Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count US Saturdays
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion I Amy Morris. This week we
Speaker 2: look at COVID. We got a lot right about the risks,
Speaker 2: but we talk with Bloomberg's Justin Fox, who says we
Speaker 2: got the response wrong, and we'll look at the benefits
Speaker 2: of telehealth and how it can be especially helpful for teenagers.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Lisa Jarvis explains how the COVID pandemic highlighted how
Speaker 2: telehealth can fit in as part of your healthcare routine. Plus,
Speaker 2: the US might want to consider changing it's COVID booster
Speaker 2: strategy because whatever they're doing now just doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: be working. But we begin with another holdover from COVID,
Speaker 2: working from home. While companies are getting more serious about
Speaker 2: their return to office policies, more employees are looking for
Speaker 2: that flexibility in their careers. Karen Cambro is LinkedIn's chief economist.
Speaker 3: Employers are now gradually pulling back on that they would
Speaker 3: like to see people back in the office. We're seeing
Speaker 3: an upswing in hybrid work where people are coming in,
Speaker 3: say it's three days out of the week, and we're
Speaker 3: seeing a decrease in job openings that offer fully remote works.
Speaker 3: So there's definitely a trend of getting back into the office.
Speaker 2: But is that the way to go? Is there any
Speaker 2: room for flexibility. Let's talk with Bloomberg opinion columnist Sarah
Speaker 2: Green Carmichael. She joins us now. Sarah, always a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you for taking the time in your column on
Speaker 2: the Bloomberg terminal. You use Amazon as an example because
Speaker 2: that company has gotten really serious about its return to
Speaker 2: work policy.
Speaker 4: Yes, Amazon has been tightening the screws now for months
Speaker 4: on employees, and last week Business Insider got hold of
Speaker 4: a memo that they had sent to their managers asking
Speaker 4: them to first talk to anyone who has not been
Speaker 4: coming in three times a week and give them a
Speaker 4: sort of an official war. Follow up with an email
Speaker 4: sort of documenting a dolores Umbradge sort of type memo
Speaker 4: of you know, you haven't been coming in and there
Speaker 4: will be consequences, and then if things haven't improved after
Speaker 4: a week, or two to really start termination proceedings. So
Speaker 4: this is really like exercising the nuclear option on hybrid work.
Speaker 4: You know, they're really saying you've got to be in
Speaker 4: three days a week and if you're not, you could
Speaker 4: be fired.
Speaker 2: So what is this push and pull over working from
Speaker 2: home due to middle managers?
Speaker 4: I think it puts them in a really tough spot.
Speaker 4: You know, middle managers are in my uh as. I've
Speaker 4: sort of talked with them. Yes, would they like some
Speaker 4: of their employees to come in more often?
Speaker 5: Yes they would. Do they want to be firing people?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 4: Are they trying to manage employees who have real needs
Speaker 4: for flexibility?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 4: Are they also trying to get people, you know, to
Speaker 4: do their best at work? Of course? So I think
Speaker 4: sort of asking middle managers to kind of become the
Speaker 4: enforcer of this policy really does put them in a
Speaker 4: bind on top of everything else that middle managers are
Speaker 4: asked to do.
Speaker 2: Now, why is there still so much disagreement about whether
Speaker 2: working from home actually works? Didn't we prove this in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty and beyond amy?
Speaker 4: That is the key question. That's really what the debate
Speaker 4: is here. A lot of managers will say that they
Speaker 4: don't think that people are as productive at home. They
Speaker 4: see the primary benefit of hybrid work as work life balance.
Speaker 4: Employees who are working in a hybrid or remote way
Speaker 4: see it differently. They are Yeah, the work life balance
Speaker 4: is nice, but actually one of the most important benefits
Speaker 4: is that I feel so much more productive at home.
Speaker 4: So there's this real perception gap based on your position
Speaker 4: in the organization. I think part of that gap is
Speaker 4: to do with trust. Employees feel like they're getting locked
Speaker 4: done at home, managers cannot see them doing it, and
Speaker 4: so managers, I think, are more skeptical. And it could
Speaker 4: also be that, you know, there are some types of
Speaker 4: managing that are actually more difficult when employees aren't right
Speaker 4: under your nose. So even if the employee is more productive,
Speaker 4: it makes the manager's job a little bit tougher.
Speaker 2: And this isn't supposition on your part. You've found in
Speaker 2: writing this column on the Bloomberg terminal is that there
Speaker 2: is research out there that shows when the employee has
Speaker 2: some power over their workspace, they do better.
Speaker 4: Yes, I talked to an interesting expert in teams and performance,
Speaker 4: David Burkis, and he was saying, you know, he's looked
Speaker 4: at he's followed this research really closely. A lot of
Speaker 4: it's coming out of Stanford, from Nicholas Blooms group at Stanford,
Speaker 4: And I asked him, you know, why are we seeing
Speaker 4: now such disagreement between these studies. You know, work from
Speaker 4: home is more productive if actually the office is more productive.
Speaker 4: He said, a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 4: people sort of sorting into categories. So if someone prefers
Speaker 4: the office, they will actually be more productive at the office.
Speaker 4: If someone prefers working from home and has some control
Speaker 4: over their schedule and can do that, they'll be more productive,
Speaker 4: you know, in that arrangement. So what we're seeing now
Speaker 4: post COVID is that when people have the option to
Speaker 4: control their work environment, it actually does improve their performance.
Speaker 4: And that's I think what so many employees are trying
Speaker 4: to hold on to and what is so challenging for
Speaker 4: so many managers.
Speaker 2: And we are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Sarah Green
Speaker 2: Carmichael about working from home and the push to return
Speaker 2: to work. Sarah, is there any indication that there's some
Speaker 2: sort of relevance to the timing of why there's been
Speaker 2: this big push of late of the past few months.
Speaker 4: I think there's probably a confluence of different factors. You know,
Speaker 4: companies have invested in their office spaces, and I'm not
Speaker 4: sure that they expected them to be this empty for
Speaker 4: this long. That's kind of a huge sub cost. And
Speaker 4: there is this assumption of like, well, we were working
Speaker 4: in person for the last hundred years, surely that's got
Speaker 4: to be the best way. But actually, if you look
Speaker 4: back further, you know, people used to work from home
Speaker 4: all the time. You know, any farmer was working from home.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: It's really only until we got these big factories in
Speaker 4: the industrial rebel that people started working outside the home.
Speaker 4: Any cobbler, any smith, all these people worked right out
Speaker 4: of their homes. A lot of shopkeepers lived above the shop.
Speaker 4: So actually work from home is the norm, you know,
Speaker 4: over the course of centuries, and it's only relatively recently
Speaker 4: that we invented these sort of massive office buildings. So
Speaker 4: from my perspective, you know, I think it's worth taking
Speaker 4: the long view on this and thinking, you know, what
Speaker 4: do we want work to be like one hundred years
Speaker 4: from now, rather than trying to preserve sort of what
Speaker 4: it's been like for most of the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: Well, let's get into that a little bit. We've seen
Speaker 2: so many changes with COVID, and I think there's no
Speaker 2: question that the workplace dynamic has changed. And from what
Speaker 2: you've just said, it sounds like it's always changing. So
Speaker 2: would COVID then be one of those little shoves that
Speaker 2: helps change the workplace as we've known it for the
Speaker 2: past few decades.
Speaker 4: I mean, we'll see.
Speaker 5: I think it will.
Speaker 4: I think what's hard about this moment is that there
Speaker 4: were big changes that happened during COVID, and now there's
Speaker 4: a lot, a lot of growths, growing pains, anxiety exactly.
Speaker 4: And I think what's hard about us sort of policy
Speaker 4: like amazons if you know, come in this many days
Speaker 4: a week or we will summarily fire you, is that
Speaker 4: that even if you're happy to come in three days
Speaker 4: a week, that creates that tension, creates a really challenging
Speaker 4: work environment to feel good about, not only for managers,
Speaker 4: but for all kinds of people, you know, for people
Speaker 4: who've been happily coming in three or four or five
Speaker 4: days a week but are now going to see some
Speaker 4: colleagues fired. And so I think that part of what's
Speaker 4: hard about this particular moment is not just the debate
Speaker 4: over remote work, but the fact that this debate has
Speaker 4: created so much tension that is then infecting the workplace
Speaker 4: and affecting people's performance and affecting people's enjoyment of their work.
Speaker 2: Now you have referred to something called return to managing.
Speaker 2: We all know rto return to office. You use the
Speaker 2: acronym RTM in your column.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think what's happening here is that a lot
Speaker 4: of companies have con used returning to office with returning
Speaker 4: to managing. You know, a manager's job is to motivate people,
Speaker 4: to inspire them, to give them feedback, to hold them accountable,
Speaker 4: to set.
Speaker 5: Big goals to move the work forward.
Speaker 4: And you can do a lot of that if you
Speaker 4: even without having your eyes directly on people, even without
Speaker 4: sitting next to them. And of course we know this
Speaker 4: because we have companies that are global companies where people
Speaker 4: on a team might be dispersed all over the world,
Speaker 4: and you know, we're somehow fine with that. But then
Speaker 4: if people are within commuting distance or within fifty miles
Speaker 4: of the office and not coming in, suddenly it's like,
Speaker 4: but how can we possibly manage them? So I think
Speaker 4: that really what needs to happen here is companies should
Speaker 4: just sort of think to themselves, Okay, like what do
Speaker 4: we really need to do in person? And can we
Speaker 4: manage people without seeing them in person, and really put
Speaker 4: some of the effort they've been enormous effort they've been
Speaker 4: putting into getting people back to the office and reallocate
Speaker 4: that just to managing, just to managing to basic management skills,
Speaker 4: giving feedback, holding people accountable, setting goals, holding deadlines, you know,
Speaker 4: all those sort of back to basics management stuff. You
Speaker 4: don't need to get people back in the office to
Speaker 4: start managing them. You don't, So let's not confuse the
Speaker 4: two things.
Speaker 2: So then, is there any concern about what this would
Speaker 2: do to morale? You yourself are talking about how some
Speaker 2: people may be perfectly happy to come into the office,
Speaker 2: but then when you see your colleagues get fired because
Speaker 2: they would rather have a more flexible schedule, what does
Speaker 2: that do to morale? What are the concerns there?
Speaker 4: I think there are big questions about morale right now.
Speaker 4: Forcing people to adopt a work arrangement that they don't
Speaker 4: like is going to be bad for morale. It's going
Speaker 4: to be bad for their morale. Their morale is going
Speaker 4: to affect other people's morale. That's a challenge. I also
Speaker 4: do think that when you look at some of the
Speaker 4: research on remote work, you know it's not always like
Speaker 4: sunshining kittens for the people doing it. You know there
Speaker 4: are real trade offs.
Speaker 5: It can be you know that you.
Speaker 4: Work really hard and you're super productive from home, but
Speaker 4: you're also more likely to burn out and feel maybe
Speaker 4: less connected to your colleagues, you're lonelier. We do need
Speaker 4: sort of these social bonds with each other. So I
Speaker 4: think that to my mind, accepting that and figuring out
Speaker 4: how do we make this work for the largest number
Speaker 4: of people is a key question for management. I also
Speaker 4: think employees have responsibilities to ask themselves, how do I
Speaker 4: really work best? And if you really do work best
Speaker 4: in an office, I think you owe it to yourself,
Speaker 4: never mind the company. You owe it to yourself to
Speaker 4: put yourself in a position where you can do your
Speaker 4: best work. But given that, given the trade offs people
Speaker 4: have to make in their real lives, I do think
Speaker 4: this is a moment of great fluidity. It's going to
Speaker 4: be challenging to manage. It's going to be challenging for
Speaker 4: each of us to figure out out of all the
Speaker 4: options we have, how do we work best? But it's
Speaker 4: also a moment of enormous opportunity where we really have
Speaker 4: a chance, for the first time in decades, to think
Speaker 4: about how should we make this work.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Sarah Green Carmichael, and coming up, we're
Speaker 2: going to take a look at the risks and the
Speaker 2: response to COVID. What did the country get right and
Speaker 2: what did everybody get wrong. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
Speaker 1: at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
Speaker 1: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. As we
Speaker 2: take a closer look at the COVID pandemic this week,
Speaker 2: Let's consider the risk factors and the response. Now, you
Speaker 2: might remember when doctor Anthony Fauci, then head of the
Speaker 2: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified before Congress
Speaker 2: about the risks of the spread of COVID nineteen. This
Speaker 2: is back in June of twenty twenty.
Speaker 8: We are now having forty plus thousand new cases a day.
Speaker 8: I would not be surprised if we go up to
Speaker 8: one hundred thousand a day if this does not turn around,
Speaker 8: And so I am very concerned.
Speaker 2: Well, that does feel like a long time ago, even
Speaker 2: though we are still feeling some residual impact of the
Speaker 2: illness and the loss and the risks involved. Bloomberg opinion
Speaker 2: columnist Justin Fox joins us now to look at what
Speaker 2: we got right and what we got wrong. And Justin,
Speaker 2: when you say risk in your columns on the Bloomberg terminal,
Speaker 2: you're talking about the risk of catching COVID or hospitalizations
Speaker 2: or fatalities. What are you referring to.
Speaker 6: The risk of dying of it if you get it,
Speaker 6: the infection without fatality rate? And what did you find
Speaker 6: so very early on back in March twenty twenty, I was,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm not a medical journalist or anything, but
Speaker 6: I like to make charts, and I was concerned and
Speaker 6: I wanted to I was a little frustrated with how
Speaker 6: it was being covered, so I just went out to find, Okay, well,
Speaker 6: what's the best estimate of how deadly this disease is?
Speaker 6: And it was a paper from February twenty twenty from
Speaker 6: Imperial College in London, Neil Ferguson, a guy who later
Speaker 6: became a little for some reasons. But it said it
Speaker 6: was approximately one percent of people who got it died
Speaker 6: in China, and when you looked in the details of
Speaker 6: the text, it was point eight or point nine percent.
Speaker 6: I was, and so you know, I wrote a column
Speaker 6: then using that a bunch of other numbers to sort
Speaker 6: of throw out this ballpark of three hundred thousand to
Speaker 6: six hundred thousand people could die of COVID in a year,
Speaker 6: and that's what happened. And so this whole backdrop is
Speaker 6: I'm reading this new book by a couple friends of mine.
Speaker 6: Actually it's called The Big Fail. It's a history of
Speaker 6: the pandemic. And there's this discussion of Ja Bodachari at Stanford,
Speaker 6: who was early on pushing this idea that maybe it
Speaker 6: was a lot less dangerous than people thought that COVID was,
Speaker 6: and it just sort of misstated. What you know, there
Speaker 6: were these case fatality numbers going around where they just
Speaker 6: took confirmed cases and divided deaths and it was like
Speaker 6: three percent. And I think everybody knew then that that
Speaker 6: was much that was too high because most people weren't
Speaker 6: getting tested, and so basically my Bodachari was arguing that
Speaker 6: maybe it was as low as point zero one percent
Speaker 6: and twenty or forty thousand people would die of the
Speaker 6: disease in the US, and that was clearly wrong. And
Speaker 6: yet in the book it was sort of discussed as
Speaker 6: if Baudachari had been right and the consensus had been wrong.
Speaker 6: And actually the consensus of how dangerous COVID was was
Speaker 6: pretty spot on. You look at the early papers that
Speaker 6: tried to make a serious estimate of it, and it
Speaker 6: was that, you know, in a population with you know,
Speaker 6: an age spread like the US when it first hits,
Speaker 6: it would kill around one percent of people who got it,
Speaker 6: which is exactly what happened in New York. It's less
Speaker 6: if it's not everywhere like it was in New York.
Speaker 6: It's less if the population is younger, like in Sub
Speaker 6: Saharan Africa. And so what was sort of interesting to
Speaker 6: me is I still think, you know, the initial reaction,
Speaker 6: who knows what the right thing was to do, But
Speaker 6: it does seem pretty clear in retrospect that sometime in
Speaker 6: summer twenty twenty, things took this weird turn where you know,
Speaker 6: a lot of places decided to keep schools closed for
Speaker 6: the whole year, and just so a lot of ways
Speaker 6: have decided to just sort of keep a lighter version
Speaker 6: of the lockdowns going indefinitely, and I just all the data,
Speaker 6: there's just not much evidence that that was the right
Speaker 6: thing to do.
Speaker 2: And we are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Justin Fox
Speaker 2: about how we got COVID's risks right, but the response
Speaker 2: was wrong. And let's get back to that. The pandemic
Speaker 2: shutdown is it. Is there any way to measure whether
Speaker 2: that was worth it?
Speaker 6: I mean, there are lots of people who run lots
Speaker 6: of regressions and done studies, and I think overall the
Speaker 6: argument is if you did it early enough that maybe
Speaker 6: it was worth it, Like in New York, It's a
Speaker 6: little hard to say, because I had my own I
Speaker 6: attempted to sort of reconstruct the pandemic for a column
Speaker 6: a couple of years ago, like when when it hit,
Speaker 6: when people got it when and it looked like it
Speaker 6: had already peaked and was receding when the strictest of
Speaker 6: the lockdown measures came in because people were scared and
Speaker 6: had already changed their behavior and so but I think overall,
Speaker 6: the idea that when it was first coming, you didn't
Speaker 6: have enough mass hospitals risk being overwhelmed. It made sense
Speaker 6: to take a few weeks off from things. But I
Speaker 6: think a lot of places, really and the US seems
Speaker 6: to have struggled the most. I mean, I guess in
Speaker 6: one sense we some places opened up again very quickly,
Speaker 6: lots of other places didn't. But it seemed like we
Speaker 6: kind of got the worst of both worlds, whereas there
Speaker 6: were other countries like Germany or Denmark that opened up
Speaker 6: pretty quickly but were more careful about it, had more
Speaker 6: testing and stuff, and were able to mostly live their
Speaker 6: lives normally with some brief shutdowns in the winter.
Speaker 2: And it does seem like the biggest mismatch involved schooling
Speaker 2: and kids. And how did the US get that wrong?
Speaker 2: What other what else could they have done?
Speaker 6: I mean, I you know, it was funny. I was
Speaker 6: watching a bunch of Faucheet videos from that summer, and
Speaker 6: you know, he knew that there was very little risk
Speaker 6: to children, and he clearly his default was that schools
Speaker 6: should reopen. But I don't know for whatever reasons he
Speaker 6: wasn't willing to push people to do that, And definitely,
Speaker 6: as the summer went on and case numbers went up
Speaker 6: again in parts of the country, he was like, maybe
Speaker 6: you shouldn't reopen in those places where cases were really high.
Speaker 6: But what's kind of funny is what happened is schools
Speaker 6: reopened in all the places in the South where cases
Speaker 6: were really high, and they didn't reopen in places on
Speaker 6: the coasts where they weren't so And and I don't
Speaker 6: think it was disastrous in those places in the South
Speaker 6: where it reopened. It definitely, I mean, you look at
Speaker 6: the numbers, like comparing Florida in California, there were some
Speaker 6: you know, more children died in Florida than in California,
Speaker 6: but it was very few in both places.
Speaker 2: While we were in the thick of this, before we
Speaker 2: had the testing and the vaccines, and while everyone was
Speaker 2: staying home, there was that debate though over how nasty
Speaker 2: this virus could be.
Speaker 6: One they nailed it down pretty well, but the fact
Speaker 6: that there's this huge variance by age that extremely dangerous
Speaker 6: if you're above sixty, not so dangerous if you're below fifty,
Speaker 6: and sort of hard to know if you're in your
Speaker 6: fifties like now, And I just think that was hard
Speaker 6: to you know, and with schools obviously very low risk
Speaker 6: to children, but you know, some teachers real risk. So
Speaker 6: the knowledge was there, and in the public health community,
Speaker 6: you know, people knew what the where, they knew the
Speaker 6: profile that it was much lower for children. I know,
Speaker 6: you could see it in the CDC data that it
Speaker 6: was putting out as not optimal at all.
Speaker 2: What have we learned?
Speaker 5: Huh?
Speaker 6: I mean that's the most interesting, I mean one thing
Speaker 6: since I've written it, there's still all of these people,
Speaker 6: including Jay Boditaria, still arguing that they were right, that
Speaker 6: it was much less dangerous than people thought, and I
Speaker 6: I just I run the numbers and they're wrong. I mean,
Speaker 6: it was about as dangerous as people thought. Obviously got
Speaker 6: less dangerous over time, less dangerous whether there or any
Speaker 6: old people, et cetera. And so it's interesting that that
Speaker 6: was done spectacularly well, and figuring out what to do
Speaker 6: about that was really hard. And you know, I think
Speaker 6: it's it's the age gradient. And it's also you know,
Speaker 6: what do you do about a thing that has a
Speaker 6: one percent chance of killing people overall? It's like, do
Speaker 6: you completely shut down society or do you totally go normal.
Speaker 6: It's probably neither of those. It's somewhere in between. And
Speaker 6: I think the countries that were most successful sort of
Speaker 6: kept up this in between where changed behavior, but it
Speaker 6: wasn't super dramatic like Japan or Sweden or wherever.
Speaker 2: All Right, Justin, thank you so much for sharing those
Speaker 2: numbers with us. Glad to do it, Bloomberg Opinion columnist
Speaker 2: Justin Fox. And coming up, we look at a different
Speaker 2: impact of COVID on kids' mental health and how telehealth,
Speaker 2: which grew in popularity during the height of the pandemic shutdown,
Speaker 2: might help. And don't forget We're available as a podcast
Speaker 2: on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. This is
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
Speaker 1: at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
Speaker 1: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. Studies have shown
Speaker 2: the COVID pandemic seemed to worsen teens in adolescents, mental
Speaker 2: health pediatrician, doctor John Brownstein.
Speaker 9: Yes, systematic gaps, limited community and specialty resources, staffing challenges
Speaker 9: that really accentuate this problem. So the bottom line is
Speaker 9: our health systems are not there to improve care for
Speaker 9: our kids in mental health crisis right now, but.
Speaker 2: There may be some hope. Telehealth appears to give more
Speaker 2: young people more access to support. Let's talk about this
Speaker 2: with Bloomberg opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis. She covers biotech, healthcare
Speaker 2: and the pharmaceutical industry. Now, Lisa, you heard that cut
Speaker 2: from the doctor, and you've referred to a new study
Speaker 2: by Rand in your column which found that telehealth really
Speaker 2: does help you feel more connected, at least for their
Speaker 2: mental and physical health.
Speaker 7: How so, you know the study, the RAND study tried
Speaker 7: to look at what happened with mental health use before
Speaker 7: in Duram and you know, towards the tail end of
Speaker 7: what we would consider the kind of peak pandemic, and
Speaker 7: found that overall, if you looked from January twenty nineteen
Speaker 7: through August twenty twenty two, overall mental health use was
Speaker 7: up twenty two percent, and that was really largely driven
Speaker 7: by telehealth, which you know most people may recognize prior
Speaker 7: to the pandemic was almost at zero. You know, a
Speaker 7: lot of insurers wouldn't cover it. It was just not
Speaker 7: a routine part of practice when it came to mental
Speaker 7: health services.
Speaker 5: And so you know, there were a number of things that.
Speaker 7: Kind of enabled that, and I'm happy to get into it,
Speaker 7: but you know, essentially, what their data showed was that
Speaker 7: both usage went up, the cost did go up as well,
Speaker 7: but in parallel, so it wasn't like it was more expensive,
Speaker 7: and it did seem to provide a lot more access
Speaker 7: to care for kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into it. You said that there are
Speaker 2: some X factors and some reasons why this is happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, you know, beyond insurers.
Speaker 7: Essentially, some of the pandemic eraor rules made it so
Speaker 7: that insurers would cover telehealth, both public and private. But
Speaker 7: you know, I think a few other factors happened. When
Speaker 7: kids moved to remote school, there was a huge push
Speaker 7: to make sure that everyone had devices and internet access,
Speaker 7: which allowed a lot more people to be able to
Speaker 7: participate in things like you know, telehealth, whether or it's
Speaker 7: for mental health.
Speaker 5: Or behavior, you know, physical health.
Speaker 7: So you know, I think that increased access, and then
Speaker 7: you know, I think people became more accustomed to the
Speaker 7: idea of you know, seeing someone virtually rather than in person,
Speaker 7: and that it could be just as good. And for
Speaker 7: this generation, it really can be meeting them where they are.
Speaker 7: They're used to interacting with their friends that way and
Speaker 7: so it's not such a stretch to interact with the
Speaker 7: mental health provider that way.
Speaker 2: He let me ask about that, is there was concern
Speaker 2: that maybe an in person meeting might be more effective
Speaker 2: than a telehealth meeting or is that an issue?
Speaker 7: So there's been a lot of studies about that kind
Speaker 7: of dating back to when people for starts to do
Speaker 7: phone type of you know, mental health visits and they're
Speaker 7: an adults, granted, but they suggest that the quality of
Speaker 7: care people are getting is just as effective. I think,
Speaker 7: you know, certainly there are times when an in person
Speaker 7: meeting you might need a follow up or you know,
Speaker 7: that shouldn't be a piece of our health care that
Speaker 7: we get rid of, you know, and everyone needs different things,
Speaker 7: so we need to have a lot of different ways
Speaker 7: to deliver mental health care to kids. But you know,
Speaker 7: the evidence suggests that it's just as effective and that
Speaker 7: the retention rate is better, so people there's a much
Speaker 7: lower no show rate when it comes to telehealth, probably
Speaker 7: because people just it's easier for them.
Speaker 5: They don't have to take an hour.
Speaker 7: Two or three out of their data commute to go
Speaker 7: to the office, you know, the mental health provider's office,
Speaker 7: and they can just sort of pop in where they are,
Speaker 7: so they saw. There's data to show that kids are
Speaker 7: going more adult kids and adults are going more consistently
Speaker 7: to their appointments, which suggests that, you know, maybe they're
Speaker 7: getting more out of it too.
Speaker 2: That makes more sense because it would be private, it
Speaker 2: would be more convenient, you wouldn't have to worry about
Speaker 2: getting to and from the location. You talk about in
Speaker 2: your column though, that there are kids who need help
Speaker 2: and there are kids who get help, and that there
Speaker 2: is a gap. Is that something new because of the
Speaker 2: pandemic or is this the gap we've been always seeing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a gap we've been always seen.
Speaker 7: You know, it's a racial gap and access to mental
Speaker 7: health care. You know, in the pandemic, one thing that
Speaker 7: happened is with schools closed, Kids who might have typically
Speaker 7: received care in the environment of the school might not
Speaker 7: have been getting it. But when it comes to telehealth,
Speaker 7: one of the things that really needs to be improved
Speaker 7: is that in this Rand study, they found that black
Speaker 7: and LATENX kids just weren't switched to telehealth as often
Speaker 7: as white kids, and so you know, that sort of
Speaker 7: mode of care and ease of care was just wasn't
Speaker 7: being offered to them at the same level. And so
Speaker 7: you know, that needs to be fixed. And you know,
Speaker 7: I think one of the things that I talk about
Speaker 7: and I mentioned earlier is just this idea of making
Speaker 7: sure that everyone has Internet, everyone has a device that
Speaker 7: they can access their provider, you know, interact with their
Speaker 7: provider on and so all all of the modes are important,
Speaker 7: but telehealth can be one that can be you know,
Speaker 7: really useful, and so we need to close that gap.
Speaker 2: And we are talking with Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis
Speaker 2: about the impact of the pandemic on kids mental health
Speaker 2: and access to mental health care. So the study that
Speaker 2: you referenced, actually you referenced several within your column when
Speaker 2: it comes to the use of telehealth, how are kids
Speaker 2: able to take advantage of it?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a multi factorial, but
Speaker 7: you know, sometimes they might that might be their first
Speaker 7: visit with the provider.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's a way that they switch.
Speaker 7: You know, I think I've talked to folks who are
Speaker 7: you know, child psychiatrists who have suggested that one thing
Speaker 7: that could happen. There's a big push right now to
Speaker 7: put more mental health providers inside schools. Could it be
Speaker 7: that kids can get pulled aside and do their provider
Speaker 7: visit while they're at school via telehealth, you know, so
Speaker 7: that they don't have to miss a chunk of their day.
Speaker 7: Those are all things that need to be considered, and
Speaker 7: you know, the Biden administration is trying to put a
Speaker 7: lot of money into ensuring that there's better services, particularly
Speaker 7: for kids, as we all recognize as crisis. So that's
Speaker 7: an area that we should be looking at.
Speaker 2: And you make a really good point about insurance companies
Speaker 2: and how they might be responding once telehealth is starting
Speaker 2: to catch on, do you think it'll still be covered?
Speaker 5: Ash? I hope.
Speaker 7: So every person I talked to for that column was
Speaker 7: worried about that, you know, just because you saw the
Speaker 7: cost of overall care go up because usage went up,
Speaker 7: which is good, it wasn't like it went up in
Speaker 7: an outsized way. But you know, kids really need to
Speaker 7: be accessing this more, you know, and I think what
Speaker 7: can be confusing is, you know, different plans cover different
Speaker 7: things if you switch insurance the extension. Though the pH
Speaker 7: the Public Health Emergency has ended, Congress has ensured that
Speaker 7: telehealth will still stay part of our access for people
Speaker 7: with public insurance through the end of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 7: We really want to make sure that that continues beyond
Speaker 7: that because though I think there's mixed evidence when it
Speaker 7: comes to our physical health and telehealth, when it comes
Speaker 7: to mental health, it really feels like this is an
Speaker 7: important way of delivering care.
Speaker 2: And in a more thirty thousand foot broader view of this,
Speaker 2: you reference a study by Harvard that makes this grim point.
Speaker 2: All kids, all demographics across the board, the different ages,
Speaker 2: the race, how much money your mom and dad have
Speaker 2: do not matter. They're struggling. Is this also a result
Speaker 2: of the pandemic?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean it preceded the pandemic for sure. I
Speaker 7: think the pandemic exacerbated it. You know, we've seen some
Speaker 7: really disturbing survey results the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey,
Speaker 7: which comes out once a year. You know, you probably
Speaker 7: saw all the headlines, including one that I wrote about
Speaker 7: that survey at the beginning of this year, you know,
Speaker 7: sixty percent of teenage girls reporting persistent feelings of sadness
Speaker 7: and hopelessness.
Speaker 5: You know, it is hitting all kids.
Speaker 7: It does not matter, you know, their their socioeconomic situation,
Speaker 7: their race, their gender, their ethnicity, like it's just across
Speaker 7: the board. And so I think there's a lot of
Speaker 7: effort to try to mobilize and address the kids that
Speaker 7: are struggling.
Speaker 2: Are you able to gauge yet how popular telehealth is becoming.
Speaker 5: That's a good question.
Speaker 7: One of the things about their rand study that was
Speaker 7: a little tough, and they you know, fully admit that
Speaker 7: they can't parse the number of users that might have
Speaker 7: increased versus the number of people who might have been
Speaker 7: visiting their provider more often. And so that's the next
Speaker 7: step and what their research, and I think that'll help
Speaker 7: us understand, you know, who is benefiting on a little
Speaker 7: more granular level in how many more people are benefiting
Speaker 7: versus whether there's like some portion that are just getting
Speaker 7: more consistent help and versus new users of telehealth. So
Speaker 7: I think there's still more studies to be done, but
Speaker 7: so far, it really does feel like the evidence is
Speaker 7: that this helps kids a lot.
Speaker 2: And if you can take advantage of it, why not exactly?
Speaker 7: You know, we all have computers. We're used to zoom
Speaker 7: by now kids included.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis covers biotech healthcare in the
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical industry. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amie Morris.
Speaker 2: Have you gotten your COVID booster? Chances are you have not.
Speaker 2: In fact, less than three percent of eligible Americans have
Speaker 2: gotten a COVID booster this fall. Faith Lamb is a
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering science and host of the Follow
Speaker 2: the Science podcast, and she joins us, Now, faye, what
Speaker 2: is the hold up? Why are numbers so low?
Speaker 10: Some of it is said, I don't think people have
Speaker 10: a clear idea of why they should get these boosters.
Speaker 10: I think it was a lot clearer why people should
Speaker 10: get the initial shots, because there was evidence that they
Speaker 10: might protect our whole communities by you know, reducing the
Speaker 10: odds that you would get infected and also if people
Speaker 10: were at risk of having severe disease. These shots were
Speaker 10: really very effective at keeping people out of the hospital.
Speaker 10: But now that we're many people are on you know,
Speaker 10: shot number six or seven. I think for you younger
Speaker 10: healthy people, it's a little unclear what the point is great.
Speaker 2: Do healthy people even meet these boosters?
Speaker 10: A lot of doctors will say no. And there was
Speaker 10: actually a piece that caught my eye because I'd seen
Speaker 10: some controversy on Twitter about this, but there was a
Speaker 10: piece of commentary piece in Science by two really prominent
Speaker 10: immunologists saying no, we should actually, if we really want
Speaker 10: to save lives, we should be focusing these shots on
Speaker 10: the people we know are most vulnerable to severe disease,
Speaker 10: because the evidence that they prevent mild disease is pretty
Speaker 10: weak right now. But that people in nursing homes, that
Speaker 10: the really elderly people, they haven't all gotten this booster
Speaker 10: and they should now.
Speaker 2: Is this all part of the mindset that the pandemic
Speaker 2: is all over, We're done. Boy got through that?
Speaker 10: Well, it's a little bit. But I also think it's
Speaker 10: that there was a sort of a public health strategy
Speaker 10: that was to be blunt, you know, to try to
Speaker 10: try to oversimplify things, you know, even though they knew
Speaker 10: that not everybody was at high risk, they felt like
Speaker 10: somehow that people wouldn't get the message or wouldn't take
Speaker 10: it seriously unless they said everybody is equally at risk.
Speaker 10: And I think people realize.
Speaker 5: It's not true.
Speaker 2: So is that a strategy that has then failed they
Speaker 2: need to fix it.
Speaker 5: I think so, yeah.
Speaker 10: I think people are smarter than that, and I think
Speaker 10: it can fail the people who really are at high risk.
Speaker 2: Do you remember during the height of the pandemic, those
Speaker 2: mass vaccination sites that popped up, and they seemed to
Speaker 2: work quite well. It was military precision to get everybody
Speaker 2: in and out. Can they do that again?
Speaker 10: Maybe? But I think we're just it would cost a
Speaker 10: lot of money, and we're in a very different situation
Speaker 10: right now. You know, back then, the vaccines really had
Speaker 10: a huge effect because there were still a massive proportion
Speaker 10: of the population that had no immunity to this virus.
Speaker 10: And now there's messaments to say, ninety nine percent of
Speaker 10: us either have had COVID or had the shots or
Speaker 10: some combination of BULK, And so we're not in the
Speaker 10: same position we were in where we had this huge
Speaker 10: percentage of the popular majority of Americans still had no
Speaker 10: immunity to this and there were you know, there were
Speaker 10: clinical trials showing that that we were much less likely
Speaker 10: to get severely ill if we got these shots, and
Speaker 10: that there was some evidence that we were less likely
Speaker 10: to get a mild case and give it to so
Speaker 10: that there was a sense that you were doing your
Speaker 10: civic duty to protect the immune compromise the people that
Speaker 10: were less likely to get protection by just cutting down
Speaker 10: on the number of cases and the risk to those people.
Speaker 2: Is that the same attitude that we have with the
Speaker 2: flu A little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I think people sort of feel like, well, you know,
Speaker 10: I might be less likely to get You can still
Speaker 10: get the flu after you get a flu shot. But
Speaker 10: I think that people feel like, well, they're at least
Speaker 10: doing what they can, you know, so that they don't
Speaker 10: get a mild case and give it to someone they're visiting,
Speaker 10: an elderly relative. So I think that there is a
Speaker 10: sort of a sense also that nobody wants to get
Speaker 10: a nasty case of flu, and if the flu shot
Speaker 10: means that what would have been a nasty case of
Speaker 10: flu is a very mild case of flu, that's, you know,
Speaker 10: that's desirable for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Faith Lamb is a Bloomberg opinion columnist covering science and
Speaker 2: host of the follow the Science podcast that does it
Speaker 2: for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We are produced by Eric
Speaker 2: Molow and you can find all of these columns on
Speaker 2: the Bloomberg Terminal, and we're available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify,
Speaker 2: or your favorite podcast platform. Stay with us. Today's top
Speaker 2: stories and global business headlines are just ahead. I Mammy Morris.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg.