Delta Variant May Warrant a New Covid Vaccine

the variant. So let's get to it. Because when I read in this morning, and when I look at the Bloomberg right now, the most read stories in the past eight hours, seven out of twenty have to do with the delta variant and COVID. Six of them are related to this Bloomberg intelligence research. Let's get to it. With Bloomberg News is h Drew Armstrong. He's a senior head editor for US Healthcare and he joins us in our Interactive Broker studio. I can't read my own writing. That's

really bad. It's been that kind of a day. This research is pretty phenomenal. Reading in um Drew I'm not surprised because we're all kind of nervous and trying to understand the delta variant. Tell us a little bit about what we need to understand about it right now, Yeah, I think you know a couple of kind of just fundamental points. We know that these viruses evolve over time, and some of these ways that they involve can be

you know, not particularly consequential virus. Yeah, everything. These virus viruses are mutating every single time they replicate in your body. They are a highly highly highly you know, they muted very fast up until the time. Very few of these mutations actually matter. A lot of them make the virus so it doesn't even function properly, and you know it just you know, this is random chance. You're basically spinning

the Roulette wheel every time from a genetic standpoint. But some of them do matter, and we have these things that are called variants of concern. The delta variant is kind of the the you know, one of the latest and greatest of these. And if you're a you know, viiologist or epidemiologists, one of the things you're talking about

is this concept of vaccine escape. Does something about the virus change in a way that it makes it so that the immune response that's kind of sitting there in your body ready and waiting is no longer you know, effective,

or is no longer as effective. And keep in mind, all this stuff is kind of on a spectrum, you know, against you know, a certain type of mutation of the virus, and then does that allow the virus to you know, that version that mutation and strain of the virus to kind of spread and be more fit and capable in a in a in a in a population. And so that's really what you're worried about now, you know. The good news when we talk about that is it. You know,

just as viruses can evolve, so can vaccines. I mean, we come up with new flu vaccines every single year. You know, there's already been talking about will we need some kind of you know, variant booster for uh for for this particular coronavirus, And so I think that's a discussion that's underway right now. And looking you know, how good is the protection and do we need to tweak things in some way or another to attack this particular variant or what is the virus gonna look like in

the future. Can a variant in a virus. You talk about a spectrum. So can someone who's gotten a vaccine, though, I mean, it can affect all of us differently, right, even as a mutation or is it can say this is the mutation, this is how it's going to affect you. That's that's exactly right. I mean, I think the way to think about it is that this is not a binary question where a vaccine either you know, works or

it doesn't work. Um, It's more of a question of, well, okay, this vaccine, let's say, was protective you know, against symptomatic illness or you know, anything anything worse than mild illness in the original strain. Well, the strain evolves, and now that vaccine is protects still, which is still good, but you know, it may be less protective or it maybe that for example, hey, you have a larger number of people who you know, they get they get infected, but

their infections are very mild. I just had a friend in Los Angeles, he had both do as a fiser. Back in April, he got COVID. He doesn't know what varying it was, but you know, I mean it wasn't He was sick and it wasn't fun, but he was over written a week or something that wasn't in the hospital. No,

it wasn't not in the hospital. And so I think, you know, and and who knows if this is the variant or some original strain, But I think, you know, we really do have to think about this as a spectrum of protection where it's never going to disappear entirely, it's never gonna be perfect. And where are you on that on that range, you know, both against protecting against infection entirely, protecting against more severe diseases, and so on

and so forth. How quickly are they tracking all the data about the variant to understand whether or not the vaccines are going to kind of stand up against it as it continues to mutate, like well, they know instantaneously because they're tracking populations or will there be a lag or no, This stuff takes a while. And that's one of the real challenges here is that viruses mutate faster

than vaccines evolve. And so one of the reasons that I think the flu vaccine tends to be relatively you know, I mean, it's it works, but you know, it's obviously people still get the flu. It tends to be about sixty protective is something you're looking for generally with the flu. That's kind of what you can expect there. Part of the reason is that you know, when you're making vaccine, and you're making vaccine and a mass scale, as we saw with the covid vaccines, you're doing this months and

months in advance. And so with flu vaccines, for example, you're trying to predict, hey, what strains of the flu are going to be circulating most predominantly by the time you know, we have to They have to guess a year or so out and say, okay, we think it's going to be these four strains. And sometimes they guess really well, and the flu vaccine is great. Sometimes they

don't guess so well. Man, it's only moderately protective. The same dynamic may eventually come to play with this, but we don't want that miss on covid right right exactly, And so you know, I mean, listen, the flu and covid are very different viruses. It's it's worth keeping in mind. You know, this is you know, a virus that it may be that we you know that one. You know that a vaccine these m R and a vaccines, they

might be very effective. It might be that, you know, if you end up doing a booster shot or something like that, you end up with very long lasting protection,

you know, against almost all strains of US. I think this is a question that is one it's it's being looked at, but it's still an open one exactly on whether we truly will need a new type of vaccine or a slightly modified vaccine, if we'll need a booster, or if we'll just be you know, say, hey, we've got against all the strains out there with the MR and A vaccines. That's pretty good. We don't know if we can get any better by giving more shots or

modifying the shots. So we don't know yet about a booster Like I keep thinking, do I have to circle some date on a calendar? No, I think we really don't know. I know, you know, Fiser has been talking it up, the US government has been talking it down. I think the reality is that, you know, the question is still out there from a data standpoint in terms

of you know, how much does immunity wayne. The immunity has a lot of different parts to it, you know, is it just these antibodies which are kind of the like live active defenses that are circulating versus kind of the immune memory cells that are a little bit more deminant but a little bit more permanent. You know, I think we really do not know yet exactly what long term immunity for these vaccines looks like, because you know, they've not been out there for that long. They've only

been in people's bodies for around a year. I mean, you know, so, yeah, exactly, So we don't know, and I think that's very, very important. There's gonna be a lot of data that is going to come out over the next couple of months. Someone's to go in one direction, someone's going to go in another. What I would encourage people to do is, you know, try to take the totality this information as it comes out, because you're going to see headlines at the point one direction and then

owns the point the other. It's not that it is changing back for it. This is the argument of science happening live in real time. You have been covering all of this stuff in real time, and I know how exhausted you must be over the past year and a half. Well, we start to see, though l A wear a mask. We have conversations here in the office, like throwing a mask it doesn't hurt. How are we as the general public supposed to read that when you also say these

vaccines are really effective and they do protect us. I think the mask debate in this country is really interesting to watch. I don't think anybody really wants to go back, you know. I mean, if you're listening, you know someone who's vaccinated, Like, I hate wearing a mask. It sucks. Do you wear it? I do on planes, on the subway and things like that. I wear where I have to wear it. Um and I wear in a couple of situations, you know, when I'm around people I don't know,

or something like that. You know, yes, but not very often, and like and I don't want to you know, I don't want to have to go back to that. It is you, it is not. It's not something I want to keep having to do. And so I think and and and trust me, I'm very much on the like

pro public health measure side. As I follow this stuff and I wore my mask diligently, I think it's going to be very hard from a political standpoint and a public health messaging standpoint to reenact mass mandates again because you know, like it's hard to go back to that world for people, especially if they've been vaccinated um, you know, and people are gonna have a reset risk calibration. I would expect a little bit and and figure out what

their level of comfort is. I feel like we keep hearing um drew increasingly from global leaders that in order to get through this, we have to have a global solution and there's going to be sharing of information, sharing

of data. It isn't really happening, is it. No? I mean, you know, I think one of the really challenging parts of the vaccine roll out within the context of the pandemic is that you've seen programs like COVACS that's the w h O and GAV organized program to kind of buy vaccines and distribute them, you know, equit will be across the globe, but really lead you know, trying to figure out a way of getting vaccines to lower incombinations.

It has just abysmally, you know, it started, has been a busmoine has has not worked, has gotten very few vaccines, has done you know, has not been able to get them to lower income countries, particularly in Africa where you know, listen to people are complaining about a fifty percent vaccination rate in the United States. It's one percent in in Africa, and they're having death spike in those places. We need

to be concerned about these hotspots. Like I think there are people listening, like that's far away from me, but I also remember back in December January, where like China, that's far away from me, it's never going to touch us, And here we are. Yeah, I mean, you know, listen, unvaccinated populations are pretty effective breeding grounds for new variants.

And we've seen what happens when very you know, variant evolves that is successful and kind of leaping around a vaccine or is a very effective hitting you know, unvaccinated or vulnerable populations. And so yeah, I mean, just from like a purely selfish standpoint, it's a good thing. Like we all get on airplane to travel around the world and you know, go to these places or people come from these places, and you know, virus doesn't really care

about income or borders or anything like that. We've got the delta variant is much more contagious, right, That's certainly something we hear. I was talking with a doctor yesterday and they said, yeah, but it's not like your outcome is worse, meaning if you've got the vaccine, you're likely to get through it. Are we likely to get to a stage, especially since a big part of the world is still not vaccinated, they are available hosts to continue

the variations uh in covid. Are we likely to get to a mutation that is not only more contagious but more a killer. It's hard to know. I mean, I think one of the general rules of viruses, you know, in a big picture sense, is that like a very effective, a virus that kills its host very quickly is not a very good virus because it makes it harder for you know, it makes it harder for her to spread.

I mean, a bola is really really scary, but as a virus attends to the reason it tends to say relatively self contained is because it kills people too quickly before they can, you know, end up walking around and spreading it to lots and lots of people. It's very

scary for healthcare workers. Is very scary if it's happening in your village, you know, but there's much less risk that you know, someone gets a bowla and then has a mind you know, you don't have a mild case of a bowla that you're walking, you know, walking around with infecting lots and lots of other people. So, um, you know, yeah, I mean this this, this question of

you know, the global issue is a is a real one. Um. And and you know the failure of of richer nations to effectively contribute to kovacs in other ways, you know, and really help push vaccinations in in in other places. I mean that is that is meaningful. And then you

mentioned some of this data sharing stuff. I mean, I think another real issue that is going to come up over and over again and is going to be I I hope a point of consideration after this, you know pandemic ends is you know, we do need probably a better system of surveillance and monitoring and fast action from a global standpoint, because I think you really saw and have seen over the course of this pandemic. You know what happens when information when countries don't share information um

as as rap with lye as they might otherwise. Um, you know, and now we're trying to track variants and you know, I mean that is still system that's kind of in its infancy in terms of you know, growing up and having global genetic surveillance of these viruses. When you wake up every morning and there's a ton of headlines when it comes to COVID and the vaccines and the variants, I mean, what is it that you're always

looking for? Top of mind? I think, you know, we're kind of at the point in this where it's you know, I personally am really more thinking about the kind of the long outcome here. I think there's you know, there's new fresh headlines every day, you know, really, but though you know, the main thing I think we're keeping an eye on right now is, you know, where are people getting sick and why are they getting sick? Um? You know, and be they vaccinated or unvaccinated? What do we really know? Um?

And what can we find out more to learn and add information about, you know, how effective these vaccines are,

how the virus is evolving. I mean, those are the things that we're really paying attention to because all that points to a time when you know, what is the you know, hopeful end point of this of this pandemic mick, you know, if there is one, or do we just end up kind of in a long tail endemic situation where we're dealing with this virus and living with it in some way or another for the rest of our lives, which is very possible. Yes, all right, gonna leave with her.

Thank you so much. It's what I wanted to do today. So thank you so much. I know you're a busy guy, Drew Armstrong. He's our senior editor for US healthcare right here at Bloomberg News. Check him out his work on the Bloomberg Terminal, also at Bloomberg dot com. To thank you so much.