COVID-19 Numbers Have Come Down, Paz Says

Business Week on iTunes, SoundCloud, bl Bloomberg dot com. You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio every weekday, or watch us on YouTube by searching Bloomberg Global News. We're going to talk about the convention that the Democratic National Convention happened this week and look ahead to next week's Republican National Convention. But you know, clearly, if you watch it all, you saw that we are still in the midst of a

massive medical and healthcare crisis in this country. It is worth remembering, even amid more positive economic news and certainly a market that's very enthusiastic. So let's check in on the virus. Get the latest, especially from outside our little bubble here in the Tri state area. Doctor Harold Pauses with us, the CEO of Wexterner Medical Center, Chancellor of Health Affairs at Ohio State University. He joins us from

the Buckeye State. So Dr Pause, really nice to have you back with us, so help us understand where we are. What's it like on the ground where you are. Thank you very much, Jason, I'm delighted to be back. So you know, in Ohio we're seeing a leveling off in the in the Columbus area of the number of patients that are being hospitalized. We were at our peak in in mid April, and we've seen those numbers uh slowly come down. We still have COVID positive patients in the hospital,

and we're certainly seeing them in the clinical sites. But the good news is we're nowhere near our peak, and that's important. And is it also about not only about numbers coming down? Certainly in states like yours and other places, we've certainly seen it come down dramatically. Dr paulse In in New York, But is it also about compared to where we were, maybe even just a month ago, we are we've started to really figure out ways to treat patients who come down with coronavirus so that they may

get sick, but we can keep them alive. Yeah, and and that's another important point. Um. Among the patients that are hospitalized, we're seeing fewer patients in the intensive care unit setting on ventilators and that's really important. And there are a number of things that have been have been used over the past several months that we've learned a lot around dessevere, which is the anti viral drug that

we can give intravenously. UM has been added. We're using a steroid drug called dex and method zone prone posturing so that patients are put on their abdomens as a on their backs and given high flow oxygen so they don't have to go on mechanical ventilation. And UM. There are there have been efforts to use convalescent plasma as well, and that I know there continues to be research looking

at how effective that is. But all these different approaches as they come together, mean that we're coming up with more and more effective ways to help patients that become critically ill with the virus. And and of course all the things that we're doing on the ground to prevent the spread and that's incredibly important, getting everybody to wear a mask two socially distant and to wash their hands as as frequently as they can, not touching their eyes, ears, nose,

or mouth, because you want to stop the spread. That's the first step is blocking the spread, which gets the overall numbers down. So Dr Paus talked to us about rapid testing because I feel like that is something that's really comes to the four this week. There's a lot of I think in this he has an optimism around that that even came up last night in former Vice President Joe Biden's speech around what he would do, Uh if he were elected? Where are we how effective? What

should we be thinking about when it comes to rapid testing. Yeah, so there's a lot of progress being made and testing and we're looking for the results to show how effective these new forms of testing are. Let me just give you a little bit of background on this. So what we were using up until now primarily is what's called viral RNA detection. So the genetic code and a virus is different than in people and people in the DNA.

In this particular virus, it's RNA, And what we're looking for is the signature RNA for this virus that causes COVID nineteen and you do that on the machine called a PCR machine Plumerase chain reaction machine, that's the gold standard. We set that up at the Ohio State Western Artical Center ten machines and we could do up to tests the day, but it takes time. It takes it takes more than than fifteen minutes. But then again it is

highly sensitive for the virus and highly specific. We estimate that our test at Ohio State wester has over sensitivity rate to find the virus. So it's great, but you know it results on average take forty eight hours or so to get back to the patient, and we've all heard these stories of patients going into some places and it takes seven days, right, So that's a challenge. So newer, newer types of testing UM depend on something else, which

is called viral anergen detection. So instead of looking for the RNA that that the virus codes for, it's looking for an anergen on the surface of the virus. And this these tests can yield results within thirty minutes and without specialized instruments. This clearly, this is this is a public health issue, and it's really a matter of uh, doing all the things that we need to do with any epidemic or pandemic from a public health and a

a medical standpoint, And it's really about prevention. It's about diagnosis, as we were just talking about briefly a few minutes ago, and it's about effective treatments and part of that is having um the vaccines available to prevent the spread of this virus and to make sure that we can develop her immunity so that there m there is not going to be additional waves of this COVID nineteen virus spreading

through our communities. So but can I can I just follow because I do feel like the virus, though, as you know, has become rather political. We certainly saw it early on in terms of getting access to equipment for there being you know, um uh a message for the entire country and it's safe to say you know this better than we do that it definitely has, you know, made it more difficult for us to get ahead of

the virus because we were all kind of doing things differently. Yeah, So I can tell you that in Ohio, the governor of Ohio, Governor Dwine, has taken a very strong leadership role in all aspects of dealing with this pandemic, everything from being very clear about the need to wear a mask, about the programs around social distancing and UH ensuring that we can go out and do the things that we need to do in terms of testing and and then making sure we had things like reagents to run these

PCR machines I mentioned before, all the way to coordinating among the hospitals to deal with patients should there be a surge and these hospital facilities get stretched to their limitations. So it is exceptionally about about having appropriate leadership in place and taking that view at the very top all the way through to how we deliver care in our

little communities. So dr pause before we let you go talk to us about reopening Ohio State specifically, but also the advice that you're giving even lower down in the educational system as we think about K through twelve. Of course, well, we're spending a lot of time as you can imagine at Ohio State UM as we reopen the university, and we want to make sure that we're able to do that and to do it safely, and that of course means that we want to test our students as they

come back. We want to make sure that we de identify classes, so these large lecture classes that all of us know from when we were in college are not going to work right now, so that we do over distance learning, but smaller classes where we can have appropriate distancing.

Keep our students six feet apart, make sure they're wearing masks, make sure our faculty are wearing masks, particularly in areas like the medical school where they have to be physically present, or even in is like theater arts where we're in dance where they have to be in a class. You can't do that over your TV monitor. We want to make sure that we can continue to do these things,

but do them safely. And of course this has had an impact on some programs like athletics and result in some very difficult decisions that needed to be made to keep our students and our staff and our faculty stays. But we are all doing this with the notion that we're going to get through this thing. And you know, i'd like to tell you the precise day, um in the next year when this will all be done, but it will be done and we'll be on the other

side of it. And then We're going to get back to all the things that we used to do at the university to their fullest extent, but in the meantime without shutting down entirely. And that's what we want to avoid at all costs, is to have to shut down entirely. We want to do as much as we possibly can that we can do safely. Right all right, Well, uh,

we've run out of time. We'd love to have you back soon, because you are really at the nexus of so many things we're interested in when it comes to fighting this virus, the future of education, and as you alluded to, Buckeye football, Thank goodness, gracious, no big tent football. Yikes.

Who are listening to Bloomberg Business Week, Well, when you think about what's going on in the world, and when the name Steve Bannon comes into the headlines like it did yesterday with a vengeance, there is one thing you want to read, and that's anything that Josh Green writes. And we're fortunate to have that as the centerpiece of our political conversation today. Joining us Amanda Colson Hurley. She

is Politics editor for Bloomberg Business Week. She edited this piece and Joel Webber, of course, the editor Bloomberg Business Week. He joins us from Massachusetts. So Joel, I was so happy when this hit the wire because it's what you want to know. It is what's going on, and a reminder of who Steve Bannon is, that's right, and and uh, you know, Josh Green, for the is that don't know him. Um wrote a book that is very much about Steve Bannon and sort of the power that um, he's been

able to wield on the right. And so that's called The Devil's Bargain. UM. And I had kind of nudged

Amanda earlier in the day. Josh is obviously a very busy man right now with an election around the corner, and we've got him on all kinds of stories, and I was like, just you know, by the way, just make sure that you remember to nudge Josh because we saw this this Bannon headline flash that he had been arrested, and I was like, oh, boy, of all the people in the world, like I desperately want to read right now, Josh Green just made himself that number one person. Um.

And so Amanda, uh, and Josh got it done. Um, Amanda,

what what what's ultimately Josh's take in the story. Yeah, So Josha's take is that Bannon's indictment sort of represents the end of this this arc of UM, a political project that Bannon a kind of big and when he was advising Trump before, you know, when Trump was campaigning in twenty sixteen, that it was really Bannon who has this vision of combining a sort of UM, anti immigrant nationalism with economic populism UM to uh kind of come up with this UM what he thought was like a

winning UM, you know, multi generational kind of winning formula for the Republican Party. UM. And I think at the time of you know, Republican Party leaders were really not sold on that. Uh. They really thought that they had to start to pivot to the center a little bit more, UM, try to win over more moderate voters, UM, try to make more inroads with UM minority groups. UM. But Bannon, Uh, Bannon's vision or insight proved to be correct in you know,

Trump won, UM, but uh, you know Bannon, UM. So Bannon kind of thought that, uh, you know, this was going to be the beginning of a grand political project that would unfold from there. UM. You know what actually happened was that UM, he pretty quickly alienated himself, uh, you know from other people in the White House. He left the White House, he kind of tried to drum up a kind of global nationalist political movement. UM that has so far, you know, uh not yielded too much,

at least for him. Um. And Uh, this you know, recent indictment kind of shows that he was not able to deliver on uh, you know, a key promise of that vision that he shaved for Trump, which was the wall. Um. You know, this was an effort to privately fund and build the border wall. Um. And it collected uh something like twenty five million dollars in donations from hundreds of

thousands of people. Uh. And the allegation is that Bannon and and three others um kind of youth a nonprofit and I think a shell company to uh to funnel some of that money, you know, to themselves personally. Um. And so Bannon, you know, this represents arguably, you know the end of his political projects. But notably, Trump has also not been able to deliver on some of these things either. Um. You know, he has uh not built a great state, beautiful wall as he promised on a

campaign trail. Um. You know, it's difficult to argue that America is kind of great again. I mean with you know, his his tax cuts, uh, you know, benefited arguably the rich and not so much the kind of middle class uh as a Bannon I think, and Trump you know had hoped. Well, Amanda, that's what's really interesting. And I love just even the title you know that Josh puts it. You guys put on this at the end of you know, it may mean the end of Steve Bannon, maybe Trump too.

And it's interesting because, as you say, they laid out this platform, there were critical states of voters who bought into that platform and brought Trump to the White House. Come and yet now you know, first of all, we know Bannon and Trump aren't a pair anymore. And you're realizing that that political platform that got Trump to the White House, you know, um, isn't there. He didn't he didn't follow through. And then you do wonder about, Okay,

so what impact might that have come come November? Right, Well, I think that clearly remains to be seen. Um, there are certainly some things that I would guess, you know, Trump voters believe that he has delivered on. Um. I'm sure there uh, you know, he has put a lot of you know, conservative judges. Uh, he has made a lot of those appointments, and that was a really big you know that that was a really big factor I

think for a lot of people who voted for him. Um. So, I mean there are you know, other variables in this um but uh, certainly, um some of those I guess the kind of signature you might also almost call them bandonian kind of goals Uh from the twenty sixteen campaign. Uh do seem you know, do seem to be unfulfilled

at this point. Yeah. It's a really interesting reminder of how important he was, and especially on the eve of the Republican National Convention next week, Carol, Uh, a reminder of what we saw in and how integral to it Steve Bannon was. It's a great must read. Check it out online and on the Bloomberg terminal. Josh Green wrote it. Amanda Herley edited it. She's the politics editor for Bloomberg Business Week. She joined us, as did Joel Weber, the

editor or of Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Listended Bloomberg Business Week on this Friday. I guess say, listening Jason recently one morning, is I like to do to surveillance with Tom Keene and the Gang. Danny blanche Flower was on. He was talking about walk around economics, which I just wanted to hear more about. So in

today's Business Week Economics. Excited to have with us Professor of economics Danny blanch Flower from Dartmouth College, former Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member. He joins us on the phone from Hanover, New Hampshire. UM Professor blanch Flower, it is so nice to have you on. I love it when you're on with Keen in the game. You're so much fun. Um so much to talk about when it comes to the economy, And first up, I want

to talk about what's so important to the economy. Education, those in school, those who just graduated, you know, they're coming into a really tough workplace. Tell me about kind of what you're setting up for in the fall. Well with with there's a there's a number of things. I mean, I think there's there's two bits really to start us going the Third World three. The first is what are we doing about the kids my Dartmouth kids who graduated

in June and July of this year and others. How are they doing with all the people on the layoff, if you like, and the struggles in the job market. I just sawt today. Massachusetts has a nonempoint way to what So, what's happening to them? Um, particularly what's happening to kids who aren't going to college? What's happening to those folks? And in fact, it's not perhaps surprising that

we're seeing unrest in cities. Think about so the kids who left school, maybe they were high school dropper, what are they doing? What hope will work is there for them? And then the third group is obviously the kids who are going to college right now, UM and I taught class in the spring remote UM Dartmouth. We are supposed to have some of our freshmen coming back, although this week they put that back again, and old faculty like

me and we're staying home. So even though the students may be coming to the university, the faculty are not are not there. I mean, so this is obviously kind of chaotic, and I think the big implication we should think of Blumberg should be concerned about what's happening in the town's what's happening in the places you know, where the where the kids are on the street. But also if they're not going to print them, they're not going

to Harvard. I mean, think about Harvard, there's the whole institution, all the things around in Cambridge and around the universities in that in that great city. This is a really downward shock to spending and the good news that you were just giving you. Remember, these are lagging indicators. We're going to see a downward pressure in the next few weeks as the as we approached the elections. But this is all very complicated, but none of it's very good news.

Well indeeded that that gets us right to this whole notion of walk around economics that that Carol and I talked about, even on the very rare occasions that she and I leave our homes and go back to our office for for a day or two, the neighborhood around Bloomberg in the same way that you're talking about these college towns that are suffering, What is the way to measure that? How do you approach that in terms of really quantifying the net effect here? I mean, let's put

this in context. I mean, I was on the bank of England and well known these days, just saying a year ahead of things that, um, the data is looking really bad. My economics of walking about, talking to people, observing what I see was changing. So obviously some of it has to do with surveys that Bloomberg talks about. You talk about the p M eyes and you talk

about all sorts of things like that. But a lot of it is I think you walk around the streets of New York, you walk up with Hexington and what do you think you know the people you know and all these people sitting at home working. So I gave a story. I remember being in in England early in two thousand and eight and I was in a taxi cab driving down Oxford Street and the taxi driver said, I know who you are. He said, you've been talking

about the recession here. And he said, I've been driving up and down this this most busy street in Europe for thirty years around Christmas and he said I've seen something. He said, for the very first time, I've seen the shoppers are walking around and they don't have shopping bags. Well, well there's a great example, right, So we've Then a little bit later we suddenly start to see a big drop in spending, but the economics are walking about. It

is essentially what firms do all the time. It's market intelligence. It's looking at you walk down your streets. And in two thousand seven I was walking down the streets around here and businesses were closing. How of the main street at Dartmouth is basically half empty, So none of this has really picked up. So I think the economics are walking about is essentially what bloom Book is so good at.

It's market intelligence. It's looking at, well, what's happening to people, you know, what's happening to the people going through the toll booth, how many people are going through the t s A checks, what's happening to grub hub, what's happening to all these kinds of things. And the evidence from those is that it was very early showing slowing, and it's really not showing a great pick up in many

of the states that have seen more COVID. So it's about I think, being smart, and especially in the world where the normal survey indicators don't pick things up. So in the UK, the unemployment rate still hasn't moved from street point nine, even though there's ten million people on furloughed on benefits. So I think it's this period now you really have to switch your brain on and start to think what's really going on? And perhaps what I see on the street, I mean interesting, what do you

see on the street around Bloomberg see very quiet street? Well, you know what's what's wild to Danny, isn't I had to pop into the city for a medical appointment this morning, but it was like I flew in driving, which is unheard of at like eight in the morning, you know, And then even coming home, you know, I don't I'm not doing My husband's a little happy, but I'm not doing that, you know, normal walk, you know home after work, you know, shopping and stopping in stores. I mean, you're

just you're not. We're not always able to walk around so easily. Well, I think that's right, And I think to think about what Larry Cudlow has been saying, keep saying that there's a V shaped recovery. So what a V shaped recovery means is that you went down. I mean, remember,

we went out really really, really quickly. A V shaped recovery means that you're gonna recover just as quickly I mean, if what you said is true, which I'm sure it is, that throws the whole idea of a V shaped recovery on its head because we came down very fast and we're recovering very slowly, so a lot a V that might be an L. And then if the COVID spreading elsewhere, then the thing flattens out. But I think this is about what market folks do and what bloom Big is

so especially good at. It doesn't make sense. The numbers often coming out don't make sense. Yes, it's seeing in Europe today that retail sales have picked up, and the p M I have picked up and so on. So Danny, you were talking about a V shape recovery. You said, you know, our recovery right now is not very strong. It's very slow incoming. I've been reading about folks talking

about this K shaped recovery. We all keep talking about different letters and symbols, but this idea that parts of our economy are doing okay, And that's the upper part obviously of the K, and you know the lower part there are parts that aren't. So what do you what

do you think? What do what do you what kind of visibility do you feel like we have and what does it mean fore Well, obviously we have rather different experiences going on in some parts of the country, So I mean Hampshire, and I go back and forth Virginia, Hampshire and Vermont, and it's very there's very few cases there. But I think in a sense, the recovery, it's hard for people to know. And if people say, I know what the what the recovery is, I think the right

answer is to say that they have no idea. And obviously it depends upon a number of things. It depends on this virus and a vaccine, It depends upon what government do, what they do about masks, and whether they close things down, and whether the Treasury puts in money and the Congress paths is a deal. But I think the biggest thing, in many senses is sort of what we've been talking about. What do people do? Do people

change their spending paths? Yes, if you're in a job when you talked about you go to the shoe shop which has traditionally been there. Okay, it's open. But the issue is how much are they making, how many hours a week are they working. But even if people are in work, and are they actually making enough money and are and going forward, are they going to change their behavior um permanently? So the idea, yeah, the subway series isn't going to take place, but maybe for the next

five years. Is it going to be back to normal again? People suddenly going to say it's okay to go to sports events, to travel on the subway, and go to a store and go to restaurants and so on. So I think that's hard to know. But certainly some groups I assume I'm going to change their behavior, and certainly if you're in a place where COVID's spreading UM so,

I think the answer is it really does depend. But the idea trotted out by the government to say that, yeah, there's a great there's a V shaped recovery coming, I think what you can probably say the one thing we know that there isn't one the fat coming because of all the things you've talked about, and I think recovery will be slow. How do you know whether there's a second round or not. How do you know how people are going to change their behavior? What? What do we

know about what the Congress is going to do? Are they going to pass up three trillion dollar measure? Who is it going to impact? What are people going to do? So I think the answer is if anybody says, you know, I'm going to forecast LANs, I would say to them, all what you should do is say it really depends his fre scenarios and under these scenarios is what we do. Uh. And anybody who says anything different, I think is just lying.

So I think we're in a completely unknown world. And I think the big worry especially is what's going on in the labor market and how fearful of people about losing their jobs and what's happened to their incomes? Um, okay, I mean you know we yeah, we said create the unemployment numbers coming down, people are back to work. Well, what if you're back to work and you're make in half as many hours as you made before, That's going

to be very different. So I think, you know, I think we have to wait and watch and do the economics of walking about because the because the old stuff that we looked at is blindingly useless. It doesn't think you just you just have to be sensible and try and look at things and your k ship recovery. I mean, preservably things are pretty different in Maine Vermont, New Hampshire than they are in Florida, Texas, Arizona and some of them some of the Midwest rural state well and Danny,

and in six weeks time, who knows, right? Uh? And before we let you go, I just have to ask you, and this is a big question that I'm fortunally gonna have to answer in ninety seconds, but how much do you worry about the fact that the K shape also indicates that those at higher levels of income and higher levels of education are doing okay and those at lower levels of income and lower levels of education and are

not in that gap is only widening. And only got about a minute, Danny, Yeah, because I mean, well, obviously we've seen that impact in the in the virus in COVID. It's impacted groups differentially. When the central bank steps in and helps asset holders, that widens inequality. And obviously what we've seen at the moment is I mean, the people out on the streets, the dissenting about about rising in

a quality level. So I think going forward we have to be mindful of this and mindful of that, you know, bring everybody along with you. And in these tough times, I mean, we have to be mindful of that. And as I said, let's worry particularly about the young. We can't leave the young behind. And I think you know, those are issues which you have to grapple with um and going forward they're probably going to be even bigger issues. Yeah, it does feel like that, all right. What a treat

for us to catch up with you. Thank you so much. Danny Blanchflower, professor of economics up at Dartmouth College. That's where he joined us from Hanover, New Hampshire. Lovely Hanover, New Hampshire. Some great insights in a in a will reminder. And I think this is why Carol, you and I to some extent, to the point that we can walk around that any of us can walk around or drive around. We see a world and an economy with our eyes that does not reflect what we see on a screen

every day. No it doesn't exactly. This whole idea of walk about is just I think brilliant And you're right, Jason, it's again, I think explains so much of the disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street. So I gotta say I'm just donn a high getting some time to talk a lot of economics with Danny Blanche Flower at Dartmouth. That was a lot of fun. Journal. Yeah, but you let me drive, No, no, no, honey, please, I'll vel I want to drive, Just drive the questions and try. Yeah,

the Drive to the Globe on Bloomberg Radio. All right, it's time for the Drive to the clothes. Excited to have with us Erica Cloud, Managing director of Technology Equity Portfolio Manager Rick Jennison associates so much. We don't know her. She's new to the program, Carol, but I like her already because A she was a chip analyst and be she went to Georgetown University. So God, like, this is all this is all going great here. It's gonna start emailing on a Friday, and I'm just gonna tell I

was just gonna say hello to my fellow Joya. I know, I love it. I also think we have not to get too deep into this. We'll talk about this offline. I think you work with a old classmate of mine. She'dle mita um from Georgetown. So who is a very very good friend of mine from Well, I can't go to a public Yeah, exactly, We're gonna go out and get a call if I'll be here, Guys, you go ahead, So Erica, talk to us about tech right now, because we talk about it a lot and it's just been

an amazing ride. Why I mean, aside from like the big cat big cat names, it feels like it's more complicated story here. You know, there's a lot to unpack here in talking about the transformation to the digital economy. UM. What we're seeing is every industry being impacted by the use of technology, whether it's telemedicine, whether it's your retailers, whether it's your traditional technology companies who are using artificial

intelligence to advance the development of their own projects. So really that every UM company is a technology company these days. So when you see you know, it's funny are Dave Wilson who does a chart of the day and he consistently, you know, looks at the technology sector and how much

it really moves the market, makes up the market. You know, all of us who are in index funds for one case where we have a lot of exposure to these names as a result, are you comfortable with that or do you feel like it's getting a little overdone and we need to be a little bit cautious here. Well, you know, I think stock selection is always very important, but there are some key sub segments that I think are still in very very early days. One example would

be tele medicine. Right now, digital health is about a forty billion dollar business that's growing in the mid teams. There are many sub segments of that that offer a lot of interesting opportunities for growth, whether it's a patient who can monitor their glucose on their own, or even patients who are for the first time of seeing their doctors over the web. Um For example, before the pandemic, only one percent of Medicare patients had visited with their

doctors online. Of Medicare patients have had a visit with their doctors since school of it. So when you think about this world that we're living in right now, Eric, and this goes back to a conversation we had with the well known economist up at the Art Myth earlier in the show. He was talking about the sort of walk about economy and the or the walk about sort of economic research that we all do, even if it's

virtual these days. But you know, one of the things that you see in that lack of people walking around candidly is everybody's working from home, especially you know, fortunate people like us, and I'm guessing you're in the same situation able to do your work remotely. It feels like this is something that's going to be a fundamental change in how business is conducted. How does that play through to an investment thesis, Well, I think there's there. There

are two factors here. First of all, I agree with you completely that whether you're working or you're studying, there is going to be much more of that that goes on in the home. And there are some positive implications from that that we're already seeing. UM from workers they have more frequent meetings with their colleagues online, they're able to keep projects on time by using online software tool UM, and they're able to track progress with customers using those

online tools. For students UM, they're able to check on their grades, check on their assignments, collaborate with other students. These are all really positive aspects of working or learning online. Having said that, I don't think that that is going to replace human to human interaction. So right now, I think we've seen the pendulums from a little bit um far to the left. But I think this certainly is going to be a trend here to stay So what

do you think about the trend? I mean e commerce, lant man, we've been all doing it, you know, but I do feel like it got kind of a kick in the pants because of the pandemic and folks that maybe weren't ordering groceries online or weren't doing kicking the pants in a good way though, right, kicking pants in a kick start? Right, All right? Maybe people don't think kicking the pants is great, but I don't know. If you do, you know, you get kick in the pants,

you get people to kind of do something. Even more so, I wonder what you think are the lasting impact because I do feel like retail, which we've been overstored, overmauled, you know, we're seeing that, you know, finally those companies go bankrupt. I feel for them, I feel for the people. But we knew it was coming, and it certainly was, um you know, accelerated as a result of the virus. But what do you what do you think how does

that impact you know, the retail stuff, what stays with us? Well, I think retail is one example of a bigger trend that I think you're getting at, and that is this notion of what this buzzword that we hear all the time. Big data, which are these very large UM data sets that can be analyzed to find patterns, and big data is very important not just for e commerce commerce, but

for so many applications UM. What big data is able to do is able to determine root causes of failures UM and then basically detect those issues real time and deal with them real time. They can, as you pointed out with e commerce, they're able to based on using big data, generate coupons at the point of sale based on what they're seeing real time in the customers buying habits. UM. You can risk analysis analyze UM for insurance companies real

time in minutes. And then the most important thing I would say for so many companies is using big data to detect fraudulent behavior before it affects an organization. So that trend that ability to not only have the engines to process big data, but then also the companies that are writing the software to do something with that big data, whether it's for e commerce or robotics or automation or security. That's really where I would focus my attention to find

the greatest opportunities in terms of investment. All Right, well, we really appreciate the time Erica Cloud, Managing Director of Technology Equity Portfolio Manager over at Tennis and Associates Saxa say how to sheet for me? Um really good to catch up with her and look at the world has changed in many ways and technology. It's not just the big cap story. I think it is pervasive and it is disrupting everything. It's not just you know, be ordering a bunch of T shirts, but it kind of I

got a link for custom made T shirts. Did you do it? I'm going to come on. Why wouldn't I? I cannot wait. Thanks so much for listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, Southcloud, Bloomberg dot com, or wherever you get your podcasts. And of course you can always listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube by searching Bloomberg Global News