a national picture that is really comprehensive, because everyone talks
Speaker 1: about the numbers a little differently, they measure it a
Speaker 1: little differently, and there's just so much variation in this data.
Speaker 1: You know, what are some of these variations or differences
Speaker 1: in reporting that make it so difficult to get a
Speaker 1: comprehensive national picture, especially when we're looking at how the
Speaker 1: states are reporting things differently. What's interesting is this nonprofit
Speaker 1: called Resolved to Save Lives actually took a deep dive
Speaker 1: into the US and they looked at all the different
Speaker 1: state dashboards and they looked at they basically came up
Speaker 1: with this list of fifteen essential data points and how
Speaker 1: ideally you would want to be tracking these measures like
Speaker 1: new cases, deaths, and hospitalizations. And after they went through
Speaker 1: the ways each state did this, they found what they
Speaker 1: described as an information catastrophe. They found that even these
Speaker 1: metrics people are often turning to, like new cases, hospitalizations,
Speaker 1: and deaths, weren't reported in a standard manner. An example
Speaker 1: of this is, for instance, in Florida, until recently, they
Speaker 1: weren't reporting new hospitalizations each day. They were reporting cumulative
Speaker 1: hospitalizations each day. And that may not seem so difficult.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can look at the numbers from before,
Speaker 1: and you can do the math. But the result is
Speaker 1: that you can't easily grab fifty sets of state data
Speaker 1: and combine them and get a really good picture of
Speaker 1: what's going on. And also, you know, it takes time
Speaker 1: to dive into these numbers and understand what their implications are.
Speaker 1: And so if each state is reporting numbers slightly differently,
Speaker 1: that makes it harder to understand what's happening in that state,
Speaker 1: just off the top. And the big issue here is
Speaker 1: the public knowledge. Right, public health officials in these states
Speaker 1: have access to data. The problem is, we've seen so
Speaker 1: many errors be made that it's important to have this
Speaker 1: public accountability so the public can understand, for instance, how
Speaker 1: the state is managing the local conditions, but also understand
Speaker 1: is it safe for me right now to be going
Speaker 1: out in my community. And these are important things that
Speaker 1: have major implications for how people lead their lives, what
Speaker 1: level of risk they expose themselves to, and it matters.
Speaker 1: I want to turn now, maybe to the federal level.
Speaker 1: It seems that hospitals have been told not to send
Speaker 1: virus data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Speaker 1: the CDC, but instead to the U. S. Department of
Speaker 1: Health and Human Service. Is now, I was hoping you
Speaker 1: might explain why would there be this change in the
Speaker 1: middle of the pandemic of where this data was sent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in some ways, the reason this change was made
Speaker 1: really has to do with these data issues. So you know,
Speaker 1: when they made this change a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: the agency said the idea was to streamline the system
Speaker 1: and better present what they what data they had, and
Speaker 1: what data they didn't have. UH. And this is data
Speaker 1: that has really important implications. That helps you know, the
Speaker 1: agencies decide where to send things like medical supplies. Right.
Speaker 1: It helps inform the government's response. But the concern was
Speaker 1: the CDC is the public premier public health agency in
Speaker 1: this country. Their job is to maintain public databases like this.
Speaker 1: They have worked with data like this for years. You know,
Speaker 1: this is what they do. And the concern is are
Speaker 1: you taking the data away from the agency that knows
Speaker 1: how to deal with the data and is there some
Speaker 1: politics involved here? The CDC is viewed as being having
Speaker 1: been largely cut out of the us is response to
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen, And the question is is this data is
Speaker 1: still going to be available to the public. Are we
Speaker 1: going to get a better system here or is the
Speaker 1: system going to become even less transparent than it was before.
Speaker 1: Uh And I think it's important to know. The HHS
Speaker 1: perspective on this is this is a way of being
Speaker 1: more transparent. We're making even more data available UH. And
Speaker 1: there are gaps in our data reporting, but we are
Speaker 1: sharing what the gaps are through this new data system.
Speaker 1: Let's let's look at this in a broader international context.
Speaker 1: How does the US is UM approach to tracking virus
Speaker 1: data compare to what some other countries are doing worldwide.
Speaker 1: What's really striking about the patchwork system we have here
Speaker 1: in the United States is that other countries have made
Speaker 1: their data more accessible in one place. So right now
Speaker 1: I could log on to South Korea's c d C
Speaker 1: and see, you know, information about their testing efforts, information
Speaker 1: on a daily basis about what's happening in that country.
Speaker 1: Australia is also a very large country, like the US,
Speaker 1: has a similar system set up as well, and to
Speaker 1: be sure, in many parts of the world there are
Speaker 1: issues with how they've handled the COVID response, But in
Speaker 1: some ways what's happened in the US is very surprising
Speaker 1: from an international perspective. You know that we're a country
Speaker 1: that's gotten involved in public health all around the world.
Speaker 1: We have the pharmaceutical companies are that are developing all
Speaker 1: these COVID vaccines, many are based here in the United States.
Speaker 1: So in some ways, the US is thought to have
Speaker 1: been a world leader in health crisis specifically, and it's
Speaker 1: not just data where our reputation is suffering, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly a part of it. That was Emma Cord And
Speaker 1: that's it for our show today. For coverage of the
Speaker 1: outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit
Speaker 1: bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like the show,
Speaker 1: please leave us a review and a rating on Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more
Speaker 1: listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily Edition is
Speaker 1: produced by Toph Foreheads, Jordan Gaspore, Magnus Hendrickson and me
Speaker 1: Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Emma Court.
Speaker 1: Original music by Leo Sigrian. Our editors are Rick Shawn
Speaker 1: and Francesca Levi. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, l