Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keene, along
Speaker 1: with Jonathan Ferrell and Lisa Brownwitz Jaily. We bring you
Speaker 1: insight from the best and economics, finance, investment, and international relations.
Speaker 1: Find Bloomberg Surveillance on Apple Podcast, Suncloud, Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 1: and of course on the Bloomberg terminal. Right now we
Speaker 1: must go to James eighty whose age listening to our
Speaker 1: analysis with Everydeen Standard this morning, James, Ah, these central
Speaker 1: banks have zero degree of freedom. They may even have
Speaker 1: negative degrees of freedom. Do you really care or when
Speaker 1: you invest? Do you really invest off what central bank
Speaker 1: headlines say? Morning Tom, That's not really what the headlines say.
Speaker 1: I think the headlines can often miss, you know, the detail,
Speaker 1: the new on the reality of the policy. See. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: you can't invest in the markets that I invest in.
Speaker 1: You probably can't invest in any markets without considering to
Speaker 1: a pretty significant degree what what central banks are up to.
Speaker 1: But I agree with you, they have no degrees of freedom. Really,
Speaker 1: they've dugged themselves a massive trap and they're now stuck
Speaker 1: in that trap. And there is no central bank that's
Speaker 1: suffering that problem to a greater degree than the ECB.
Speaker 1: Do you think they're stuck down here for the whole
Speaker 1: of the cycle, James, and beyond. There's literally the ECBs
Speaker 1: problem is that it's trying to use cyclical policy to
Speaker 1: deal with massive, massive structural issues. There is there's no
Speaker 1: economic theory that says that monetary policy has anything more
Speaker 1: than inter temporal effects. And even fiscal policy to the
Speaker 1: extent that it's current spending and not investment, only has
Speaker 1: a temporal effect. It brings forward to demand from the
Speaker 1: future to today. It does not in and of itself
Speaker 1: create demand through the cycle. So ECB is absolutely trapped.
Speaker 1: Its job really at the moment seem to be just
Speaker 1: keeping financial markets from pricing a much more terrifying future
Speaker 1: and hoping that that politicians can can get their act together.
Speaker 1: But I see no evidence so that's occurring on I'm
Speaker 1: just working through this statement right now and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to find the big change, and James, I've got to
Speaker 1: be honest with you, it just feels like a bunch
Speaker 1: of twigs around the margins. As far as the forward
Speaker 1: guidance is concerned. This market market participants and the ECB
Speaker 1: is going to be well aware of this. They want
Speaker 1: to understand what happens after the emergency ends, what happens
Speaker 1: with PET, what happens to all that flexibility and to
Speaker 1: the hawks push back significantly enough that in the asset
Speaker 1: purchased program, beyond the crisis, beyond the emergency, we lose
Speaker 1: some flexibility. You're hearing anything about that this morning, and
Speaker 1: not in the market doesn't really care about the underlying
Speaker 1: economic reality. To be honest, the market wants some certainty
Speaker 1: around asset purchases because it makes for a very asymmetric
Speaker 1: market environment and one in which that you can disregard
Speaker 1: actual fundamentals and risk and valuation. And by the is
Speaker 1: on the basis that syndram case you back, that's what
Speaker 1: the market would like to see. Obviously, the ECB Government
Speaker 1: Council has significant disagreement amongst these members, such that there
Speaker 1: may come a time in the future where that disagreement
Speaker 1: really does impinge on their policy setting. I just don't
Speaker 1: think we're there yet, because we're still relatively early in
Speaker 1: the European recovery, and obviously with the delta variant that
Speaker 1: there are threats to that recovery that are already emerging.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm minded to quote the Bgs or
Speaker 1: boy Zone if you're of a younger generation and say
Speaker 1: it's only words. I don't know if Tom knows who
Speaker 1: boy Zone are? The Bejs though, do you know boys are? Tom? No? No, No,
Speaker 1: I don't think he's missing out. They did a cover
Speaker 1: of the Begs. Tom awhile ago, Kelly go on, I'm
Speaker 1: going to plead the fifth on whether or not I
Speaker 1: know who that is. Just carry on, James, that was
Speaker 1: a conversation killer. Don't worry, Kelly's going to pick this up.
Speaker 1: I want to know when you think the market is
Speaker 1: going to get some answers. I was. I was speaking
Speaker 1: with economist over at Berkeleys yesterday saying this meeting maybe
Speaker 1: was overhyped and that yes, we were going to get,
Speaker 1: as John says, some tweaks around the margins. But the
Speaker 1: real answers to what the market's looking for is not
Speaker 1: going to be coming until September or December. When do
Speaker 1: you expect us to have a clue what the post
Speaker 1: PEP world is going to look like? Wow? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's really difficult to say, because obviously it will
Speaker 1: depend on economic outturns, and honestly, it will depend on
Speaker 1: what's happening outside the Eurozone as much as it is
Speaker 1: what's happening within the Eurozone. Again, I don't expect to
Speaker 1: see any material shift in the structural outlook for the Eurozone.
Speaker 1: But of course bond markets are highly correlated. So in
Speaker 1: this world where the ECB is managing monetary conditions to
Speaker 1: whatever that, that actually means that there is always the
Speaker 1: the real danger that typening from the Federal Reserve can
Speaker 1: lead to an unwarranted, unwanted typing from the ECB, and
Speaker 1: they will seek to offset that almost regardless of the
Speaker 1: domestic economic data. That is to say, again the way
Speaker 1: central banks run their mandates, they're not really two concerned
Speaker 1: until they get to the steady states as they see it,
Speaker 1: which is to say that the non accelerating inflation, right
Speaker 1: of unemployment the NERU. When the economy has reached its capacity,
Speaker 1: then they care about title policy. Up until that point,
Speaker 1: they have absolutely no interest in making marginal adjustments to
Speaker 1: the policy as they get there. So ECB, until it
Speaker 1: gets there, it's not going to want to tighten policy,
Speaker 1: and it may have to loosen policy to offset a
Speaker 1: titan which is coming externally. James early Pine or you
Speaker 1: watch this news conference. In thirty five minutes, I've got
Speaker 1: a meeting, and there we go. Message John James, how
Speaker 1: unfortunate it's going to see you James at Aberdeen Standardestment
Speaker 1: Senior investment Manager. We kept a secret from Julia Cornado
Speaker 1: because we knew that if she knew I was going here,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't have an excuse. You do not have to
Speaker 1: come on, ye, Dr Cornado joins us to mercro policy perspectives. Julia.
Speaker 1: This came up as I was having a beverage of
Speaker 1: my choice and someone said to me, Okay, I get
Speaker 1: I s l M going back to Hicks and the
Speaker 1: real economy and the money economy. And now none of
Speaker 1: this theory is working right now given the fiscal stimulus
Speaker 1: and the insanity of his natural disaster that we're all living.
Speaker 1: But then it folds over into aggregate supply and aggregate demand.
Speaker 1: Dr Coronado, could you explain to our audience how these
Speaker 1: dynamics affect them when we go from Central Bank mumbo
Speaker 1: jumbo like I s l M over to America's aggregate
Speaker 1: supply and America's aggregate demand. Yeah, and those dynamics are
Speaker 1: incredibly complex even in normal times, let alone when we're
Speaker 1: sort of rebooting the global economy and dealing with a
Speaker 1: lot of liquidity slashing around. So you know, for example,
Speaker 1: even when the cycle was running very strong, uh last
Speaker 1: before the pandemic, we didn't see any inflationary pressures. Why well,
Speaker 1: you know, we had wage gains that were solid but
Speaker 1: not really accelerating. We saw consumers that were pretty price sensitive.
Speaker 1: They were very budget conscious, even as they were feeling
Speaker 1: good about the world. We think an older economy, consumers
Speaker 1: that have been through multiple crises just are more cautious.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the big questions going forward, is
Speaker 1: to consumers return to those cautious, price sensitive, budget conscious
Speaker 1: ways that limit how much of these supply chain bottleneck
Speaker 1: price pressures can be passed through at the retail level.
Speaker 1: Their lines on the page, my eyes used to glaze over.
Speaker 1: Cornado's nailed this stuff in the school, and there were
Speaker 1: shifts along the line and the great debate where these
Speaker 1: two strange words endogenous within the system and exogenous outside
Speaker 1: the system. Is a pandemic endogenous or exogenous? I know
Speaker 1: that it's exogenous. I mean, this couldn't be a better
Speaker 1: example of sort of an exogenous shock in the sense
Speaker 1: of you know, without getting into the origins of the virus.
Speaker 1: You know, for the most of the people in the economy,
Speaker 1: most of the businesses and consumers, this just hit us
Speaker 1: like lightning. Uh. You know, early we weren't sort of
Speaker 1: preparing for a pandemic. We were preparing for another year
Speaker 1: that looked sort of like so uh. It really caught
Speaker 1: everybody off guard. And then the complicating factor, Tom, is
Speaker 1: that many businesses saw the crisis and sort of pulled
Speaker 1: out the crisis playbook. Okay, I know that demand is
Speaker 1: going to collapse. I'm going to sell off my inventories.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ramp down operations uh and hoarde liquidity
Speaker 1: and just get real cautious. But then we went into
Speaker 1: a good sending boom supported by the fiscal stimulus, and
Speaker 1: you know, that caught homebuilders off guard, and it caught
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, goods sellers and producers off guard.
Speaker 1: And now they're scrambling to catch up. Uh. And that,
Speaker 1: and and therein lies a lot of the frictions that
Speaker 1: you hear uh la Guard and Powell talking about. They
Speaker 1: expect these things to be transitory because you know, if
Speaker 1: anything we learned during the pandemic, and we expect it
Speaker 1: to be true after the pandemic or as we move forward.
Speaker 1: We're pretty resilient and creative and you know, we find
Speaker 1: ways to get things done even through these challenges. So, um,
Speaker 1: it's not going to happen overnight, but we do expect
Speaker 1: ship manufacturing to ramp up and some of those bottlenecks
Speaker 1: to ease, and then competition is going to play its
Speaker 1: role and drive prices back down in fault. To me,
Speaker 1: what Dr Cornato says there is the absolute foundational thing
Speaker 1: that corporations adept. Yes, they're mailieable and they make decisions
Speaker 1: as the information is given to them. Yeah, we're seeing
Speaker 1: that in the earnings that are just being reported this period. Uh,
Speaker 1: Julian love to get your thoughts. We just heard from
Speaker 1: Christine Lagard this morning. She is she had some comments. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess the takeaway is lower for longer
Speaker 1: or somewhat even suggests lower forever. Given what we heard
Speaker 1: from Christine Lagarde, what do you expect to hear from
Speaker 1: this Federal Reserve coming up for the July meeting? Well, look,
Speaker 1: I think the FED is in a different place than
Speaker 1: the ECB uh, and so I do think that Chair
Speaker 1: Power will confirm that the discussions around the modalities and
Speaker 1: specifics of tapering got underway. I think they're going to
Speaker 1: get underway in July. They're going to get briefings from
Speaker 1: the New York Said staff and the Board staff on
Speaker 1: different choices that they need to make and what are
Speaker 1: the pros and cons, and they're going to have a
Speaker 1: detailed discussion, and I think he'll confirm that. Um I think,
Speaker 1: you know, in in the next months, maybe with the
Speaker 1: July minutes, maybe at Jackson Hall. You know, last cycle,
Speaker 1: we got this kind of blueprint, sort of a statement
Speaker 1: of normalization principles and plans, and so that's one question
Speaker 1: where we get kind of a blueprint from the Fed.
Speaker 1: These are the things that we've a creek agreed upon.
Speaker 1: For example, we expect to taper and end bond purchases
Speaker 1: before raising rates is one thing they said last time.
Speaker 1: I would expect them to reiterate that this time. They
Speaker 1: may sort of specify that they're going to have an
Speaker 1: even handed, uh sort of tapering between treasuries and mbs.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if they get that specific, but something
Speaker 1: that provides this guidance along those lines to resolve some
Speaker 1: of the debates we've been having in markets and provide
Speaker 1: some clarity. That's that's what share Powell wants to do
Speaker 1: is lay the groundwork for markets steadily, methodically, well ahead
Speaker 1: of the actual announcement, which we still expect to come
Speaker 1: in December maybe November. Of the data run well, but
Speaker 1: we don't think they're in a hurry. But at the
Speaker 1: same so it's kind of start the signaling process, start
Speaker 1: the planning process, and give plenty of runway to market
Speaker 1: to adapt to the fact that the set is going
Speaker 1: to be withdrawing some of the liquidity support it's been
Speaker 1: pumping in over the last year plus. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: We were just talking to a guest earlier, Julia, and
Speaker 1: just kind of he was bemoaning the fact that in Europe, yes,
Speaker 1: they have lots of monetary easing in support, but really uh,
Speaker 1: too little and too late on the fiscal statements side.
Speaker 1: That's certainly not the case here in the US. Plenty
Speaker 1: of students has been pumped into this economy. How critical
Speaker 1: is it to get even more well. I think that
Speaker 1: there's what we're talking about now on fiscal policy in
Speaker 1: terms of the infrastructure packages is very different from what
Speaker 1: we put in over the last year, which was multiple
Speaker 1: injections of big liquidity directly to consumers and businesses. They
Speaker 1: were one time payments to get people through the pandemic,
Speaker 1: to build a bridge of financing effectively, which it did
Speaker 1: very well, maybe maybe too well in some in some cases,
Speaker 1: but definitely got a lot of people through. What we're
Speaker 1: talking about now is much more structural. We're talking about
Speaker 1: a ten year spending plan of building capacity in certain
Speaker 1: areas that we think we need repairing, you know, physical infrastructure,
Speaker 1: addressing certain um sort of structural shortcomings in our economy
Speaker 1: and again over a longer horizon, and by the way,
Speaker 1: mostly paid for. That does not fall under the category
Speaker 1: of fiscal stimulus. That's more of a you know, retooling
Speaker 1: and uh structural adjustment in uh certain areas of the economy.
Speaker 1: You know, I do think it won't fully be paid for,
Speaker 1: so there will be some fistical tail winds, but you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of the dynamics of that, the timing of that,
Speaker 1: it's not at all like what we what we are
Speaker 1: emerging from now. Okay, let's leave with her Julia Cornodle
Speaker 1: think as much particularly clinic early on he was knighted
Speaker 1: or at least made a lord by Cleveland at one
Speaker 1: point after staring down a utility with some great threat
Speaker 1: to his life. He's going on to do all sorts
Speaker 1: of things within the American dialogue. And this is a
Speaker 1: guy out of Cleveland who became identified with Cleveland and
Speaker 1: struggling Cleveland and helped form Cleveland and what it is
Speaker 1: today with a pretty earnest and good recovery. Dennis Casinis
Speaker 1: joins us now. At one point, the youngest mayor I
Speaker 1: think on planet Earth joins us in celebration of the
Speaker 1: light the division of light in power. Mayeric Ca Sinis.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us at today. What
Speaker 1: I love about your book is you do the modern thing.
Speaker 1: You have these wicked short chapters of six or seven pages,
Speaker 1: which was the hardest chapter to write, of some sixties
Speaker 1: seventy of them in your book. The first chapter I
Speaker 1: started that book in November of what what You're what
Speaker 1: you're reading with the reader will see represents the seventh
Speaker 1: draft the book that was written over a period of
Speaker 1: forty years. It's yucks now and of course so many
Speaker 1: people know you from your TV efforts as well. It
Speaker 1: was deadly serious back then in Cleveland, and that you
Speaker 1: were knighted by Cleveland later for staring down the public
Speaker 1: utilities of trying to think about the city. When did
Speaker 1: you know the tide had turned in your belief in
Speaker 1: Cleveland and the ownership of the utilities would be brought
Speaker 1: out Fifteen years after I left office Cleveland announcement expanding
Speaker 1: a public power system that I saved. And it took
Speaker 1: the people of Cleveland about fifteen years to figure out
Speaker 1: what happened, and that is that if I had sold
Speaker 1: the municipal electric system, it would have cost them hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars and increased taxes and utility rates.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it took fifteen years, but if fortunately I
Speaker 1: had time to spare. So give us a sense, uh, Dennis,
Speaker 1: about really what was the heart of the matter of
Speaker 1: the initial uh challenge for you with this utility. Just
Speaker 1: give our our our listeners kind of a sense of
Speaker 1: time and space. Sure, of course, Cleveland and the Cleveland
Speaker 1: Electric Illuminating Company, I had to competing electric systems that
Speaker 1: competed side by side for over seventy five years. Municipal
Speaker 1: electric system called MUNI Light and then CEI private investor
Speaker 1: own utility. What happened, though, is that CEI made a
Speaker 1: decision at some point they wanted to take over munilife,
Speaker 1: and so they developed a plan which became public and
Speaker 1: they also used their power with the media to try
Speaker 1: to force the shore of the sale. And so the
Speaker 1: book opens up with blackouts that are occurring in downtown
Speaker 1: Cleveland over the holidays, and as the story unfaults, it's
Speaker 1: clear that we're in a story of corporate sabotage and espionage,
Speaker 1: and it takes a very dark turn beyond the blackouts,
Speaker 1: very quickly, and it ends up becoming an unprecedented sorry
Speaker 1: in American history, documented by the way about the battle
Speaker 1: between UH, you know, a public publicly owned utility and
Speaker 1: privately owned utility, the division of light and power, and
Speaker 1: part of that America synages the idea of the division
Speaker 1: of power in Washington. Your observation on what your Democratic
Speaker 1: party needs to do to keep majority in the House
Speaker 1: and grab a legitimate majority uh in the in the Senate.
Speaker 1: How do the progressives liberals of your party need to
Speaker 1: speak to more moderate Democrats? Well, the first thing I
Speaker 1: need to do is to support law enforcement in the cities,
Speaker 1: because crime rates are going up in the cities. I mean,
Speaker 1: Cleveland's had a sharp increase in homicides, colonious assaults, carjackings,
Speaker 1: and people are concerned and the Party needs to have
Speaker 1: a strong stand on public safety, you know, word for
Speaker 1: civil liberties. Everyone understands that we've got to show that.
Speaker 1: We also understand that some cities are under a siege
Speaker 1: of crime. Uh. You know, it's the old mantra of job, job, jobs,
Speaker 1: and we need to make it possible for people to
Speaker 1: get back to work and to make sure they're making
Speaker 1: a decent wage. And that, you know, is what an
Speaker 1: infrastructure bill has to be about. And you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's it's kind of like the old FDR formula, which
Speaker 1: we unfortunately got away from. So Mayor, you know, we
Speaker 1: have a president who was in the Senate for forty years.
Speaker 1: We have a vice president who just came out of
Speaker 1: the Senate. There was some expectation, it was just hope,
Speaker 1: that there would be an opportunity for some real bipartisan
Speaker 1: work in Congress. It does not appear that that's going
Speaker 1: to be the case. Should anyone be surprised? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: first of all, Joe Biden is a very pragmatic. I've
Speaker 1: known President Buying for almost shifty years, and he's you know,
Speaker 1: he's a product of the institution, and he knows almost
Speaker 1: you know, like Lyndon Jackson, he knows how the institution works.
Speaker 1: So I think we should, you know, expect some progress.
Speaker 1: But we're in an era of hyperpartisanship, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: which is resulting in in inertia, and that's bad for
Speaker 1: the country. And so you know, this battle for control
Speaker 1: of the Senate in the House is creating certain, you know,
Speaker 1: aspects of our politics which are so destructive. I think
Speaker 1: American people are getting shut up with both parties as
Speaker 1: a result of that. And you know, it's like a
Speaker 1: set of your differences. Run the government and don't screw
Speaker 1: it up. Dennis Casina. The Division of Light and Power
Speaker 1: reads like a movie script. It's like every I think
Speaker 1: the longest chapter is I gave pages. I love it,
Speaker 1: I loved boom boom boom. You get right through this
Speaker 1: on the Titanic battle he faced in Cleveland over public
Speaker 1: utilities in a political battle and involves some crime as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is way more than just regulated utility.
Speaker 1: Chip right, Dennis, Concenters of course Democrat as well Jennifer
Speaker 1: Neuso where it's Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and
Speaker 1: a senior scholar. Jennifer, I want to go back to April. April,
Speaker 1: the EU was really looking at letting American tourists into Europe.
Speaker 1: There was a better tone. Hospitalizations now led by the unvaccinated,
Speaker 1: have returned to where they were April twenty six, and
Speaker 1: it is not a good trend. What is the character
Speaker 1: of those hospitalizations. Yeah, it is not a good trend.
Speaker 1: I mean it is a different patient population than had
Speaker 1: been hospitalized earlier in the pandemic. In particular, we have
Speaker 1: um fortunately seen good vaccine uptake against the populations that
Speaker 1: are most likely to become severely ill, of older adults,
Speaker 1: and so now the people who are being hospitalized UM
Speaker 1: are younger. Although age is the singlet single biggest risk factor,
Speaker 1: it's not the only risk factor. And so certainly people
Speaker 1: with underlying health conditions, and it's a list, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of people um that fit in that category. UM,
Speaker 1: but also even potentially people who have no underlying health
Speaker 1: conditions are unfortunately now being hospitalized. And it's so tragic
Speaker 1: because vaccines can prevent that from happening, Jennifer, We used
Speaker 1: to talk about trying to achieve a seventy vaccination right
Speaker 1: in this country. Can you compare and contrast the reproduction
Speaker 1: rate of this variant, the dominant variant right now, the
Speaker 1: doabta variant, compared to what we first experienced eighteen months ago,
Speaker 1: and what that means for those kind of goals, whether
Speaker 1: now needs to be seventy, etcetera. Yeah, I mean it does,
Speaker 1: like need to be higher. Um. The delta variant is
Speaker 1: spreading much more quickly, and it's potentially spreading a bit
Speaker 1: earlier um in people's illness, possibly when they're not even
Speaker 1: feeling much, um, So that complicates things. So the fact
Speaker 1: that if you're sick and you're out and about, you
Speaker 1: can infect more people than you would have with earlier
Speaker 1: forms of the virus just makes it harder for public
Speaker 1: health officials, um, you know, to outrun it, to to
Speaker 1: use other measures to try to control it. And that's
Speaker 1: why it's really important that we don't have to do that,
Speaker 1: that we can prevent those infections from occurring in the
Speaker 1: first place. And that's what vaccines are great at doing.
Speaker 1: Not perfect, but great masks. That's the conversation down in
Speaker 1: d C. Jennifer, you know it's back on the table
Speaker 1: politically this morning, return of the masks. The Washington Post,
Speaker 1: going with White House official, was debate masking push as
Speaker 1: COVID infection spike. If you've been vaccinated, Jennifer, what does
Speaker 1: a mask do for you? What does it do for others? Sure? Well, listen,
Speaker 1: As I said before, the vaccines are are pretty good
Speaker 1: at preventing you from getting infected. That said, we know
Speaker 1: that there are some people who are still going to
Speaker 1: get iill potentially, but you know, they'll keep them out
Speaker 1: of the hospital. It'll be mild, it'll be the kind
Speaker 1: of illness that if that's all the virus could do,
Speaker 1: we would have never heard of this virus in the
Speaker 1: first place. So if you're somebody in that category where
Speaker 1: you know you don't want to get that illness, then
Speaker 1: wearing a mask, even though you're vaccinated, may be helpful.
Speaker 1: Your need to do that UM is greater when you're
Speaker 1: in a place where there's just a lot more illness
Speaker 1: around you, where people are more likely to be infected,
Speaker 1: where there's lower protection overall in the community because of
Speaker 1: low vaccination rates. UM That said, don't believe that the
Speaker 1: vaccines don't UM, you know, give you some protection. I
Speaker 1: think there's been a rising narrative about that that it's
Speaker 1: really disturbing to me. Our school is one of those
Speaker 1: places where you need to be more careful. Jennifer my
Speaker 1: home state of Virginia yesterday urging everyone in an elementary school, students,
Speaker 1: teachers alike, to mask up. Given under twelve still aren't
Speaker 1: vaccinated as we approached the school year, is it safe
Speaker 1: for students to be returning? Sure? So, first of all,
Speaker 1: we know that it is possible to return children to
Speaker 1: school UM safely, and it's really essential that we do
Speaker 1: so after UM this past year and a half of
Speaker 1: educational disruption that itself carries harms. I've got two young
Speaker 1: kids who are too young to be vaccinated UM, so
Speaker 1: I'm very much in that boat. So so we can
Speaker 1: do it safely. Now, it has been recommended that kids,
Speaker 1: particularly those who can't be vaccinated, wear masks. You know. Truthfully,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to depend on what the level
Speaker 1: of infection in the community is. If you're in a
Speaker 1: community that has done done its part, has vaccinated its adults,
Speaker 1: and there are very few cases it seems hard to
Speaker 1: think that you need to wear masks in schools. That said,
Speaker 1: if you know you want to have zero risk tolerance
Speaker 1: and let's just get them back and make sure they're
Speaker 1: as safe as possible, then you know that's that's an
Speaker 1: important tool to use. I think in schools where the
Speaker 1: case numbers and the surrounding communities are raging, then masks
Speaker 1: are probably an important tool because we do know that
Speaker 1: if there are cases among kids in schools, UM, it
Speaker 1: follows what happens in the surrounding community. UM I do
Speaker 1: have to stress though, that overall kids are at lower
Speaker 1: risk of serious illness from all forms of the virus,
Speaker 1: including the Delta variant. There's been some I think confusing
Speaker 1: conversation about that lately, and as a parent, um I
Speaker 1: would want other parents to know that, so you know,
Speaker 1: we just we face those risks, UM with with what
Speaker 1: data we have right now. Well, Jennifer school is not
Speaker 1: back in session yet. It is still summer vacation, and
Speaker 1: it's so the summer season in Europe too, and yet
Speaker 1: anyone in Europe looking to take a vacation in the
Speaker 1: US still can't do that. The Biden administration yet hasn't
Speaker 1: yet made a decision. If you were advising the president
Speaker 1: and the people around him as to whether or not
Speaker 1: that's safe given the concerns of the delta variant, what
Speaker 1: would you say, Well, first of all, the delta variant
Speaker 1: is already here and it's raging. So if we're not
Speaker 1: letting people in because we want to keep it out,
Speaker 1: then that ship has already sailed. Um. You know, I
Speaker 1: think there's probably political pressures to keep the border closed
Speaker 1: because people, you know, and to prevent people from coming
Speaker 1: because it's probably just easier. Um, but I'm not convinced
Speaker 1: that it's doing much for us epidemiologically. Is it politics
Speaker 1: or is it science? That's a big question right now,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people keep saying it's about politics,
Speaker 1: including your South. Jennifer is going to catch up. Jennifer
Speaker 1: Newts Jones Health Consents at the House Security Senior Scholar.
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