Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty six since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic.
Speaker 1: Today's main story in the desire to return to our
Speaker 1: normal lives. Many looked at the development of a COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccine as a magic bullet. But a successful vaccine
Speaker 1: may not be the panacea many are hoping for. But first,
Speaker 1: here's what happened in Virus News today. Spain, the country
Speaker 1: with the most cases in Europe, is closing nightclubs and
Speaker 1: asking local authorities to enforce a law that bands drinking
Speaker 1: in the streets. The country also prohibited smoking if people
Speaker 1: can't maintain a distance of at least two meters that
Speaker 1: it's meant to prevent clusters of smokers outside night spots
Speaker 1: and restaurants. More than a third of Americans say they
Speaker 1: won't get vaccinated when a COVID nineteen vaccine becomes available.
Speaker 1: According to an NPR PBS News Our Merist poll of
Speaker 1: around twelve hundred adults, about thirty five percent of people
Speaker 1: won't line up for the shot when it's ready. The
Speaker 1: resistance to the vaccine is split by party and education.
Speaker 1: With Democrats and college educated people more likely to say
Speaker 1: they will get inoculated. Vietnam may order up to one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million doses of Russia's coronavirus vaccine, according
Speaker 1: to a local newspaper citing the country's acting health minister.
Speaker 1: Vietnam reported eighteen new infections on Friday, including seventeen locally
Speaker 1: transmitted cases and one imported. According to the Health ministry,
Speaker 1: Russia has rushed its vaccine plan despite international criticism, and
Speaker 1: we'll start mass inoculation this month before clinical testing is completed.
Speaker 1: On Thursday, the Philippines said it would join the final
Speaker 1: phase of clinical trials for the vaccine starting October, and
Speaker 1: President Rodrigo du Terte expects to be inoculated by May.
Speaker 1: And now for today's main story. In the fight against
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen So many are pinning their hopes on a vaccine,
Speaker 1: but how long will it take. Russia's super fast tracked
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen one is technically the first in the world,
Speaker 1: but the first vaccine may not be the best one,
Speaker 1: and even with other vaccine trials underway around the globe,
Speaker 1: it would be wrong to think we can resume normal
Speaker 1: life as soon as we have one. I spoke to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg healthcare reporter Michelle fake Cortez, who explains why Russia's
Speaker 1: approach to vaccine development is so different and why the
Speaker 1: world may be expecting way too much from an inoculation.
Speaker 1: What is actually the realistic timetable of us having a
Speaker 1: vaccine from where we are right now, in the weeks
Speaker 1: or months ahead when you think about it, the most
Speaker 1: advanced trials are going to enroll thirty THOU people. Maderna
Speaker 1: is one of the ones who's in the very forefront
Speaker 1: of this effort right now. As of the first week
Speaker 1: of August, they had enrolled about six percent of the
Speaker 1: thirty THOU patients that they're planning on enrolling. That means
Speaker 1: more than of those thirty patients still need to be
Speaker 1: found entered into the clinical trial and get their first injection.
Speaker 1: The thing to keep in mind is that everybody needs
Speaker 1: two injections of most of these vaccines, and they have
Speaker 1: to come a month apart. So if we spend the
Speaker 1: month of August enrolling patients in this trial, and then
Speaker 1: we spend the month of September giving everyone the second injection,
Speaker 1: then perhaps we'll spend the month of October seeing whether
Speaker 1: or not the vaccine is offering any protection, and the
Speaker 1: fact that we're seeing some decreasing numbers of infections actually
Speaker 1: works against us in this particular context, because in order
Speaker 1: to show that a vaccine works, the people who have
Speaker 1: been vaccinated have to naturally come into contact with the pathogen.
Speaker 1: We're not doing challenge trials where people are being exposed
Speaker 1: intentionally to coronavirus, so you have to encounter it in
Speaker 1: your natural life. If you're being very careful, which hopefully
Speaker 1: everyone is, you're wearing a mask, your social distancing chances
Speaker 1: are you're not going to be exposed to it that much,
Speaker 1: so they need to give you a little bit more
Speaker 1: time in order to have that exposure. If we don't
Speaker 1: get those numbers, then it's going to be hard to
Speaker 1: show whether or not the vaccine works and how effective
Speaker 1: it is in the context of people who have been exposed.
Speaker 1: So that would be happening over the month of October.
Speaker 1: Then we're looking at November for analyzing these data, and
Speaker 1: so perhaps by late November early December we might be
Speaker 1: seeing some of the results. But that's just for the
Speaker 1: Maderna trial that has already started. The other trials aren't
Speaker 1: even supposed to start until later in August or September
Speaker 1: and even October. From the news that we've had out
Speaker 1: of Russia that they have approved, you know, a vaccine
Speaker 1: test and they actually think that they have a viable vaccine,
Speaker 1: are we aware of exactly what steps they have moved forward?
Speaker 1: A little bit more quickly then than what we would
Speaker 1: see in the States. Russia has actually been very open
Speaker 1: about what they're doing, which is a little bit surpris
Speaker 1: rising to me in the U. S. We've heard all
Speaker 1: these announcements from the government that they're buying vaccine doses,
Speaker 1: and not only are they buying them, they're actually manufacturing
Speaker 1: them and their stockpiling them in warehouses, and they're going
Speaker 1: to wait until the clinical trial results come in and
Speaker 1: show whether they're beneficial or not, and if they work,
Speaker 1: we will have this huge dose build up that we
Speaker 1: can start rolling out to our citizens. In Russia, they're
Speaker 1: taking the opposite approach these vaccines. As I said earlier,
Speaker 1: thirty people are being enrolled in these trials in Russia.
Speaker 1: They're saying, what are you more afraid of? Are you
Speaker 1: more afraid of the coronavirus? Are you more afraid of
Speaker 1: the vaccine. If people are willing to roll the dice
Speaker 1: on this, why don't we just let our entire citizenship
Speaker 1: decide for themselves if they wanted or not. So they've
Speaker 1: been very open that they haven't even started their phase
Speaker 1: three clinical trials. They have results on a few hundred people,
Speaker 1: just like the other trials that show that there have
Speaker 1: been no devastating side effects, no anaphylactic show, no one
Speaker 1: dying because they were using this coronavirus vaccine. And in
Speaker 1: Russia they're just going to let people make that own decision.
Speaker 1: It's a right to try situation. If you want to
Speaker 1: get the vaccine, you can get it, and they have
Speaker 1: approved it. And so now they're claiming to have generated
Speaker 1: the first formally approved coronavirus vaccine. But the bottom line
Speaker 1: is is that's not an effective vaccine. They have not
Speaker 1: approved a vaccine that's proven to be effective. So it's
Speaker 1: not going to be who's first. It's going to be
Speaker 1: which one works the best, and we just don't know that.
Speaker 1: In the US, we're going to be behind if the
Speaker 1: vaccines all work, because we're going to have waited for
Speaker 1: the results. In Russia, they're going to be first, but
Speaker 1: they might not ever know whether they're vaccines work or
Speaker 1: not because the benefit that comes might not be entirely
Speaker 1: and immediately apparent. It depends on how much exposure you
Speaker 1: have to the virus. And if you're not tracking these
Speaker 1: people and monitoring how many people do get infected and
Speaker 1: how many don't, they'll never know how well and whether
Speaker 1: it's working. So I'm just wondering along those lines, are
Speaker 1: there other potential health risks to exposing a population to
Speaker 1: this vaccine that hasn't had this extent of trials as
Speaker 1: we're seeing in the US. In addition to side effects
Speaker 1: like muscle pain, weakness, fever, that sort of thing, there
Speaker 1: is a really very frightening complication that can come from vaccination,
Speaker 1: which we've seen with other types of immunizations, including for
Speaker 1: DANAE and other things. And what happens there is the
Speaker 1: vaccine primes your immune system. It tells the immune system
Speaker 1: what to look for that another pathogen, a bad virus
Speaker 1: could be coming after it, and it allows the immune
Speaker 1: system to start to start bulking up to take on
Speaker 1: that fight. But there are cases where priming the immune
Speaker 1: system actually leads to a worse infection. In the end,
Speaker 1: So those people who have been vaccinated and then see
Speaker 1: the virus again naturally from the community actually have a
Speaker 1: worse case. They're more likely to get sick, they get
Speaker 1: more severely ill, and they have an increased risk of
Speaker 1: dying because of the implication of the vaccine. That's the
Speaker 1: thing that in the United States and in most of
Speaker 1: the western world, that public health officials want to be
Speaker 1: sure that they're not going to actually take people who
Speaker 1: are completely healthy and who might not ever be exposed
Speaker 1: to coronavirus and actually make those people worse. Looking ahead
Speaker 1: for the United States, and let's say that a successful
Speaker 1: vaccine candidate is determined by stay at the end, and
Speaker 1: we start distributing that vaccine in early what does this
Speaker 1: actually mean in terms of lockdowns, quarantines, our ability to
Speaker 1: travel or go out to bars. What actually will the
Speaker 1: vaccine help us to regain in terms of wanting to
Speaker 1: return to our normal lives. People really do have a
Speaker 1: misperception of what this vaccine is going to mean. And
Speaker 1: I think that's really to the detriment of all of
Speaker 1: us and perhaps a shortcoming of the scientific media and
Speaker 1: public health officials that we're not doing a better job
Speaker 1: of communicating this to the public, and we're going to
Speaker 1: have the same problem that we did when it came
Speaker 1: to the summer and they need to reopen our economies.
Speaker 1: Everybody thought we're going to lock down for a few weeks,
Speaker 1: for a few months, and then we're going to get
Speaker 1: back to normal, and when that didn't happen, people were
Speaker 1: flaw mixed, and it created so much stress intention in
Speaker 1: the entire world, and we're setting ourselves up for another
Speaker 1: situation exactly like that. A vaccine is not a panacea
Speaker 1: in this case. It's not even going to be close
Speaker 1: to a panacea or a magic bullet. People might think
Speaker 1: of a vaccine a way that you think of it
Speaker 1: as a as an immunization for measles. If you get
Speaker 1: vaccinated against the measles, you almost definitely are not going
Speaker 1: to get measles. Chances are because everyone else is also
Speaker 1: vaccinated and we have herd immunity. Measles doesn't spread very much,
Speaker 1: so you would probably never even come into contact with it,
Speaker 1: and if you did, that vaccine would protect you so
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about it. That's not the
Speaker 1: case with coronavirus. We have heard from Dr Fauci and
Speaker 1: others that they're hoping that we're going to get to
Speaker 1: be about sevent effective with the first coronavirus vaccines, and
Speaker 1: in fact, if it only protects only half of the
Speaker 1: people who get it, they're going to consider that effective.
Speaker 1: That's what's going to be needed in order to get
Speaker 1: the vaccine approved. But what that means is that one
Speaker 1: of every two people who are vaccinated might not get
Speaker 1: any protection from the vaccine. So if you go out,
Speaker 1: it might protect you or it might not, and you
Speaker 1: will have no idea which camp you're going to fall into.
Speaker 1: So it's not like it's going to be a magic
Speaker 1: bullet that once you're vaccinated you can go out into
Speaker 1: the public. Again, the other thing to keep in mind
Speaker 1: is going back to that issue of herd immunity. We
Speaker 1: know that between sixty and of the population needs to
Speaker 1: have some type of immunity against coronavirus in order to
Speaker 1: stop it from spreading. The ways that we get immunity
Speaker 1: are from people who have already had it and recovered
Speaker 1: and from people who are vaccinated against it. But again,
Speaker 1: if only of people get any kind of immunity, even
Speaker 1: if you've vaccinated a hundred percent of the population. If
Speaker 1: it's only effective, you're still not at herd immunity, and
Speaker 1: then you're going to have to wait until the number
Speaker 1: of people who have been infected catches up and get
Speaker 1: you to that higher level. And that's also supposing that
Speaker 1: a hundred percent of people get vaccinated, which we all know,
Speaker 1: sadly in our current environment that that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: That was Michelle Fake Cortez and that's it for our
Speaker 1: show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com
Speaker 1: slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave
Speaker 1: us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Speaker 1: It's the best way to help more listeners find our
Speaker 1: global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by tophra
Speaker 1: Forehaz Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's
Speaker 1: main story was reported by Michelle Fake Cortes. Original music
Speaker 1: by Leo Sidran. Our editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine.
Speaker 1: Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Two