WEBVTT - Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - July 23rd, 2021 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:05.400 This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:09.200 editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus 0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:13.160 global business finance and tech news as it happened. Bloomberg 0:00:13.240 --> 0:00:16.759 Business Week with Carol Messier and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:21.320 Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone, welcome to the weekend 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:24.319 edition of Bloomberg Business Week. We've got the space race, 0:00:24.520 --> 0:00:26.880 the race against the COVID Delta variant, and the race 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:30.240 to sustainability all top of mind this week Tim with 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:32.559 our guests. But before we do, Tim, We've got to 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:34.560 talk about where you were this week on location with 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:37.599 Jeff Bezos and the Blue Origin crew in West Texas. 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:40.159 That was in Van Horne, Texas, Carroll the high desert 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:42.920 of West Texas, not that far from El Paso, but 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:45.880 about a hundred miles from pretty much anything. Van Hornten 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:48.919 is this tiny town, about two thousand people, but it's 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:52.760 the jumping off point for Jeff Bezos. Is Space Race 0:00:53.720 --> 0:01:02.320 ST two one look Controlled business Day ever a great 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:04.280 place for space flight. It is a great place for 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:08.000 space flight, except in the Afternia. I know there were 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:10.520 some weather problems also on that subject, the future of space. 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:13.280 It's bigger than Bezos, Branson and Musk. This is a 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:15.920 Bloomberg big take Yeah, it's a great story. All that 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:17.440 to come. But Tim, let's get back to your trip. 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:19.080 So let's talk a little bit more about you being 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:21.200 on the ground. First of all, you had to get 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:23.360 on an airplane. Yeah, I did for the first time 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:28.720 in gosh since last March. Um was crowded. There was 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:30.600 not an empty seat on on either of the flights 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:32.800 that I ended up taking. Carol. The big takeaway that 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:35.800 I had, apart from everybody was totally mass compliant on 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:39.520 the airlines. I was just how crowded everything was in 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:41.280 every airport that that I went through. There are no 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:43.520 direct flights to El Paso from New York City, so 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:48.160 both times when I flew to and from, there were layovers, crowds, crowds, crowds, 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:51.120 really long lines for for coffee, really long lines for restaurants. 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.240 I couldn't help but thinking, Hey, this is the labor 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:54.840 shortage that we keep hearing about. That's what I was 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:56.680 just thinking as you were talking. It's real and you 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.040 saw it firsthand. So you were headed, of course to 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:01.440 West Texas to catch up with Jeff Bezos and the 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:04.760 Blue Origin crew. What's interesting is we've had a lot 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:07.559 going on in the private space race as of late. 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:12.000 What was different about the Bezos trip versus Richard Branson 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:14.400 and his crew, Well, they're really apples and oranges when 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:16.880 you think about how they get to what they define 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:19.519 as space. So the first thing is you notice is 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.840 the craft and the difference between the Bezos and Branson crafts. 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:26.280 Branson's is much more of a space plane and it's 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.920 indeed ferried by this huge dual fuselage aircraft to about 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.760 fifty feet and then it's dropped from the belly of 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:36.360 the craft and then it shoots straight up like a 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:39.080 rocket would, but it appears much more like an airplane. 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:41.120 And the way that it comes back to to Earth, 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:43.560 it glides back to Earth and lands on a runway 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:47.359 like a traditional airplane, or maybe a better comparison would 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:51.640 be like the actual Space Shuttle Woodland. Uh. Bezos was 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:54.639 on a legit rocket. I mean, this is like when 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:57.240 we think about rockets going to space, Like that's what 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.720 what Bezos did. And the launch profile was really similar 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:04.079 to Alan Shepherd's launch profile back in nine one. I mean, 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:06.400 it was a capsule on on top of a rocket 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.040 that shot straight into the sky and kept going for 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.200 a couple of minutes. The capsule was released, and uh, 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:19.040 the capsule went beyond what's identified as the International definition 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:22.840 of space, the Carmen line on KOs high and then 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.560 they came back down in a capsule um three parachutes, 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:28.280 three drug shoots. And I think among the most innovative 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:30.520 things about this is something that we see from SpaceX two, 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:35.080 which is that reusable booster. That thing went almost as 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:37.520 high as the capsule, came down and landed right where 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:39.440 it was supposed to, just a couple of miles from 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:41.440 where it took off. You you know this because I've 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:43.240 talked about this. My dad was involved in the early 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:46.040 Space Race and involved in guidance systems with all the 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:49.120 early Apollo and Gemini missions. But what's interesting cause I 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:51.920 think he would be blown away that you're now reusing 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:54.000 rockets because that's not the way it was. No. You know, 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:55.840 I saw somebody point this out on Twitter. This is 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:58.920 not my my my original thought, but he or she 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.840 basically said, Uh, imagine every time you flew on a 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:06.720 seven thirty seven, that they would have to dispose of it. Exactly, 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:09.480 and that's that's how we've got into space in the past, right, 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:12.560 disposing of this stuff. So the reusability is huge. This 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:15.960 particular stack, the capsule and rocket combination that Bezos went on, 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.760 had it already been flown twice before. It's pretty remarkable, 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:21.280 and then to see it come down and hit it 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:25.599 smart is just mind blowing. Um would you go? I 0:04:25.640 --> 0:04:28.840 think I would? I think I would. Yeah, I mean 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:32.839 Bezos said like, hey, if if this is a vote 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:34.880 of confidence, right, Like, if it's not safe enough for 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:36.400 me to go, then it's not safe enough for anyone 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:38.960 to go, big time, big time. You and I have 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:40.880 talked a lot in the last couple of weeks. You 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:42.760 and I both get excited about this. I have to 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.720 say I was glued to my phone watching Jeff Bezos 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:49.400 and his crew go up. I just couldn't stop watching. Uh. 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:51.599 There are those though, that I even talked about on 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:53.599 the day. I'm like, did you see it? And they're like, yeah, 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:54.960 you couldn't pay me to go up in there, and 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:57.960 just we're so dismissive of it. Some would say, we 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:00.640 have some really big problems in our world. Why are 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:03.680 we spending so much time so much energy. Even as 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:06.200 a news organization, Why are we focusing on it um 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:08.000 when there are some other big problems in this world? 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:11.919 There is the significance to continue space exploration. Jeff Bezos 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:13.440 talked about it a lot, he did, and I think 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:16.719 that criticism is absolutely fair and absolutely warranted. And in fact, 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:18.920 it was brought up to Jeff Bezos and his crew 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:20.719 ahead of the launch, and Bezos, I think had a 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:23.800 pretty good answer. He said, we have to do both, 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:26.760 and there is room to do both. One thing that 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:29.599 he talked about a lot after he landed was how 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:32.800 important it is to preserve Earth and in order to 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:34.000 do that, and this is part of the long term 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:35.760 vision of Blue Origin. I mean, Beazos has been working 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:37.840 on this for twenty one years. Blue Origins established in 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:41.080 the year two thousand and his long term vision is 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:45.159 moving the polluting producing activities that we do here on Earth, 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.320 moving those to space, because he said over and over again, 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:51.919 Earth is the best planet that we've got in the 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:54.799 Solar system. But the way things are going right now, 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:59.599 with population growth, with energy usage, it's not going to 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.039 support future generations. I mean, look at the past week 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:04.000 in terms of climate change and the floods we've seen 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:06.840 in Germany, the floods that we've seen in China, I mean, 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:09.000 the fires out in the Pacific Northwest. This is not 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:11.200 just the last week, but the last few weeks here. 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:14.120 It's just a reminder that our climate here on Earth 0:06:14.160 --> 0:06:17.480 is definitely at risk. It is. I mean, you were 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:19.200 you were here in New York, but as I was 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:22.120 in Texas, I kept seeing posts and hearing from people 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:25.280 about the sky here thousands of miles away, the smoke 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:28.200 from fires making its way to the East coast. All right, 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:30.000 coming up, we're gonna do more on the new space 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.480 race and how the future of space is bigger than Bezos, 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.400 Branson and Musk. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:46.960 is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:52.320 and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. We're 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:54.800 going to stay with the private missions into space. A 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:56.920 store that cut our attention. It was a Bloomberg big 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.520 take featured also in Bloomberg Business Week magazine. Tim, it 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:02.440 was about how the future of space it is bigger 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:05.359 than Bezos, Branson and must But before we get into that, 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:08.320 discussion Bloomberg's Janet who takes a look at the historic 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:13.239 flight and what happened right after the touchdown to one 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:18.600 a merror ten minute mission, years and billions of dollars 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:23.600 in the making, How it felt, Oh my god. Space 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.920 flight has been the dream of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:31.440 since childhood. In his first words post touchdown, Bezos thank 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:36.240 the team, all of the engineers a blue origin who 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:39.960 have toiled hard to get this stud and then this 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:44.760 surprising remark. I also I want to thank every Amazon 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:49.000 employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.160 all of this. He also spoke of the implications and 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:56.480 impact of space travel. This is important. We're going to 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.960 build a road space so that our kids and their 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.240 kids can build the future. And we need to do that. 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:06.760 We need to do that to solve the problems here 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.920 on Earth. This is not about eskeeping Earth. Much has 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:13.240 been made of the billionaires race to space, with Bezos, 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:17.440 Elon Musk, and Richard Branson, who did his suborbital flight 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:20.680 a couple of weeks ago, all making space travel their 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:26.040 passion projects. Along for the historic ride, the first paying passenger, 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:28.760 the eighteen year old son of a Dutch venture capitalist 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:33.000 and eight two year old Wally Funk, the Mercury aviator 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:36.920 who was denied entry into the astronaut ranks because of 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:39.640 her gender. We had a great time. I want to 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:43.960 go get fast. Damon and Funk just became the youngest 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:47.120 and oldest people to reach space. So what happened up? 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:57.040 There a lot of fun that included throwing candy around 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:00.840 the American billionaires race to space. Well less independence on 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:04.960 Russia for launches, and Bezos says demand and innovation will 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.240 bring the cost down, in part from criticism over the 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:11.760 billion spent since Blue Origin was founded. In two thousand, 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:16.680 Bezos announced two major grants. Dream Corps founder Van Jones 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:20.040 and chef Jose Andress of World Central Kitchen were given 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:24.199 a hundred million dollars each to gift to philanthropies, including 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:27.680 their own. As for Blue Origin, two more flights with 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:31.680 humans are expected this year. Bezos says they are approaching 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:35.440 a hundred million in ticket sales. Asked if he will 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:39.400 go again? Hell, yes, how fast can refuel that thing? 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.600 Let's go. Janet Wu Bloomberg News Thanks to Janet Wu 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:45.800 for that report. For more on the future of space, 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:48.280 we also caught up with Bloomberg business Week features writer 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.080 Ashley Vance. He's also the author of Elon Musk Testla, 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:54.559 SpaceX and The Quest for a Fantastic Future. I mean, 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:56.880 you know, that's the space tourism sort of piece of 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.439 all this, and then it's kind of these layers of 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:04.160 building a true economy for the first time in low 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:07.600 Earth orbit around the Earth. So we've got the space tourism, 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.000 you's got space X doing really well, spending satellites and 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:13.959 people to space. A company in New Zealand called rocket 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:17.720 Lab has already sent up dozens of rockets carrying satellites. 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:21.000 You know, if you look at the launch manifest of 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.080 all these rocket companies were to send up about a 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:27.480 hundred thousand satellites over the next decade, which would be 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:32.559 about its currently about three thousand satellites around the Earth. 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:34.760 And so it's just the point that I wanted to 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:37.680 make is that this has been his dream for a 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.480 long time, and you know it's still just a handful 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.319 of governments really that of controlled space for the last 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:46.360 six decades and that's changing now. Well, I love this 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:48.520 line in your story. What happens up above us will 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.120 be one of the most important economic and technological stories 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:55.439 of the next decade, whether or not Musk ever settles Mars. Uh. 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:58.680 It's just like in some ways, or is it different 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:00.600 from the space race back in the XTSE, I mean, 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:03.640 which led to a lot of R and D, a 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:08.280 lot of you know, innovation and just different thinkings about 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:11.680 our world. Well, we're talking about in the story a 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.040 lot is is something that's just it's kind of more 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.280 basic in some ways. It's building a the next great 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:20.079 computing infrastructure. I think of it as like a computing 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:24.720 shell around the Earth, full of communications, satellites, imaging science, 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:27.520 all kinds of things and and you know, just like 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:30.280 we had the Internet build out over the last twenty 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:32.560 thirty years. Um, you know, I think this is going 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:36.640 to be where the next part of the cloud goes, 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:40.360 is actually into the avot. You talk about a senior 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:43.080 at Read College in Portland, Oregon. It's a great story 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:44.760 and I think it's a great example of what you 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.200 are talking about. More broadly, Here tell us who this 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:50.360 person is, Decker Eve Lithas am I saying it correctly, Yeah, 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:52.600 that's right. I mean, so this is an example of 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:55.599 how far we have common people don't always notice you know, 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.880 a couple of weeks ago, the story broke all throughout 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:03.520 the news that we'd uncovered about a hundred twenty missile 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:06.880 silos in China that had not previously been disclosed. It 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:09.680 seemed to be evidence that they're in the process of 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:12.760 a very large nuclear weapons build out. You know, in 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:14.840 the past, this kind of thing would have been discovered 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:18.640 by a military satellite. Um in this case, it was 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:23.199 an undergrad read college necker who was on his laptop 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.880 and he was using just commercial satellite imagery from a 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:29.480 company called Planet Laps, and it happens to be you know, 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:32.280 these these silos are in the deserts, and so even 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.720 the military satellites would not usually be looking there because 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:37.840 it's not a point of interest. But in this case, 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:42.200 Planet has so many imagery satellites that it photographs every 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:44.440 spot on the Earth every day, and so they had 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.520 you know, hundreds to thousands of images over years of 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:50.840 this spot. Actually you drew a parallel here just that 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.319 shows how far we've come in such a short period 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:56.600 of time, roughly seventy years. You write that when the 0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:59.320 U S went spit to space looking for Soviet weapons 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:01.679 of mass destruct in the late nineteen fifties, it had 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:04.800 to use rockets to carry bulky satellites into orbit where 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.880 they took photos and then they dropped their film canisters 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:11.720 back to Earth to be rather incredibly caught in mid 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:16.439 air by planes. This was the start of the satellite imagery, 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.040 you know, business as it was, and that was at 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:23.400 the end of nineteen We basically had to develop rocket technology, 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:27.000 new optics and and all these these amazing ways to 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.120 attatch film canisters coming back to Earth all at once, 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.200 and it didn't work very often at the beginning, and 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:35.040 they finally figured it out. But then you know, you 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:37.800 cut forward all this time and any one of us 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:41.640 now could open up um this planet last software and 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:45.319 start poking around and the look that was Bloomberg business 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.440 Week features writer Ashley Vance, author of Elon Musk, Testla, 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:51.560 SpaceX and The Quest for a Fantastic Future. Reminder, it's 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:54.360 not just about the trip itself, but the implications and 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:56.959 what we find out and what we can improve upon 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:00.280 here on Earth. It's hard to imagine that sixty years 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.440 ago we'd be sitting here and have the ability to 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:07.160 have satellites deliver Internet took places all over the world 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:09.480 like Elon Musk is trying to do because we didn't 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:11.360 even know what the Internet was sixty years ago, and 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:13.520 I think that's a really important way for us to 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:15.600 think about what could be in the future when it 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:18.760 comes to space exactly. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week. 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.200 You know, space was a big story this week, so 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:23.920 too was the COVID delta variant, and on that we've 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:27.280 got a warning for everyone that's next. This is Bloomberg 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:35.640 broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg eleven 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:40.360 Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:43.880 Bloomberg one O six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:47.120 sixty to the country Sirius XM Chado one nine team, 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:50.320 and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:55.520 Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week. The world 0:14:55.520 --> 0:14:58.960 of financial markets obsessed this week with the COVID delta variant. 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:01.800 And in another Bloomer big take this week, a story 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:04.720 that's also in the new issue of the magazine. It's 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:07.080 a story to him with a warning that more COVID 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:10.080 variants are coming in the US isn't ready to track 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:13.200 them Bloomberg News US health care reporters Cynthia Kons wrote 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:15.440 all about it. She joined us along with the editor 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:18.040 of Bloomberg business Week, Joel Weber. We actually started talking 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:21.720 about this story um a while ago, and the thing 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:24.240 that just made me um my ears perk cup was 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.880 because at that time, variants, I don't they were not 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:31.320 part of the bigger conversation. And and Cynthia was like, 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:34.120 you know, there's this the threat that variants are going 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:36.560 to come at us. We're gonna have more than one 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.640 of them. But the bigger thing is we don't actually 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:43.040 know how to track them the US. Other people actually 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:45.760 do do a better job of this. But the sort 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.000 of the takeaway from the story is genetic sequencing is 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.680 not something that has really been prioritized in the US. 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:53.400 So the little kernel of hope is that there is 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:55.480 this little patchwork quilt that I think we're gonna talk 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:57.880 about a little bit. But but Cynthia, why is the 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:02.680 US not doing jen sequencing at scale? And and why 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:06.560 are we effectively flying blind without it? Yeah, well, it's 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:09.920 a money issue. Um, there's no real center. Now. The 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:12.960 CDC has some money from the Biden administration, but they're 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:16.200 giving it out. It's not moving very quickly from what 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:18.600 I hear from scientists in the field. But when it 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:20.880 came down to it, we had these genomic labs at 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:24.760 academic universities and they would seek you know, grants, or 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:27.400 they would apply for money and they would get rejected. 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:29.560 And this happened to so many scientists. I know one 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.320 turn to crowdfunding, but he didn't get much money from that. 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:36.240 Another one actually was very dejected and about to run 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:39.000 out of money, and someone who turned her down five 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:41.680 months prior because they didn't realize the importance of variant 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:43.760 tracking came back and said, wait, wait, we want to 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:45.400 give you money. So she reapplied. So it was a 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:48.160 lot of really slap dash getting money where and how 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:50.840 you could. And it wasn't hey, here's a substantial amount 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:53.600 of money. It's going to be invested through academic centers 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:56.320 and different parts of the healthcare system to get this done. 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:58.680 Why is it so important that we do this sequencing? 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:01.840 So this is how we find mutations and so virus 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:03.920 like covids changing all the time, and you have to 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.720 do a lot of sequencing to figure out what's important 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:08.720 in that there are tons of changes within the virus 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.399 that don't matter, and to matter, it has to be 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:13.960 you know, significant in terms of its infectiousness or how 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:17.000 it harms a person. Potentially they get sicker things of 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.959 that nature, artifects younger patients worse, or something like that. 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:23.520 There are distinct things that make mutations concerning. But the 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:25.760 very virus is changing all the time, so you need 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:27.199 to be keeping an eye on it in such a 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:30.320 huge way in order to get enough data to say 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:32.960 that this specific mutation is doing X, y or z 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:35.520 to patients. And once you have that data, then you 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:38.479 have a better handle on how to enact measures. This 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:41.000 is how they decide, say the mask mandate may come back, 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:44.000 or there may be longer quarantine times. Waiting to see 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:46.560 the impact on the population we need to see is 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:49.840 too late because then the disease just continues to exactly exactly. 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:51.159 That's kind of how you would think of it in 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:54.000 terms of the best key scenario of public health officials 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:56.760 had the information fast enough, they could lock it down 0:17:56.760 --> 0:17:59.320 really fast. Granted, it feels like we're in a post 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:02.720 lockdown world, but not necessarily just in the US, it doesn't. 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:04.920 It seems like that might not be the next that 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:07.160 might not be a strategy that's readily employed at this stage, 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:08.639 but still it could be. If we know we have 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:11.720 a highly infectious or highly deadly version, things could be 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:14.439 done to stop it from spreading too quickly. So the 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:18.399 some of this sequencing is actually happening in New York 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:21.040 in in Queens right. Talk to us about the Pandemic 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:23.119 Response Lab and the work that they do. It's Pearl 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:27.080 for those of us who are cool chill so Pearl, 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:29.639 as it's called. This was an effort by a company 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:32.600 called open Trons. They do they create robots that help 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.320 automate labs, and they basically applied to be a COVID 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.040 testing center and they became this pandemic response lab and 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:40.080 they were a COVID testing center for New York City 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:42.439 and they augmented the city health efforts and that started 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:45.399 in the fall. And what happened was early on they thought, okay, 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:48.080 but let's figure out what's going on mutations. So they 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:50.359 tried to, you know, convene with health officials and figure 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:52.480 out if they could get some money to start sequencing, 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.240 and there was just no money for it. Again, coming 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:58.600 back to the initial issue of money. So because there's 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:00.399 no money for it, but they were actually in a 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:02.679 good position. They had a lot of the technology. They 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.080 decided to set this up and do the sequencing on 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.200 their own dime to start out. And so they're doing 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:10.359 the sequencing and they're giving New York all their data 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.280 and now they're participating in trying to get funding from 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:16.520 other sources. But they did it basically on their own dime, 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.199 which is pretty remarkable when you consider that's not how 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.080 businesses typically operate. Right Who else is doing a good 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:25.360 job of this in the US. There's states that are 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:28.280 doing better than others, but they're still not There's still 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:30.960 a lot of limitations within state based systems. But Michigan 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.280 has a really strong system, but it's still takes up 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:35.920 to two weeks to identify and communicate a variant through 0:19:35.920 --> 0:19:38.400 the system that Michigan set up. But they are one 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:40.640 of the bigger systems. There are some big labs around 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:43.800 the country doing a lot of it, like Scripts in California. 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:47.920 UM there's different UM. The Chance Zuckerberg Group was doing 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:49.600 it for a while. Now they're trying to move into 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:52.119 helping educate labs around the country and get up and going. 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:54.560 But there are definitely a lot of places that are 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:56.960 doing it. The problem is there there's a lack of 0:19:57.040 --> 0:20:00.600 cohesion to create something that we would consider really system 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.240 through which these books are all participating in the same way. 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.480 That's Bloomberg News US healthcare reporter Cynthia Coon. She wrote 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:08.440 that story. She joined us along with the editor of 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.880 Bloomberg Business Week, Joel Weber. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.840 Up next day, continuation of our latest installment of the 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:18.119 b W Talk series, This one with Raytheon Technology CEO 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:21.639 Greg Hayes. This about the success of a major aerospace 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:24.320 and defense industry merger that came together in the early 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:27.400 days of the pandemic. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg. 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:38.359