Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day two eight
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story.
Speaker 1: The US government's COVID nineteen strategy has been defined in
Speaker 1: part by focusing almost exclusively on speeding drug development for
Speaker 1: treatments and vaccines, But the lack of a corresponding effort
Speaker 1: to mitigate the outbreak could mean it will take years
Speaker 1: for life to return to normal. But first, here's what
Speaker 1: happened in virus news today. The Port Authority of New
Speaker 1: York and New Jersey said it will find people fifty
Speaker 1: dollars for not covering their faces at airports and at
Speaker 1: bus and sub way terminals. Since March, the agency has
Speaker 1: used posters, public service announcements, and other means to promote
Speaker 1: mask wearing. The new mandate comes as case and hospitalization
Speaker 1: numbers rise in New York and New Jersey. The states
Speaker 1: are trying to prevent a second wave of the novel coronavirus.
Speaker 1: New York City alone has reported almost twenty four thousand
Speaker 1: virus related deaths, about two thirds of the state's overall total.
Speaker 1: The US government agreed to pay drugmaker Eli Lily for
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand vials of its experimental antibody treatment. The
Speaker 1: therapy is under regulatory review for emergency authorization use. The
Speaker 1: funding from Operation Warp Speed, the White House led effort
Speaker 1: to quickly secure supply of COVID nineteen vaccines and therapeutics,
Speaker 1: will only be put into effect if Lily's therapy receives
Speaker 1: a green light from the US Food and Drug Administration. Finally,
Speaker 1: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is bracing for another lockdown
Speaker 1: in England. New modeling by the UK government's Emergency Scientific
Speaker 1: Committee suggests the entire country is likely to require the
Speaker 1: tightest restrictions by mid December. The modeling suggests that the
Speaker 1: new wave will lead to more deaths than the first,
Speaker 1: casting doubt on the British Prime Minister's localized approach. The
Speaker 1: Sun newspaper reported government scientists predict that about twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand people will be hospitalized with the novel coronavirus by
Speaker 1: the end of November. And now for today's main story.
Speaker 1: The US government's COVID nineteen strategy has been for i
Speaker 1: on developing vaccines and treatments rather than emphasized measures to
Speaker 1: limit the spread of the disease that could delay the
Speaker 1: return to normal life for most Americans. While the US
Speaker 1: has committed more than ten billion dollars to develop new
Speaker 1: shots to fight COVID nineteen, about half of Americans in
Speaker 1: a gallop pole said they are wary of taking them,
Speaker 1: and one report suggests that if the vaccine program has
Speaker 1: any hiccups, we could be living with the virus well
Speaker 1: into twenty three. I spoke with health reporter Naomi Kresky,
Speaker 1: who reported on the cost of the government's focus on
Speaker 1: developing drugs rather than changing behavior. Many hopes in the
Speaker 1: US and of course worldwide are pinned on the arrival
Speaker 1: of a vaccine for con rolling this pandemic. I was
Speaker 1: just wondering, what are some of the dangers in putting
Speaker 1: so much weight on the availability of a vaccine. So
Speaker 1: one significant danger in doing that would be if you
Speaker 1: pinned all of your hopes on a vaccine and did
Speaker 1: not do all of the other things that are necessary
Speaker 1: to try to um control the pandemic before a vaccine
Speaker 1: comes um And you know, the fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is that just the availability of a vaccine. Saying a
Speaker 1: vaccine is approved does not mean that suddenly everyone will
Speaker 1: immediately be immunized. UM. It will take time to distribute vaccine. UM.
Speaker 1: There will be you know, priorities will need to be set.
Speaker 1: Probably vaccine will go first to two healthcare workers and
Speaker 1: two people with chronic conditions. UM. It will take a
Speaker 1: long time before before enough of the population can be
Speaker 1: vaccinated to achieve herd immunity via vaccination. UM. We talked
Speaker 1: with Marie Paul Keeney, the research director at in Some,
Speaker 1: which is a French health science institute, and she's a
Speaker 1: former WHO official, and she told us a vaccine isn't
Speaker 1: a magic wand UM, it won't be a quick fix,
Speaker 1: she said, even if it is effective. And let's talk
Speaker 1: about efficacy, you know, particularly in the US, and you
Speaker 1: know what has been put out by the FDA, What
Speaker 1: are the requirements for how effective a vaccine has to
Speaker 1: be to be approved? So the f d A has
Speaker 1: said that, UM, they would give emergency authorization to a
Speaker 1: vaccine which is fifty effective, which means that it's what
Speaker 1: it sounds like, it could work in half of people.
Speaker 1: And the factor at play there is that less effective
Speaker 1: a vaccine is, the more people need to take it
Speaker 1: in order to protect the population. As a whole. And
Speaker 1: so this is one of these um kind of wild cards.
Speaker 1: You know, we won't know how long it will take
Speaker 1: to vaccinate enough people to really protect the population until
Speaker 1: we know how effective these vaccines that are in final
Speaker 1: tests right now actually turn out to be. And that
Speaker 1: raises an issue of trust. Many Americans have said they
Speaker 1: may not trust the first COVID nineteen vaccines that are available,
Speaker 1: or may not be willing to take a vaccine at all.
Speaker 1: So what needs to happen, in your view, to convince
Speaker 1: Americans to be vaccinated. Yeah, that's that's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: I mean, probably some pretty good pr some good marketing. UM.
Speaker 1: We interviewed somebody who compared, you know, the situation to
Speaker 1: past vaccination campaigns, you know, back in the day when
Speaker 1: Elvis was getting vaccinated on TV in order to get
Speaker 1: people to take a polio vaccine. UM. You know, reluctance
Speaker 1: has been shown um to be high, and some in
Speaker 1: some surveys people are are a little bit let's say,
Speaker 1: some people are waiting to see, you know, what the
Speaker 1: what the results will be for the vaccines that are
Speaker 1: being tested. So you've highlighted a number of issues that
Speaker 1: even if and when a vaccine is available. As you say,
Speaker 1: it's not a magic wand the risk of COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: will not just go away immediately. So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about timelines. You know, in terms of
Speaker 1: a best case scenario, what would need to happen to
Speaker 1: significantly lower the risk of COVID nineteen and realistically, how
Speaker 1: soon do you think that's that's achievable. So we actually
Speaker 1: went to a consulting company based in London called air
Speaker 1: Affinity to crunch some of these numbers. So, according to
Speaker 1: their calculations, in order to vaccinate enough people in the
Speaker 1: US to achieve HERD immunity through vaccination by mid July,
Speaker 1: the government would need for all six vaccines that it
Speaker 1: has purchased in advance to succeed. So all six of
Speaker 1: these would have to work and be safe, and it
Speaker 1: would need to get all of the optional extra allocations
Speaker 1: that are in those purchase deals as well. Um, So
Speaker 1: each of these deals, there's kind of a base level
Speaker 1: of vaccine and the deal, and then there's an optional
Speaker 1: extra amount and so the government, the US government would
Speaker 1: need to get to that base level and then they
Speaker 1: would also need to get the optional x STRA amount
Speaker 1: and then obviously all six vaccines would have to work.
Speaker 1: And if all of those things can happen, sort of
Speaker 1: a perfect case scenario, depending on how well how well
Speaker 1: the vaccine works, of course, they could potentially have quelled
Speaker 1: the virus by mid July of next year. Now, if
Speaker 1: let's say only four of the six vaccines are approved,
Speaker 1: and that would actually be pretty good. You know, in
Speaker 1: drug development, things are not guaranteed to work, and so
Speaker 1: it's not unreasonable to think that only four could be approved.
Speaker 1: Um and then then let's say production and supply run
Speaker 1: into some issues, so maybe those are each about lower
Speaker 1: than expected. Then just based on those things, the US
Speaker 1: could see delays in achieving that HERD immunity level That
Speaker 1: would run into the second quarter of according to these calculations.
Speaker 1: So there's a broad band of potential timelines and really
Speaker 1: a lot of factors at play. I mean, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about lowering the risk of COVID nineteen, is there
Speaker 1: a threshold? Is there an actual number which we're measuring
Speaker 1: that by. So one way to look at that would
Speaker 1: be how many people need to be immune in society
Speaker 1: in order for the virus not to spread? And who
Speaker 1: has said that number is probably about sixty or seventy percent.
Speaker 1: So you need sixty or seventy of people that have
Speaker 1: immunity for the virus not to spread. And you know,
Speaker 1: one way to achieve that would be for those people
Speaker 1: to have gotten sick, but obviously that's not ideal because
Speaker 1: then you're running into potentially very large numbers of people
Speaker 1: who are getting very sick. Um. So when we talk
Speaker 1: about that sixty to seventy threshold, we're generally talking about, Okay,
Speaker 1: sixty to seventy of people have been vaccinated and they
Speaker 1: have immunity that way, okay. So you know, we've been
Speaker 1: largely focusing on this timeline as it were to the
Speaker 1: US and in terms of access, in terms of distribution
Speaker 1: that might differ in other countries. And I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you had looked into just what different scenarios we
Speaker 1: might be seeing in other countries versus the U S
Speaker 1: when we talk about lowering this risk and and maybe
Speaker 1: even a potential timeline. So this is such a multi
Speaker 1: prompt question to unpack. The US will probably have more
Speaker 1: access to vaccine than many countries in the world, just
Speaker 1: because it's a wealthy country. It's a country that has
Speaker 1: already put a lot of money into finding these vaccines,
Speaker 1: and it has advanced purchase deals for vaccines. There was
Speaker 1: an ox FAN study that came out last month that
Speaker 1: found that wealthy nations that represent just of the world's
Speaker 1: population already have essentially cornered more than half of the
Speaker 1: promised doses of leading vaccine candidates. So they already tied
Speaker 1: up more than half of the capacity of vaccines that
Speaker 1: are being developed in advanced purchase deals, which leaves the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the world's population um looking to get
Speaker 1: access to vaccine probably later. So that's one factor is
Speaker 1: that the US, by virtue of wealth, is actually in
Speaker 1: pretty good shape in terms of getting access to vaccine.
Speaker 1: The other factor, of course, is that you can achieve
Speaker 1: some level of safety and social reopening by controlling the
Speaker 1: virus through other methods before vaccine is present, and so
Speaker 1: there are countries that are really doing more with testing, tracing,
Speaker 1: mask wearing, all of these kinds of really boring, unsexy
Speaker 1: basic public health measures that have been shown in some
Speaker 1: countries to really work well against the virus. Is there
Speaker 1: anything that either the US government should be doing or
Speaker 1: or Americans can be doing to try and bring about
Speaker 1: this best case scenario in terms of lowering the risk
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen by July. Is there anything we can
Speaker 1: be doing right now? Work should be doing right now.
Speaker 1: So there are things that can be done on a
Speaker 1: government level and on an individual level. Um On the
Speaker 1: government level, the w h O is urging all governments
Speaker 1: to invest in testing to promote mask wearing. And I
Speaker 1: also just want to mention treatments. There are treatments that
Speaker 1: are being developed for the virus and new treatment strategies,
Speaker 1: and I talked to one company CEO from Novartist yesterday actually,
Speaker 1: who said that he thinks that in the next year,
Speaker 1: doctors will slowly refine these treatments. They'll figure out better
Speaker 1: ways to treat people, figure out when to use certain medicines.
Speaker 1: And that also will be a mitigating measure to ensure
Speaker 1: that if people do get sick, they're able to get
Speaker 1: better quicker. That was not only risk. And that's it
Speaker 1: for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from
Speaker 1: one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please
Speaker 1: leave us a review and a rating. On Apple podcasts
Speaker 1: or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners
Speaker 1: find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced
Speaker 1: by Tophah. Foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson.
Speaker 1: Today's main story was reported by Naomi Kresky. Original music
Speaker 1: by Leo Sidran. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi.
Speaker 1: Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: The Brook the Las