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 the impact of the price wars in electric
Speaker 2: vehicle motors in the US and China. Plus suicide is
Speaker 2: a leading cause of maternal mortality in the US. But
Speaker 2: now a remarkable breakthrough the very first pill for postpartum depression.
Speaker 2: Will it be enough? But first we begin with politics
Speaker 2: and what the polls are telling us. And the answer
Speaker 2: is not a lot. Reuter's IPSOS poll says about half
Speaker 2: of all Republicans say they will not vote for Donald
Speaker 2: Trump if he's convicted of a felony. But maybe we
Speaker 2: should take those polls with a grain of salt. GOP
Speaker 2: presidential candidate and North Dakota Governor Douggham tells ABC that
Speaker 2: voters are not paying attention to Trump's legal issues.
Speaker 3: When we're out talking to voters in Iowa New Hampshire,
Speaker 3: they're not asking about the indictments. If they want to
Speaker 3: they can turn on a cable news network and watch
Speaker 3: that seven by twenty four. But then what they are
Speaker 3: asking about is inflation.
Speaker 2: North Dakota governor and presidential hopeful Doug Burgham. Let's dig
Speaker 2: into all of this with Bloomberg opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein.
Speaker 2: Let's just start from the very beginning. Are people thinking
Speaker 2: about the twenty twenty four election?
Speaker 4: Yet?
Speaker 5: It depends on which people you're talking about. If you're
Speaker 5: talking about Republican Party actors, you know, people who make
Speaker 5: a living in politics, who are you know, passionate about politics? Oh? Absolutely,
Speaker 5: they've been thinking about it for years. If you're talking
Speaker 5: about the bulk of most voters, no, you know, it's
Speaker 5: they involved in baseball, pennant races or least you know,
Speaker 5: preseason football, the actors strike, whatever, you know, getting their
Speaker 5: kids to school on time, picking the kids up from daycare,
Speaker 5: all that kind of stuff. You know, they're not thinking
Speaker 5: about politics very much right now. It's you know, August,
Speaker 5: a year before the election.
Speaker 2: So when they are thinking about politics, do they trust
Speaker 2: polls anymore? Remember after twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, everything
Speaker 2: from Brexit to the presidential election, that seemed like the
Speaker 2: polls just missed so much, so did have people started
Speaker 2: looking at polls and just sort of rolling their eyes
Speaker 2: and saying, ah, this isn't right.
Speaker 5: We wouldn't know unless we could test the polls to
Speaker 5: find out how people think. Right, The truth is that
Speaker 5: the polls missed by a little bit, and people notice
Speaker 5: a lot. It's a close election, and the polls are
Speaker 5: wrong about the outcome. You know, we've had elections where
Speaker 5: the polls were accurate but were maybe five points off,
Speaker 5: but it was a ten point win, so nobody cares.
Speaker 5: You know, people don't trust the polls, but the polls actually, overall,
Speaker 5: as you know, as a they're reasonably accurate. We can't
Speaker 5: get exact numbers. Polls, after all, are only a snapshot
Speaker 5: of where we are. So polls right now don't tell
Speaker 5: us anything about what's going to happen in a presidential
Speaker 5: race more than a year from now. They're not. We
Speaker 5: can't do that because people if you ask people about it,
Speaker 5: they're going to give an answer, because people tend to
Speaker 5: be able to do that, but it's not predictive of
Speaker 5: what they're going to actually do over a year from now.
Speaker 2: It seems to be a foregone conclusion that Trump is
Speaker 2: the air apparent to this nomination process. He's way out
Speaker 2: in front in the polls, and that's kind of the
Speaker 2: point of your whole column is, maybe don't take the
Speaker 2: polls about Donald Trump so seriously just yet.
Speaker 5: Right, It turns out that nomination point can be somewhat
Speaker 5: predictive this far out, but with huge caveats. The probably
Speaker 5: is with anything about Trump right now. The reason that
Speaker 5: we can trust polls generally is because posters, who are
Speaker 5: very good at what they do, they can construct models
Speaker 5: based on on previous iterations, previous election cycles. There's never
Speaker 5: been a presidential candidate who's facing sets of felony charges.
Speaker 5: So it's just hard to model that we you know,
Speaker 5: by all standard indications, absolutely Trump is well out in front,
Speaker 5: not just in the polls, but also by endorsements from
Speaker 5: important Republicans, you know, all all the ways that you
Speaker 5: would tell who's winning the nomination. Trump looks like he's winning.
Speaker 5: Does that mean he's a lock to win? I don't
Speaker 5: think so, because I don't think we can predict how
Speaker 5: this plays out over time. Maybe trials that happened even
Speaker 5: as soon as the Iowa caucuses, you know, which are
Speaker 5: coming up in January.
Speaker 2: And as you had said, there are those Republicans, those
Speaker 2: more high level, top tier Republicans in the party who say, yeah,
Speaker 2: if he's convicted, I'm not going to cast my vote him,
Speaker 2: or as things are going right now in the courts,
Speaker 2: I just don't think Donald Trump is good for our party.
Speaker 2: Doesn't necessarily mean they can be held to that, especially
Speaker 2: considering that we haven't even had the first debate yet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're gonna have debates, We're going to have campaigning,
Speaker 5: but the big thing that matters the most is going
Speaker 5: to be events and how voters react to that, on
Speaker 5: how party actors react to that, and a lot of it.
Speaker 5: Even they don't know yet how they will actually react
Speaker 5: to some of these things. Now, so far he's been indicted,
Speaker 5: that has not you know, people have not abandoned him,
Speaker 5: and that's a good indication that it's not going to
Speaker 5: happen soon. But we still don't know because it's something
Speaker 5: that's unprecedented. So it's a little hard to guess how
Speaker 5: people's reactions will go as evidence comes out, as perhaps
Speaker 5: you know, we go to trial. There's just some uncertainty there.
Speaker 2: Have we seen anything like this before, for when it
Speaker 2: comes to trying to figure out where things are headed,
Speaker 2: what the trend is going to be with polls. What
Speaker 2: I mean is clearly what we're talking about is the
Speaker 2: Trump candidacy, and that there is something particular about his
Speaker 2: campaign Trump supporters that can put his poll numbers into question,
Speaker 2: whether you're talking about his legal issues or the devotion
Speaker 2: that a lot of his supporters have for him no
Speaker 2: matter what he does. I'm wondering if we've seen that
Speaker 2: before anywhere in the history of this country.
Speaker 5: I don't think there's anything comparable in that you have
Speaker 5: separate out the nomination side and the general election side. Okay,
Speaker 5: nominations are always vulnerable, or at least they are always
Speaker 5: potentially valiable. So we've seen, you know, candidates go from
Speaker 5: big leads to collapsing overnight. We've seen, you know, in
Speaker 5: just the last cycle, Joe Biden had a big lead
Speaker 5: in the polls and then got clobbed in the first
Speaker 5: couple events, and then you know, and then Bernie Sanders
Speaker 5: had a big lead and then suddenly Biden came back
Speaker 5: and you know, one one very comfortably. So you know,
Speaker 5: where the polls predictive, well sort of, they were the
Speaker 5: original ones turned out to be, but not so changes
Speaker 5: can like that can happen very quickly. And because you know, yes,
Speaker 5: Donald Trump's core supporters really like him, but they're Republicans,
Speaker 5: they probably like the other candidates too, or at least
Speaker 5: potentially like them. Maybe at the moment they don't. They
Speaker 5: may not have heard yet about some of the other
Speaker 5: candidates who they may eventually come to like. Now, if
Speaker 5: you talk about general election, that's much less valuable. If
Speaker 5: then we're talking about well, maybe Trump if he's unpopular
Speaker 5: and he you know, when you're talking about general action,
Speaker 5: Trump is very unpopular. That could cost Republicans two three, five,
Speaker 5: We don't know points compared to a generic Republican candidate,
Speaker 5: and you know, but the move but there is going
Speaker 5: to be around the margins. He's not going to lose
Speaker 5: all his support overnight, because Republicans are going to at
Speaker 5: the end of the day look at it and say, well,
Speaker 5: even those who are unhappy with Trump are going to say, well,
Speaker 5: but the alternative is even worse, and so they're going
Speaker 5: to wind up most of them are going to wind
Speaker 5: up back with Trump, of course, if they if he
Speaker 5: lose this five percent versus a generic Republican he's in
Speaker 5: huge trouble for actually win the election.
Speaker 2: Oh, I would like to shift gears before we let
Speaker 2: you go, Jonathan about something on the Democratic side, and
Speaker 2: that is the investigation into Hunter Biden. It is moving
Speaker 2: along with some momentum as well as the move to
Speaker 2: impeach President Biden, which dovetails with that investigation. I'm wondering
Speaker 2: about where the GOP's mindset is, if they really believe
Speaker 2: this is bound to help them in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 5: Perhaps do they believe that they have something there. You know,
Speaker 5: it's hard to get into into anybody's mind. What I
Speaker 5: can say about it is it's good programming for Republican
Speaker 5: aligned media, and those people are very very important within
Speaker 5: the Republican Party coalition. For individual members of the House.
Speaker 5: If you push impeachment of Joe Biden, regardless of evidence, logic,
Speaker 5: even a theory that would be impeachable, you're going to
Speaker 5: get invited onto all the talk shows. And so there's
Speaker 5: strong internal Republican reasons to push this, which have very
Speaker 5: little to do with twenty twenty four or with actually
Speaker 5: getting rid of Biden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the reason I'm asking is because in recent years
Speaker 2: we've seen impeachment movements right the Clinton White House the
Speaker 2: Trump White House, but both times it helped the incumbent.
Speaker 5: I don't think it helped Trump in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: You don't.
Speaker 5: I mean, after all, he lost, and Trump basically remained
Speaker 5: unpopular throughout his presidency, but before the pandemic, when the
Speaker 5: economy was very good, he was unusually unpopular for a
Speaker 5: situation with prosperity. In Bill Clinton's case, it probably helped
Speaker 5: him a little bit, but Bill Clinton was mainly helped
Speaker 5: by peace and prosperity. The other thing is you have
Speaker 5: to separate the push for impeachment with the actual scandal.
Speaker 5: In Clinton's case, the actual scandal was a huge, big
Speaker 5: story in nineteen ninety eight. I think that the Joe
Speaker 5: Biden story as of right now is not a huge
Speaker 5: scandal on its own. It's a huge story because Republicans
Speaker 5: in the House are pretending it's a big story. Perhaps
Speaker 5: they'll eventually come up with evidence or something. So it's
Speaker 5: really impeachment on its own. Is the story not what
Speaker 5: Biden has done?
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein, And coming up, we're going
Speaker 2: to take a look at price wars between the US
Speaker 2: and China over electric vehicle motors and batteries and who
Speaker 2: has the edge. Now you're listening the Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at
Speaker 1: one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
Speaker 1: demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion i Amy Morris. Price wars
Speaker 2: continue over electric vehicle motors in China and the US,
Speaker 2: and usually they could be either creative or destructive. They've
Speaker 2: been dealing with a higher cost structure that subsidies in
Speaker 2: manufacturer losses, cancer mount but that's starting to change. We
Speaker 2: want to learn more now. Bloomberg Opinion columnist David Fickling
Speaker 2: also covers energy and commodities, and he's going to set
Speaker 2: us straight. Now, let's first talk about the price wars
Speaker 2: over EV motors, electric vehicle motors. Who has the edge?
Speaker 2: What are you seeing now?
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, as you said, I think there's two types
Speaker 6: of price wars out there. The destructive ones, which are
Speaker 6: the ones that we classically think about often think a
Speaker 6: good metaphor is like the airline industry if you had,
Speaker 6: you know, if you have Nighted and Delta going into
Speaker 6: a price war with each other, it will be very
Speaker 6: value destructive. You're teaching consumers to pay less for their
Speaker 6: tickets essentially, and neither side really benefits. On the other hand,
Speaker 6: if Southwest goes into a price war against Delta, you're
Speaker 6: in a different You're in a different sort of environment
Speaker 6: because of course Southwest has a fundamentally lower cost structure
Speaker 6: and that and they're going to win from that. You know,
Speaker 6: if you look at the airline industry, the you know,
Speaker 6: the higher the airlines are the highest valuations are mostly
Speaker 6: discount carriers because they have a they've got a lower
Speaker 6: fundamental cost structure. Now, the reason I think this is
Speaker 6: relevant to the auto industry is that until very recently
Speaker 6: and really at this point now, the product with the
Speaker 6: lower cost structure is a gasoline or diesel powered cars.
Speaker 6: It's fundamentally cheaper than than a battery electric car. But
Speaker 6: that has been changing because the most expensive bit, which
Speaker 6: is you know, can be you know, a third or
Speaker 6: more of the cost of the electric car is the battery.
Speaker 6: And as battery manufacturing goes through the roof, as it's
Speaker 6: expanding at this very rapid right. The costs are coming
Speaker 6: down quite dramatically. Now we've had a bit of a
Speaker 6: we've had a bit of a bump with the commodity
Speaker 6: price inflation of the last few years, but the overall trajectory,
Speaker 6: if you plod it out in a graph, is still
Speaker 6: going down. And we're very close to the point, and
Speaker 6: now I think in China passing the point where they're
Speaker 6: actually going to be fundamentally cheaper on price, and that
Speaker 6: makes a big difference to everything.
Speaker 2: The batteries themselves also are a bit of a disincentive
Speaker 2: for those who don't want to spend half an hour
Speaker 2: charging their car when they're on a road trip, or
Speaker 2: who are concerned about the weight of it changing the
Speaker 2: structure of the car and changing the speed of the car.
Speaker 2: And it's inten that sort of thing. Is all of
Speaker 2: that baked into this, Yes it.
Speaker 6: Is, And I mean the article I was writing was
Speaker 6: talking about how electric cars in China are now becoming
Speaker 6: cheaper than gasoline cars, and of course how you measure
Speaker 6: that is is a little bit difficult because they are
Speaker 6: fundamentally different products, So so how do you measure that
Speaker 6: they are competitive? And the point that you're raising there,
Speaker 6: I think is an important one because one thing that
Speaker 6: we've seen from quite early on you'll know, the phrase
Speaker 6: range anxiety. This is something that people, you know, worry
Speaker 6: a lot about. Is the battery going to last me
Speaker 6: long enough to go on a long road trip. Am
Speaker 6: I going to be spending half an hour charging when
Speaker 6: I'm you know, rushing to a family dinner or something
Speaker 6: like that. And one thing that we've seen as the
Speaker 6: cost you would measure the cost of electric car batteries by,
Speaker 6: you know, the cost per killer what hour. As the
Speaker 6: cost per killer what hour has gone down, we've generally
Speaker 6: actually seen the batteries getting bigger. So the actual cost
Speaker 6: of your battery is not getting is not going down
Speaker 6: the cost you know, because the killer what hours are
Speaker 6: going up at the same time that the cost birgear
Speaker 6: what hour goes down. And that's because the car makers
Speaker 6: have been trying to address range anxiety. And you know,
Speaker 6: at this point, a typical electric vehicle will will will
Speaker 6: give you, you know, it'll give you sort of four hundred
Speaker 6: k's on a good charge, So what was that two
Speaker 6: hundred and fifty miles, But of course that's in ideal conditions.
Speaker 6: And now they've you know, now they've addressed range anxiety
Speaker 6: and ideal conditions. Well, what happens if it's cold, what
Speaker 6: happens if you've got the air conditioning running? And so
Speaker 6: so in some ways they've been you know, you know,
Speaker 6: trying to go up and down escalator against this. But
Speaker 6: if you look, now, you know two crucial models. I
Speaker 6: think the you know, obviously, the Tesla Model three is
Speaker 6: a car that's got a sort of demonstrated ability to
Speaker 6: you know, to to sort of compete against that range anxiety.
Speaker 6: And it is its competing on price with a lot
Speaker 6: of the sort of you know, the sort of premium
Speaker 6: mid size sedans, the sort of BMW three series oud
Speaker 6: ea for you know, Mercedes C class. It's now cheaper
Speaker 6: than those cars in China.
Speaker 2: Now, how is it, David, that China has seemed to
Speaker 2: crack the code? And how far behind is the US
Speaker 2: in this competition to make these batteries more efficient the
Speaker 2: car is more efficient.
Speaker 6: If you compare the US and China in what sort
Speaker 6: of electric vehicles are being designed, they're they're extremely different.
Speaker 6: If you if you look at the market, of course,
Speaker 6: you know the thing we all know about the US
Speaker 6: market is that well, in both the US and China,
Speaker 6: SUVs are very dominant, but of course trucks and you know,
Speaker 6: light trucks in the US, pickups are extremely dominant. So
Speaker 6: the advantage for US car makers, and we've seen it
Speaker 6: with the you know, the Ford F one fifty lightning
Speaker 6: and obviously, like you know, Teszler's attempt with this cyber
Speaker 6: truck and riving the lights is to try and get
Speaker 6: into that sort of large, larger vehicle market, large you know,
Speaker 6: light truck or suv market, and that's the sort of
Speaker 6: that's the area where there's lightly the earliest crossover point
Speaker 6: where electric vehicles become cheaper than gastine. They're clearly not
Speaker 6: there yet. It's probably sort of two or three years
Speaker 6: away at this point. In the US China, the sort
Speaker 6: of core of the market is a little bit different.
Speaker 6: There's the SUVs are still big, as they are everywhere,
Speaker 6: but these sort of like mid size sedans again, like
Speaker 6: you know, some of these you know vw ones that
Speaker 6: we that we've been talking about, those are you know,
Speaker 6: those are to some extent the core of the market.
Speaker 6: And because there's the range, anxiety is a little bit
Speaker 6: less because the population is that much denser, people are
Speaker 6: less spread out. A lot of these cars have been
Speaker 6: are starting to get into the market that are sort
Speaker 6: of coming in a sort of cheaper price point. And
Speaker 6: of course, the one other thing is a crucial supply
Speaker 6: chain thing. Of course, you know, China has has already
Speaker 6: built a vast battery supply chain, the Chinese battery makers,
Speaker 6: they've built the capacity for the batteries, but they're having
Speaker 6: trouble getting export markets sufficient for them, so all that
Speaker 6: capacity is stuck at home, and that's pushing prices down.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if these price wars and it this competition
Speaker 2: is helping to spur this growth and development that you're seeing,
Speaker 2: and it sounds like there's more room for it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, it's I think fundamentally you have to
Speaker 6: come back to looking at the market share, and you know,
Speaker 6: go back a few years. I think in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 6: the Chinese government set a target for twenty five percent
Speaker 6: of the market to be new energy vehicles by twenty
Speaker 6: twenty five. I remember reading just i think three years ago,
Speaker 6: quite a bullish report from Deloitte, reckoning that you'd get
Speaker 6: about a third of China's electric vehicle Sorry, a third
Speaker 6: of the Chinese car market would be electric by twenty
Speaker 6: twenty nine to twenty thirty by the end of this decade. Now,
Speaker 6: in June, these new energy vehicles were thirty seven percent
Speaker 6: of sales. If you look at how they've risen, it
Speaker 6: is really taken the market by storm. And if you
Speaker 6: look at the best selling cars in China again in June,
Speaker 6: seven out of ten of them were batteri or plug
Speaker 6: in hybrid models. So and that really changes the whole
Speaker 6: dynamic in significant ways because these are no longer exotic products.
Speaker 6: These are extremely familiar products to everyone. And one thing
Speaker 6: that we've you know that a lot of carmakers have found.
Speaker 6: We talked about range anxiety and many of those issues.
Speaker 6: You know, it tends to be an issue for people
Speaker 6: who haven't bought an electric car yet for owners of
Speaker 6: electric cars, it's not. It doesn't really trouble them very
Speaker 6: much at all. So and this is why the issue
Speaker 6: of the sort of you know, the price competition and
Speaker 6: the price war is so important. Like you reduce the
Speaker 6: barrier to people buying their first electric car similar to people,
Speaker 6: you know, buying their first discount airline ticket, people find
Speaker 6: they're actually quite open to it once they once they
Speaker 6: get a chance.
Speaker 2: David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion covering energy and commodities.
Speaker 2: Now coming up, we're going to learn more about a
Speaker 2: new postpartum depression pill and how it is becoming a
Speaker 2: vital tool in women's healthcare. Don't forget We're available as
Speaker 2: a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Opinion. As many as half of women
Speaker 2: with postpartum depression go undiagnosed, and suicide is a leading
Speaker 2: cause of maternal mortality in the US. But now a
Speaker 2: remarkable breakthrough, the very first pill for postpartum depression. But
Speaker 2: will it be enough. Let's talk about it with Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis, who covers biotech, healthcare and the
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical industry. Lisa, let's talk about postpartum depression. Something I
Speaker 2: get the impression isn't talked about very much at all
Speaker 2: in this country. How many women experience postpartum depression?
Speaker 4: Ray Amy, Well, thanks for having me, and we know
Speaker 4: that as many as one in seven women experience postpartum
Speaker 4: depress and one of the things that's worth noting is
Speaker 4: that many of those women are experiencing depression even before
Speaker 4: during their pregnancy, and during that period it's going undetected
Speaker 4: and undiagnosed and untreated, and that can carry over into
Speaker 4: the pregnancy itself. And so you know, we know that
Speaker 4: the postpartum period is just one of enormous change. Anyone
Speaker 4: who's had a child knows that all of your relationships
Speaker 4: change in an instant with your partner, your parents, your peers,
Speaker 4: even your own body. The social pressure to have a
Speaker 4: perfect connection with your baby is great, and meanwhile, you're
Speaker 4: often very isolated because you're taking care of a newborn,
Speaker 4: and on top of that, you're sleep deprived. So a
Speaker 4: lot of people struggle during that period. And you're right,
Speaker 4: it's just not talked about enough.
Speaker 2: Now. A lot of people would assume that, oh, it's
Speaker 2: just hormones, my body is readjusting from pregnancy to being
Speaker 2: a new mom, or like you said, I am just
Speaker 2: not getting enough sleep. Does that tend to mask what
Speaker 2: people might think is just oh, I need a nap,
Speaker 2: versus ooh I might need to talk to someone.
Speaker 4: Well, first, I think it's important to recognize your's a spectrum.
Speaker 4: You know, there's kind of the baby blues, and then
Speaker 4: there's something that gets more serious and then you know,
Speaker 4: of course, there have been cases that we've all read
Speaker 4: about that are really, you know, horrifying and terrible for
Speaker 4: families where women have an extreme version of this. But
Speaker 4: I think it's when you know, you're kind of noticing
Speaker 4: that you're struggling to feel happy in this period that
Speaker 4: you know doesn't have to be perfect, but generally people
Speaker 4: are you know, who aren't depressed, are like, have the
Speaker 4: surge of hormones that makes them, that fuel them to
Speaker 4: get through those sleepless period And so I think the
Speaker 4: most important thing is if you're having any struggles to
Speaker 4: talk to your provider. One thing again that anyone who's
Speaker 4: had a child knows is that the instant the baby arrives,
Speaker 4: all of the attention shifts from the mother's health, the
Speaker 4: pregnant mother's health, to the newborn, right and rightfully so,
Speaker 4: but at the same time, that leaves a lot of
Speaker 4: women who go without care during that period. And we know,
Speaker 4: your first follow up visit isn't until six weeks after
Speaker 4: having your child, and so that's a long time, and
Speaker 4: a lot happens in six weeks as in your post
Speaker 4: pregnant period. That's an eternity for a new mom.
Speaker 2: So is that why they've never had drugs before to
Speaker 2: help new moms out when they're going through this.
Speaker 4: I wish that were the reason, but unfortunately, I think
Speaker 4: a lot of the reason has to do with the
Speaker 4: fact that this problem wasn't getting the attention it deserved,
Speaker 4: in part because you know, for a long time, drugs
Speaker 4: were really primarily studied in men, and the way that
Speaker 4: this drug works is by mimicking a hormone that you
Speaker 4: know all of us have, but is in effect after pregnancy,
Speaker 4: and I think it just was a mechanism that went undetected.
Speaker 4: But you know, basically, the mice that are used in research,
Speaker 4: and even when theris the kind of anti common antidepressants
Speaker 4: that a lot of people take, we're studied, almost all
Speaker 4: of those were studied in either mail mice or you know,
Speaker 4: in men in the clinic. So I think it just
Speaker 4: kind of left women underserved and the problem underrecognized.
Speaker 2: So now that there is this breakthrough, this very first
Speaker 2: pill for postpartum depression, would this then change how women
Speaker 2: might be treated, diagnosed, monitored for postpotum depression.
Speaker 4: That's my hope. You know, we've had options in the past.
Speaker 4: The same company Stage Therapeutics that developed this drug has
Speaker 4: another drug that they got approved in twenty nineteen, but
Speaker 4: it's challenging. You have to go into the hospital and
Speaker 4: have this almost seventy two hour infusion, so that's very
Speaker 4: tough for a new mom. You know, even when you're
Speaker 4: in an extreme situation where you're feeling depressed to leave
Speaker 4: your family for three days in order to get treatment.
Speaker 4: You know, it does act quickly, but it just really
Speaker 4: was a ba and in addition to its cause, was
Speaker 4: a barrier to people using it. SSRIs have been an option,
Speaker 4: but they can take months. So I do think yes,
Speaker 4: having something that in two weeks could make a lot
Speaker 4: of people feel better and take it home would really
Speaker 4: change things. The other thing that could change things is
Speaker 4: that AKAG, which is the big society for obstitricians and gynecologists,
Speaker 4: recently in June changed their recommendations for screening women for depression,
Speaker 4: and so they now recommend during the period where you're
Speaker 4: considering having a child, several times while you're pregnant, and
Speaker 4: then several times in the thought every single postpart and
Speaker 4: visit that your provider screening you for depression, so which
Speaker 4: could really help. I think in total it brings more
Speaker 4: recognition to the problem, which I hope means more women
Speaker 4: getting help.
Speaker 2: Let's get into the pill. Well, how does it work.
Speaker 2: What's it called?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's called surround known and it's it mimics a
Speaker 4: natural hormone. So it's actually a new class of antidepressants
Speaker 4: or you know, a new class of psychiatric drugs than
Speaker 4: what we have in the past. And you you take
Speaker 4: it for two weeks, and which is different, right, I
Speaker 4: think most people who take an SSRI would take that
Speaker 4: for months or perhaps for life, you know, and it
Speaker 4: works pretty fast to help you, you know, potentially modulate
Speaker 4: the hormones that could be affecting your mood post pregnancy,
Speaker 4: and so, you know, the idea is that after that
Speaker 4: two weeks, hopefully you're feeling better and you go back
Speaker 4: to your normal life. That might not be the case
Speaker 4: for all people. Hopefully you're you know, also getting some
Speaker 4: talk therapy, and then eventually, if it really is you know,
Speaker 4: a severe case, it might be that you then later
Speaker 4: go on to SSRIs, but you have this immediate intervention
Speaker 4: that can help you during that really challenging, you know,
Speaker 4: early early period after having a child.
Speaker 2: I'm also curious about if it would somehow impact breastfeeding, appetite,
Speaker 2: weight gain, weight loss. Is there any downside or are
Speaker 2: there side effects people should know about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they should, I mean, you know, I think one
Speaker 4: of the you know, it's it's a double edged sword
Speaker 4: because some people don't want to take any medication when
Speaker 4: they're breastfeeding, and that's one of the deterrens actually to
Speaker 4: people getting treated, is that if they take an SSRI,
Speaker 4: even though we know that it's reasonably safe to do
Speaker 4: so well breastfeeding, they don't want to do that for months.
Speaker 4: In this case, I think it hasn't been studied in
Speaker 4: breast milk, we don't have enough information to say, like
Speaker 4: you could breastfeed while you're taking the drig. We do
Speaker 4: know that one could for two weeks so called pump
Speaker 4: and dump, you know, you could continue to breastfeed, you know,
Speaker 4: dump the milk and then go back to breastfeeding your
Speaker 4: child after, which I think is a better option for
Speaker 4: a lot of women. It's work, but you know, at
Speaker 4: the same time, let's you kind of have both things.
Speaker 4: You're at home, you're with your infant, and then one
Speaker 4: of the side effects is that it can just you know,
Speaker 4: cause drowsiness, and so that the FDA did put a
Speaker 4: black so called black box warning on the on the
Speaker 4: pills that they would not like you to drive for
Speaker 4: twelve hours after taking the pills, which you know, that
Speaker 4: is a limitation and that's tough. I do recall during
Speaker 4: my early days and months after pregnancy that you know,
Speaker 4: I was home a lot. So that may not be
Speaker 4: a limitation for everyone. That's a barrier.
Speaker 2: So now we have talked a lot about how this
Speaker 2: is not being talked about, right I'm wondering though, if
Speaker 2: part of the issue is what is expected of the
Speaker 2: mom or what is what she is expecting of herself.
Speaker 2: You're not expected to be sad or depressed or or
Speaker 2: have you know, questionable thoughts and you may not say
Speaker 2: anything if you're actually going through this as a new mom.
Speaker 2: Is that also part of this?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean, I think that's one of the reasons
Speaker 4: it goes undetected, is that, you know, it's hard to
Speaker 4: talk about. We all have, you know, social media and
Speaker 4: new moms on social media showing us what the perfect So, yeah,
Speaker 4: a notion of motherhood is and that you're supposed to
Speaker 4: be just so barney to your new infant. That's not
Speaker 4: everyone's experience, and I think that can be really hard
Speaker 4: to say that that's not what's happening for you, and
Speaker 4: that makes it difficult. And so I think this hopefully
Speaker 4: helps people recognize it's really common. There's help. You should
Speaker 4: get help, because we also know that it can affect
Speaker 4: your baby if you're not bonding with your baby. I
Speaker 4: mean not to put make anyone feel guilty about something
Speaker 4: they can't control, but I think you know it just
Speaker 4: it's a good reminder that, like helping yourself helps your
Speaker 4: whole family.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned it in your column, but I'd like
Speaker 2: you to say it out loud. This could also help
Speaker 2: elevate the conversation about postpartum depression.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think it just really could help lift some of
Speaker 4: the stigma women feel, you know. I mean, we want
Speaker 4: people to get treated. We want people. The other thing
Speaker 4: is this is the start of your new family. A
Speaker 4: lot of people experience this during their first child, you know,
Speaker 4: their first pregnancy to start your new family. Want you
Speaker 4: to start out your new family on the best possible foot,
Speaker 4: So get the help you need.
Speaker 2: Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg opinion covering biotech, healthcare, and
Speaker 2: the pharmaceutical industry. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
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Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy morris By. Now
Speaker 2: you've probably heard that Zoom is asking its employees to
Speaker 2: return to the office, and perhaps you reveled in the
Speaker 2: irony with a declaration of remote work is dead. But
Speaker 2: hold on, this is not necessarily the end of an era.
Speaker 2: In fact, if you look a little deeper, it may
Speaker 2: just be the beginning. Bloomberg Opinion. The editor, Sarah Green
Speaker 2: Carmichael joins us now. Sarah set as straight Zoom bringing
Speaker 2: folks back to the office. But this isn't necessarily the
Speaker 2: ironic headline we all thought it was.
Speaker 7: No I can see why. It's a headline that raced
Speaker 7: around the world, But the reality is that Zoom is
Speaker 7: only asking employees within fifty miles of the office to
Speaker 7: come in twice a week. That is much much less
Speaker 7: than many other companies return to office policies, so it's
Speaker 7: hardly the end of an era here.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: You talked about in your column a Harvard professor conducted
Speaker 2: a field experiment suggesting that having people in the office
Speaker 2: two days every week may be the sweet spot. Explain
Speaker 2: that to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Sure.
Speaker 7: This was a fascinating field experiment by Harvard Business School
Speaker 7: professor Rog Chowdery, and it's the gold standard and research.
Speaker 7: It was a randomized, controlled experiment with real workers, and
Speaker 7: what they found is that when people came in just
Speaker 7: one or two days a week, they thought that was
Speaker 7: the sweet spot for both productivity and collaboration. People who
Speaker 7: came in more than that didn't necessarily show any more
Speaker 7: collaboration or productivity, and people who never came in experienced
Speaker 7: more loneliness and isolation. So it seems that one or
Speaker 7: two days a week is just fine.
Speaker 2: Would the move to bring employees into the office more
Speaker 2: frequently than just two days a week? Is that driven
Speaker 2: by employers? I mean, most would prefer their staff to
Speaker 2: be in house more often than two days a week.
Speaker 2: Are they the ones who are really behind this?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's really the employers. The managers, the senior executives
Speaker 7: who are pushing for more than that. But we've seen
Speaker 7: that over the past year, despite a lot of headlines
Speaker 7: about this company or that company changing their remote work policy,
Speaker 7: that actually levels of days worked at home have basically
Speaker 7: been flat over the past twelve months. And executives I've
Speaker 7: talked to about this say that while they have sort
Speaker 7: of asked people to come in and they have sort
Speaker 7: of said, hey, we're going to keep track, we're going
Speaker 7: to take attendance, that they actually feel like they can't
Speaker 7: force people to come in, And as of yet, there's
Speaker 7: not really disciplinary action for employees who are coming in
Speaker 7: less than executives were like. So there's not a whole
Speaker 7: lot executives this far have been willing to do. And
Speaker 7: that's still a very tight labor market.
Speaker 2: Remember before the pandemic, there was this big move afoot
Speaker 2: to create a three day weekend. There was a really
Speaker 2: big move to have more flexible hours. Now this was
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. It seems almost like
Speaker 2: that kind of went poof when everybody was relegated to
Speaker 2: their own homes to do their work. And now I
Speaker 2: haven't heard a great resurgence of that. Where is that movement?
Speaker 2: What's going to happen to our work week?
Speaker 7: I'm really glad you asked about that, because the place
Speaker 7: the movement is alive and well is actually in Europe.
Speaker 7: Several European countries have conducted experiments with the four day week.
Speaker 7: Almost all of the companies that have undertaken these experiments
Speaker 7: so that they were so positive they're just going to
Speaker 7: keep going. Now, there was some selection bias there, obviously,
Speaker 7: companies only opted in if they were willing to do
Speaker 7: the experiment thought it might work for them. But it's
Speaker 7: been enormously popular. Maybe the difference is that in Europe,
Speaker 7: you know, among other differences with America, in European work
Speaker 7: life balance, but in Europe, people have returned to office
Speaker 7: in higher numbers. And that could be because they have
Speaker 7: maybe smaller apartments, they have potentially shorter commutes. But whatever
Speaker 7: the reason, you know, that's where we really see both
Speaker 7: return to office and more four day work week experimentation happening.
Speaker 2: So could it gain traction in the US?
Speaker 3: You think?
Speaker 7: I doubt it. I would like to see it, and
Speaker 7: I think that there's going to be some tech companies
Speaker 7: and maybe smaller companies that want to be able to
Speaker 7: hire top talent and cannot pay a premium that will
Speaker 7: use it. And I've definitely known people who've worked out
Speaker 7: their own flexible arrangements, you know, through HR always. But
Speaker 7: I think in terms of mass adoption of a four
Speaker 7: day week in the United States, it's just really hard
Speaker 7: to see that in a sort of work obsessed society
Speaker 7: like ours.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion editors Sarah Green Carmichael and that does it
Speaker 2: for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We are produced by Eric
Speaker 2: mollow and you can find all of these columns on
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Speaker 2: top stories and global business headlines are just ahead. I'm
Speaker 2: Mammy Morris and this is Bloombird.