Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's
Speaker 1: main story. President Donald Trump has resumed campaigning just over
Speaker 1: a week after testing positive for COVID nineteen, but it
Speaker 1: remains to be seen whether his body and his campaign
Speaker 1: can escape unscathed from the effects of the virus. But first,
Speaker 1: here's what happened in virus news today. China reported a
Speaker 1: new cluster of coronavirus infections in an eastern ports city,
Speaker 1: breaking a two month streak without local transmission. The city,
Speaker 1: located in Shandong Province, found three asymptomatic case is linked
Speaker 1: to a hospital that treats COVID nineteen patients from abroad.
Speaker 1: More tests uncovered a cluster of twelve cases so far,
Speaker 1: making it China's biggest in months. It shows how difficult
Speaker 1: it is to stamp out the coronavirus in any one country.
Speaker 1: When outbreaks are flaring in places like India and the
Speaker 1: US and rebounding in Europe. Several nations in the Asia
Speaker 1: Pacific region, like Thailand or New Zealand, have also maintained
Speaker 1: long stretches of virus free periods, only to see the
Speaker 1: pathogen rear its head again. New research suggests the coronavirus
Speaker 1: can remain infectious for weeks on our paper, currency, and
Speaker 1: handheld screens, among other places. Scientists at the Australian Center
Speaker 1: for Disease Preparedness showed it could live on plastic bank
Speaker 1: notes and glass found on mobile phones for twenty eight
Speaker 1: days at room tem picture that compares with seventeen day
Speaker 1: survival for the flu virus. Scientists say the virus is
Speaker 1: extremely robust and that their research can help them more
Speaker 1: accurately predict and mitigate the pandemic spread. Finally, the US
Speaker 1: death rate from coronavirus infections is the highest in the
Speaker 1: developed world. That's according to a study of global mortality
Speaker 1: rates published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Speaker 1: Early in the outbreak, the country's mortality rate from COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen was lower than in many other hard hit countries,
Speaker 1: including the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands. But as spring
Speaker 1: turned to summer, the US largely failed to embrace public
Speaker 1: health policies that have helped other countries reduce their death rates.
Speaker 1: More than one hundred thousand fewer Americans would have died
Speaker 1: if the US had the same mortality rate as the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: The US leads the world in total coronavirus deaths, with
Speaker 1: nearly two hundred and fifteen thousand, according to data from
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins University and Now for today's main story, President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail today, a little
Speaker 1: over a week after testing positive for the coronavirus. He
Speaker 1: said he's quote in great shape as he plans a
Speaker 1: rally in Orlando, Florida, to kick off at least four
Speaker 1: straight days of political events. Trump's jam packed itinerary shows
Speaker 1: how much his campaign hopes to reverse polling trends that
Speaker 1: show him falling further behind Democratic nominee Joe Biden. But
Speaker 1: as the President prepares to address supporters amid record US
Speaker 1: deaths from the pandemic, the virus stays with him, both
Speaker 1: literally and figuratively. I spoke to Michelle fake Cortez, who
Speaker 1: wrote in Bloomberg Business Week that Trump's handling of his
Speaker 1: own infection and the cluster of infections of the White
Speaker 1: House is a microcosm of the country's overall pandemic response. Today,
Speaker 1: President Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Florida,
Speaker 1: and that's just a little over a week since he
Speaker 1: announced he had tested positive for COVID nineteen on October two.
Speaker 1: Is that a remarkably fast timeline or or what are
Speaker 1: we looking at here? The CDC does say that people
Speaker 1: who test positive for coronavirus should isolate themselves for about
Speaker 1: ten days, that they will be capable of transmitting the
Speaker 1: virus for a little bit over a week to other people,
Speaker 1: and so they should, you know, remain by themselves and
Speaker 1: isolated for that period of time. It's a little bit
Speaker 1: different with President Trump because of the cocktail of medicines
Speaker 1: that he got. There is some thought perhaps the steroids
Speaker 1: or he was taking could make him infectious for a
Speaker 1: longer period of time. On the flip side, the doctors
Speaker 1: have been really tracking him very closely. They've been doing
Speaker 1: a lot of tests that look at the levels and
Speaker 1: types of antibodies that he has in his body, and
Speaker 1: it does look like he does not have virus that's
Speaker 1: replicating in a way that could be infectious to other people.
Speaker 1: So it does seem like it's okay for him to
Speaker 1: get out there at this point. And speaking of that
Speaker 1: experimental cocktail, of drugs. It sounds like even if he
Speaker 1: is not contagious, he still potentially might be feeling effects
Speaker 1: from the virus. Or is he potentially experiencing any effects
Speaker 1: from these treatments. The President could absolutely still be suffering
Speaker 1: complications from either the virus or the medicines that he took,
Speaker 1: and in some cases he could be getting benefit from
Speaker 1: the medicines that he received, a benefit that might not
Speaker 1: persist once he stops taking them, specifically the decks metha zone,
Speaker 1: the steroid that he was given. The other thing that
Speaker 1: I think is really important to keep in mind here
Speaker 1: is it seems like the President really did thread the
Speaker 1: needle when it came to this cocktail of medicines that
Speaker 1: he received. He falls squarely into the high risk category.
Speaker 1: He's older, he's obese, he's not physically active, he doesn't
Speaker 1: have a good diet. There are other health complications that
Speaker 1: he has had that should have made him particularly vulnerable,
Speaker 1: and he seems to have done much much better than
Speaker 1: the average person in his condition when it comes to coronavirus. Now,
Speaker 1: the way that they went about that he received this
Speaker 1: monoclonal antibody from Regeneran that basically was an early start
Speaker 1: to the immune system. Then he got remdesevie, which is
Speaker 1: an anti viral, so that's fighting the virus itself. And
Speaker 1: then he got the steroid, which calms down any kind
Speaker 1: of over active response to the virus. So the idea
Speaker 1: that these medicines were given so closely together and each
Speaker 1: seemed to be really potent for him is great news
Speaker 1: for the world that there might be an avenue to
Speaker 1: actually getting this virus under control. The question is going
Speaker 1: to be who gets that treatment and is it going
Speaker 1: to be like this for everyone? And again, going back
Speaker 1: to your point earlier, we don't really know how the
Speaker 1: president is doing. We have gotten some reports from his doctors.
Speaker 1: We've seen him in public a few times, but certainly
Speaker 1: we haven't seen him for extended periods of time, and
Speaker 1: his doctors have not been forthcoming, so we don't really
Speaker 1: know to what extent he's still suffering from the virus
Speaker 1: and it's after effects, or if in fact he has
Speaker 1: truly recovered. And you raised a great point about perhaps
Speaker 1: the unique treatment that the president received, to what extent
Speaker 1: does this differ from, say, a standard treatment for someone
Speaker 1: who comes in with a positive COVID nineteen test. Doctors
Speaker 1: believe that the most potent treatment the President Trump received
Speaker 1: was the monoclonal antibody from Regeneraan. That therapy is not
Speaker 1: currently available to anyone outside of clinical trials, with the
Speaker 1: exception of a handful of patients ten or fewer who
Speaker 1: have gotten it on some type of a compassionate use basis.
Speaker 1: So the answer to the question to what extent can
Speaker 1: the average American get this, the answer is zero. The
Speaker 1: average American has no access to this product from Regeneration.
Speaker 1: There are others that are also in development, one from
Speaker 1: Eli Lily, one from Astra Zeneca. Those also are not
Speaker 1: available outside of a clinical trial. There's not that many
Speaker 1: places where these medicines are being studied, so there's limitations.
Speaker 1: Not everybody can drive to those hospitals. Once you get
Speaker 1: to the hospital, you get enrolled in the clinical trial.
Speaker 1: Half the people get the therapy, half the people get
Speaker 1: a placebo. So even then you don't know if you're
Speaker 1: going to get it. So what President Trump got a
Speaker 1: hundred percent access to the medicine. Literally no one else
Speaker 1: in the world has. Obviously, we have seen that the
Speaker 1: President is very eager to get back onto the campaign trail.
Speaker 1: But despite say, a scheduled rally and other in person events.
Speaker 1: This development has actually led to the cancelation of the
Speaker 1: upcoming debate with Joe Biden. In terms of the health
Speaker 1: risks that an in person debate could hold, what are
Speaker 1: the threats of this in person debate format? The risk
Speaker 1: from President Trump is likely very low. The thing is
Speaker 1: is that it's not just President Trump when it comes
Speaker 1: to these debates, all of these all of these candidates
Speaker 1: have a whole host of people who are helping them
Speaker 1: and a whole other group of people who were coming
Speaker 1: to support them. And it's that expanded group that is
Speaker 1: the potential threat. We saw with the first debate that
Speaker 1: President Trump's supporters and his family members came in with
Speaker 1: masks on and took their masks off. We know at
Speaker 1: that period of time they were all in a uniquely
Speaker 1: vulnerable situation and they were potentially putting other people at risk.
Speaker 1: It's that situation that is potentially harmful. President Trump could
Speaker 1: have infected other people in his family, other of his supporters,
Speaker 1: others of his helpers, and those people could have been
Speaker 1: harboring the virus for days or weeks and then turned
Speaker 1: positive before a debate, and then their presence at the
Speaker 1: debate stage could be passing the virus along to other people.
Speaker 1: It also could have worked the opposite way. Just because
Speaker 1: we don't know that Joe Biden wasn't was positive. Just
Speaker 1: because we know that Joe Biden has not been infected
Speaker 1: with the virus doesn't mean that somebody in his entourage
Speaker 1: couldn't also be positive. What do you think, if any,
Speaker 1: is the relationship between President Trump's personal response to having
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen and how he has handled the pandemic in
Speaker 1: the US overall. President Trump's personal philosophy is very evident
Speaker 1: when you see him speaking almost in any circumstance. He
Speaker 1: is a person who tends to put a positive spin
Speaker 1: on things. When he's talking about his own experiences and
Speaker 1: his own life and what he's hoping to do. He
Speaker 1: likes to emphasize the positive. He wants to go into
Speaker 1: a battle, he wants to win. He's looking on the
Speaker 1: bright side. We know from Bob Woodward's book that from
Speaker 1: very early on in the pandemic he did not want
Speaker 1: to take a negative tach. He didn't want to scare people.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be calm and reassuring and have a
Speaker 1: positive outlook, this virus is just going to go away
Speaker 1: at some point, We're not going to have it. We're
Speaker 1: all going to get through this. We'll get to the
Speaker 1: other side of it. All of those things are true.
Speaker 1: The question is is we have no idea when that's
Speaker 1: going to be. We might not be through to the
Speaker 1: other side of it and be done with this virus.
Speaker 1: We might get through to the other side and realize
Speaker 1: it's something we just have to live with. The Other
Speaker 1: thing that's very consistent about President Trump is he doesn't
Speaker 1: like bureaucracies. He doesn't like the standard protocols that are
Speaker 1: in place. And the huge crisis that came out of
Speaker 1: that because of this pandemic is that the exact way
Speaker 1: that we would have been able to best handle it
Speaker 1: is through the efficient and effective and powerful use of
Speaker 1: government bureaucracies who have been working for decades for this
Speaker 1: exact moment. There were processes in place. There are public
Speaker 1: servants who have been designing ways to combat viral respiratory
Speaker 1: outbreak for years and years and years, and they knew
Speaker 1: exactly what to do. But because the President was taking
Speaker 1: a more optimistic, hopeful approach and an anti bureaucracy approach.
Speaker 1: It basically cut the process off at the knees of
Speaker 1: what would have been helpful. So President Trump was hopeful
Speaker 1: for himself. He believed that because everyone around him was
Speaker 1: being tested, that he wasn't vulnerable, that he couldn't get infected.
Speaker 1: He believed that the virus was not going to stick around.
Speaker 1: Once it got warm outside, it would go away. All
Speaker 1: of these hopeful, idealistic and incorrect ideas did ultimately hurt
Speaker 1: the president and our country. So his hopeful nature for
Speaker 1: him personally might have might have actually paid off, but
Speaker 1: for the rest of the country, with over two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand deaths, clearly it has not. That was Michelle fake Cortez.
Speaker 1: And that's it for our show. To day. For coverage
Speaker 1: of the outbreak from one hundred and twenty bureaus around
Speaker 1: the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if
Speaker 1: you like the show, please leave us a review and
Speaker 1: a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best
Speaker 1: way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The
Speaker 1: Prognosis Daily Edition is produced by Tophur Foreheads Jordan Gospoure,
Speaker 1: Magnus Henrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was
Speaker 1: reported by Michelle fake Cortez. Original music by Leo Sidrian.
Speaker 1: Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.