Inside Pfizer’s Vaccine Distribution

You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. We talked about New York City receiving its first delivery of the one J and J vaccine. But you are seeing Tim vaccine manufacturers facing a global shortage of raw materials that actually came from the head of the world's biggest vaccine maker and also the World Health Organization. So you know here we are. You're in. Vaccines are rolling out, but now we're trying

to find the vaccinators and the places to do it. Yes, we've learned over the past few months it is very complicated to roll out of vaccine globally, not to mention just develop bit in such a short period of time. G. G. Grand Ball is Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Joins us right now on the phone from Baltimore. GG, thanks for joining us. UM, what are you watching right now? What is the most important thing when it comes to

the pandemic recovery? To keep an eye on the vaccination rates? For sure? UM? They right now we have in the US, we have three vaccines with the use authorization. Hopefully we'll have more globally. There's a few others. Um. It's it's really just about trying to get as many people vaccinated so that um, we can Um that plus masks and social distancing spread the stop to spread of this virus. We're doing a pretty good job though, right, I mean

the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. As of yesterday, we hit just over two million vaccine doses given per day according to the seven day rolling average. That's that's a pretty pretty good rollout, right. Oh, it's really so encouraging to see, um. And and we definitely it couldn't happen at a better time, because you know, we have as you know these variants that are that are emerging that we're keeping, that we're tracking more diligently now UM, and some of them are

more transmissible. So we really do need to get people vaccinated as well as stick with the other stuff UM to be able to stop the spread of this virus. So g G, this is what I want to know. You guys, you scientists, You understand kind of viruses, what they can do, how they can mutate, the variants that can come out there, and then you've got on the

other side the vaccine that's fighting it. So what is kind of the mix between how quickly we have to get x percentage of our population vaccinated to stay ahead of the variants. And I know it's never like black and white here and very clear, but tell me kind

of what you are keeping an eye on here. Well, there's a lot of people who UM, you know, all of these things and models because there's so many variables to be able to project how many people need to be vaccinated to be able to keep variants of bay etcetera. And we have the whole population of children that are not even right now being planned to get vaccinated UM, and so you know it's going to take a while before we get anything towards what we've been you know,

talking about her immunity or anything like that. UM. But so I I just UM would like to see the demand UM and supply match up a little better for a vaccine and UM and so that you know, people pharmacies are more aggressively advertising it and trying to get those people who are hesitant to sign up, and and to show that these vaccines are have a good safety record and that they have really amazing efficacy to be able especially to prevent hospitalizations and deaths based on the

current rate on the modeling that you're seeing, When is that equilibrium going to to be reached? When is demand not going to exceed supply? UM? I I mean, so the President UM said that every adult should be able to be vaccinated in the US by May. UM. That would be fantastic. I'm also waiting, UM. But then we were going to have kids, UM, and there are trials that are starting up. I'm hoping that that will be before the end of the year that kids can start

being vaccinated UM. Hopefully much neoner than that. UM. And then of course kids have to be vaccinated. Forgive me for saying that. But I'm just curious. Do we have to have kids vaccinated in order to get hurt immunity? And it is that is that got to be part of the process. Um, I don't I think that that disease could be uh stopped in other ways. I mean, we know that we can stop spread of disease with you know, good ventilation, masks, etcetera. Um, and and these

things will change over time. But um, but I think it's just pure public health and etcetera. Would be great to have kids be vaccinated so that if there are any long term effects of the disease, that we're limiting that. Um in children? How do you do clinical trial when it comes to a vaccine on a on a child? I mean these are people who are under eighteen and have to get consent from their parents obviously, but how does that work? I mean that sounds very complicated and sticky. Well, Um,

kids participate in clinical trials all the time. UM and uh and so yes does involve consent for their parents? And um, there are I mean not just this uh these vaccines, but all kinds of medical treatments. UM. Where the balance are sometimes kids uh, you know, especially older kids really enjoy participating in it and UH and giving back and participating in the science. So it's something everyone

can do. UM. I have my one of my kids in a in a brain study to study the team the teen brain for for ten years, and so it's kind of fun and interesting testing. How important is it that we continue to do testing for the virus? Yeah, it's really important, and strangely, for a lot of different reasons,

people are still trying to figure out. Testing has been down recently, so UM we need testing to be able to figure out, you know, not only how many people are positive and how how many cases we have, but also UM, an increasing number of those positive cases are getting sequenced so that we can keep a track on the variants so and see which, you know, new ones are emerging and which ones are are more present than than we'd like them to be. So UM testing is

really important. But for whatever reason, whether it's bad weather or people are sick of this, or resources are devoted to vaccines versus testing, it has been down recently. I I wonder if that's also because people are seeing numbers go down, and maybe it's down also because you know, we aren't really around any major holidays like we were a few weeks ago. UM g D I I do wonder when it comes to this, just what things look like on the other side. I ran to a friend

of mine in the lobby of our building yesterday. She lives really close to us, she's a neighbor. It's been a year since we've gotten to hang out with with her and her family. And I was saying, hey, we're so close, like you know, just a few months, and she looked at me, gave me this look, and she's like, no, this is going to be with us forever. UM, where

do you fall? Well, I think some things will be will be different forever and and it'll probably take us some time to realize just how much thing have changed and what's UM, what's going to stick around? UM? But I mean post vaccine and when cases are low, I think things are going to be a lot better for for most people with UM. I think you know the recommendations for people who are vaccinated to continue to wear masks.

It's because community transmission is still so high. So the vaccine doesn't protect you from getting infected, it protects you from the combing to that illness and UM. And so we're still trying to figure out what that means for everyone. But it should really help to reduce bread and when spread goes down, then we all benefit and I think we'll be able to hang out a lot more. But g two Tim's point and Tim's friends point. You know, there's a story on the Bloomberg about you know, where

we are and hunting for the coronavirus's origin. We still don't really exactly know where this came from or how it came about. At the same time, we have talked to a lot of folks too the virus, you know, hunters that are out there that said there's another two hundred or I don't know how many that are out

there that can be just as problematic. I mean, do we need to then, ultimately going forward, live in a world where we're constantly on kind of pins and needles and worried about wait a minute, where did you come from? Maybe you brought something into this country. Well, I hope that we are doing we'll do a lot better job of figuring out and responding to pathogens as they emerge a lot faster. I mean, the vaccine, it's amazing we

have I mean vaccine, multiple vaccines in a year. I don't want to say that that isn't amazing, that it's totally amazing, but UM, you know, the science of making sure that we, you know, figure out what things are likely to emerge. UM, maybe have a more broad coronavirus coronavirus vaccine that can protect against multiple types of strains

that we think are going to emerge. All these things require UM a lot more dedication of resources and thinking about all of these health security issues as really a national security priority. I mean, this is this is devastating to the US and UM, and we could have been better prepared. G. We only have like fifteen seconds left because MR and A vaccines are are being used now and we were able to develop them so quickly. Does this mean in the future we can respond very very quickly.

I hope. So, I hope. So. It's so exciting that those vaccines were so quick to develop and that they work so well. I think it's going to be a new age for for that kind of technology and vaccines in general. Yeah. Right. The collaboration too, and the way they were able to move so quickly. G. Thank you

so much. UM. G. G. Gronville, Senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at Bloomberg School of Public Health on the phone from Baltimore, and just a reminder, of course, uh, the school supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. Well, the cover story in the

magazine this week, we mentioned it earlier. It's about fer Fightser uh and really kind of their vaccine capitalism and going inside Fiser's I love this headline fast fraud and lucrative vaccine distribution, and I really feel like they're being given accolades, but they're also getting a bunch of heat. As we said earlier, Yeah, they are. Look, there is no playbook to how a company responds to a pandemic, and that's that's pretty much. That's that's what one of

the things that the piece goes into. Joining us right now on the access line is Joel Webber, editor at Bloomberg Business Week, and Stephanie Baker, one of the reporters on this piece, Financial Investigation, senior writer at Bloomberg News. Joel, why was was this the the perfect story for the cover this week. Well, I think the Fighter um shot and vaccine is one of the biggest success stories ever Frankly, I mean, like, to go from a pandemic to a vaccine in a year is is a wonder and we've

we've written about that. But what we hadn't ever explored UM and with Stephanie and her co author Cynthia drove into in this story is is sort of behind the scenes UM logistics and distribution challenges and and also keep in mind here like the Fighter is a publicly traded company that did not take money from the government and because of that, they didn't have any strings on on how they went about even pricing that, and that I thought was a really interesting angle, uh and one that

you know speaks to also just the legacy of what we know about the pharmaceutical industry, which pricing has always been an issue with and it was actually the issue that Albert Borla, who's the CEO of Fightser, was expecting to deal with when he took over the job at FISER a year before the pandemic happened. So so Stephanielle, I just want to turn it over to you because I thought so much of the reporting in this was was spot on and really interesting. And tell us, how

does FIGHTSER going to go about deciding who gets the vaccine? Well, you know, it's a pretty opaque process still despite all our digging. I think it is a mix of your place in the queue, when did you get your order in your order size, production, forecast calls from world leaders. Um. You know, we went into detail about how Israel managed

to get its hands on so many doses. And as you know, Israel is a world leader in terms of vaccination rates and that is thanks to FISER because they are almost exclusively used in FISER for the vaccination campaign. And UH Israel's Prime Minister of Benjamin Netanyah, who spoke to UH FISER CEO Albert Bola more than twenty times.

Um uh. And you know one of the reasons why Israel got priority access was well a paid more paid about thirty dollars ago, about more than the US did, and be it Um offered to use Israel as a real world case study for how effective the vaccine is and that has UM generated a stream of positive headlines about how effective the Fiser vaccine is. Um. You know, Israel was vaccinating sixteen to eighteen year olds at a time when Europe was still waiting to vaccinate eight year olds.

And that's kind of what we went into is how did that happen? Um? Why was Europe so behind in terms of Fiser's distribution, and and why did Israel pull ahead? And really came down to these few things. Uh, the EU European Union of course was late to place their order. That was one factor. But um, you know, Israel obviously offered a very unique opportunity for the company to showcase

how great their macnine is. Yeah, exactly. There's a line in your story, um, the story that you and your colleagues did, Stephanie, where you talk about Fiser not bound to serve a global health agenda. Um, but having said that that there will come a day where there will be an autopsy of the pandemic and that one of the main questions will be how a single company came to hold such power over so many Because Fiser is

in that position. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, I think Fiser really stands out because it's the biggest player taking a commercial approach to COVID vaccines. Obviously, there are other players on the market. There's Maderna. They don't really have the capacity to produce at the level that Fiser does. UM. There's Astra Zeneca, which does have a huge production capability, but they've promised to sell their vaccine on a not for profit basis for just a few dollars of dose

during the pandemic UM. So Fiser's really cut a very commercial approach to this. And you know, when I was looking at vaccine access, who was getting shots, who was behind you know, I realized that Fiser didn't really didn't finalize their deal with Kovacs this who back to facility to distribute vaccines to low income countries until January and it was only for about forty million doses. That was

two percent of visors projected output this year. And just to put that into context, Astra did a deal for a hundred and seventy million doses. Johnson and Johnson has a preliminary deal with Kovacs for five hundred million, So that really kind of puts it into perspective that they're pushing this out on a commercial basis, doing bilateral deals with countries. More than sixty countries have signed up and

we still don't know a lot. You know, there's a lot that we set out to try to find out that we didn't we didn't get to the bottom of and we're going to continue to record it out to try to find out exactly how this system worked. So, just on the idea of vaccine capitalism, Stephanie, how does Fightser's efforts and money money making abilities and all that compared with with other uh, with the other vaccine efforts that are out there and staff we only have about

thirty seconds here. Unfortunately, well you know it it is um, it is looking at a commercial approach. It is looking at a post pandemic approach as well, where it's updating it's vaccine so it can tackle these new mutant variants. And I think it's looking at a at a way to up the price when and um, we're in a post pandemic world. Um, you know, it will still probably be you know, charging kind of more commercial rates than than Astro Seneca and Johnson and Johnson. So I think

that's how it stands out. All right, We're gonna leave at that. Listen, this is a must read. There's so much. As Joel mentioned, the reporting on this is just killer. Stephanie Baker, Financial Investigation Senior writer at Bloomberg News or thanks to her along with Joel Webber, editor Bloomberg business Week, it's the cover story. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. So we've got a little check on tech right now

because Twitter having a plan to fact check tweets. I think this is something do you guys talked about on Quickcake right? Well, you know, I gotta I gotta be honest. We were trying our hardest to get Kurt on the show today and I think he was busy, which is okay, Kurt, because we got Kurt now. Yeah, but thank god you mentioned it. Bloomberg Tech reporter Kurt Wagner joining us on the phone. We're gonna talk about Twitter. Were also going to talk about Square doing a deal in the music industry,

but let's start with Twitter fact check tweets. Tell us about this and their plan. Is it a good one? Because often times when you think of fact can you think of the route that Facebook is taking, which is they're partnering with you know, outside experts, right. But Twitter's idea here, it's called bird watch, and what they want to do is turn all of their users into pseudo

fact checkers. And so if you're on Twitter and you come across a tweet that you know looks like it needs more context or it needs additional information, you can actually submit a note that could be attached to that tweet kind of um, you know, fact check it yourself. And so they want to turn their entire user base

into pseudo fact checkers. Okay, So when I think about this, I think of Wikipedia, and you know, this is a place where where that actually works pretty well on Wikipedia, but it doesn't translate to other corners of the Internet. It hasn't worked well to stop disinformation from spreading on the platforms that that you write about so much. What

makes Twitter think it will work on Twitter? Well? I think that they would argue that they already see people doing this, they just don't do it in this exact format, right. I mean, how often have you've seen someone reply to a tweet and and say, hey, you know this is wrong, or hey you you didn't mention x, or they quote tweet it right and they had their own commentary that way. So Twitter would say, hey, listen, people are already doing

a version of this. We just haven't really you know, built it as its own kind of fact checking product, and they think that if they do that, they can kind of take all of those inputs that people are already providing, which just make them easier for other people

to find. So one of the challenging things about this about fact checking on Twitter as it as it stands now is oftentimes the tweet with the misinformation gets retweeted and so many more times, and it gets so much more engagement than any corrected tweet or any sort of

fact check that is a reply. How does Twitter handle that well in this instance, So, imagine a hundred people submit a note for a particular tweet, right Twitter would use an algorithm to basically pick the one or two most helpful replies to that, and then they would actually

pend those notes to the original tweets. So, in theory, anytime that that tweet is sent around, if it's retweeted, even if it's screenshot, at somehow they want those notes, you know, those replies to exist with the original tweets so that you would see them side by side. It's a little bit clunky right now, because again it doesn't exist just yet, but at least in sirie, all of the notes and the fact checks would kind of ride

along with the original. You know, it's funny when Tim said, uh, Wikipedia, I thought of that too, And I also thought of um ways, like this whole idea of community involvement, like you know, you're saying when there's a cop ground or there's a traffic accident, or you know, like you don't have to be a part of it, but you do, you like you kind of want to help out. Could this possibly set the stage for a model going forward for social in terms of policing itself. I think that

would be the hope if this does work. I mean, why not implement this on Facebook right or in Instagram. I think that we're looking right now at a bunch of regulators in Washington who want to change the rules around speech online, and we're seeing companies try to come up with creative ways to you know, basically appease them

without necessarily changing the rules. And so I think this is one of those examples where Twitter saying, hey, we're gonna we're gonna give this a shot, and in this works, maybe this is the best way to sack check or police. You know, these big platforms online and and we'll do it, and we'll let you know the regulators decide whether or

not they want to require other companies to do the same. Hey, Kurt, I want to hit another story that you filed earlier today about the music service title Square buying the company for close to three million dollars in a stock in cash deal. When I tweeted this out this morning, Kurt, somebody replied to me and said, Oh, I had forgotten about Title that even existed. This is this is I think a head scratcher of a deal for a lot of people. What is Square going to do with Title?

Oh and I'm kind of bearing the lead here. Jay Z is joining squares board. Oops. Right, yeah, you may have heard of jay Z before. Yeah, going to be involved now. Um No, I think it is a little bit of a head scratcher on the surface, But all kind of explain how Squares thinking of this, right, which is that they're saying, listen, we have built an entire

business around helping entrepreneurs, small businesses, you know, build their business. Well, musicians are entrepreneurs as well, and they're trying to build a business. They're trying to sell merchandise to trying to sell tickets, albums, whatever it may be. And so they see this kind of as an extension of what they already do, but into a new industry. Now the question is did they need to buy a streaming music service in order to do that? I would say probably not.

But when you really think about how much money this is, the very small amount of money for a company like Square, and if they can get someone like jay Z on their board and get someone like jay Z involved in kind of this idea of commerce around music, you know, that might be a three d dollars well spent. So it's a little early to tell um, but it is a bit of a head scratcher. But you could see, I guess in fury maybe where they're thinking, you don't

sound convinced just quickly. I'm a little on the fence. But you know, I know that you know, Jack Dorsey and jay Z are buddy, and so part of me wonders how much of this is, you know, one friend buying another friends company. But again, it's a small amount of money for Squares, so maybe it's the that worth taking right right exactly all right, Kurt, thank you so much. Kurt Wagner, Technology Porter, Bloomberg News joining us on the

phone from San Francisco. But it is interesting to see some of these kind of collaborations for certainly what I would consider the new tech tech companies. Also some cool pictures that Square released earlier today of Jay z and And and Jack Dorsey. I want to be on that board. I'm roam a journal. Yeah, but you let me drive? Oh no, no, no no, no, honey, please, I'll do the right revel I want to drive, just drive. Good question, Let's try the drive to the globe. Thanks Wells on

Bloomberg Radio. All right, just about eleven minutes left in today's trading session. We are seeing stocks certainly off their loads of the session, but definitely off their highs of the session as well. Let's see what our next guest has to say. Brian Jacobson is with US, multi asset strategist at Wells Fargo Asset Management six hundred three billion dollars in assets under management, with us on the phone from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hey Brian, good to have you here

with Tim and myself on Bloomberg. Gotta start with technology. How do you see the pullback in tech stocks? What does it say to you? Yeah? Thanks for having me on Yeah, pull back in technology, We actually weren't really all that surprised about my way My team has been positioning portfolios has been really more favoring in the what

has been dubbed, you know, the reopening trade. As far as you know, people are getting a little bit tired of doing their video meetings and things like that, might actually want to get out and see people face to face. So does that mean selling tech names? Selling tech names are just not adding to positions? Well, the our approach is to not focus on individual names, but as far as like the futures contracts and the broad indexes, and one of our favorite trades has been going longer the

small cap stocks and then shorting larger cap stocks. And we did take off our trade, which was long nas deck a few weeks ago, and so it's not necessarily outright shorting it, except for to the extent that the kind of positioning, as far as favoring smaller cap stocks over larger cap stocks, is reflecting a short bias towards some of those names. Hey, what did you make of fitchri Pal's comments today? Said an online event that he'd be quote concerned by disorderly markets, but he stopped short

of offering steps to curb heightened volatility. What do you make of it? Uh? Yeah, I think that like a lot of people are just a little disappointed. I wasn't really expecting him to come out and say, Hey, we're gonna do yield curve control or we're gonna, you know, actually go out and extend the maturity of our our portfolio. But uh, you know, his unwillingness to be a little bit more I guess forth right, or to commit to doing something I think got people a little bit nervous.

You know, their policy meeting is coming up on March seventeenth, and so a lot of people are going to be kind of looking or we're looking to this as being maybe one of the last opportunities before the meeting to get some indication about whether or not they're actually going to do something about the rise in the longer term

yields that we have seen. You know, there's a lot going on in the treasury market as far as with increase in inflation expectations, people getting excited about the growth outlook, so that can push up real interest rates. And then plus you also have issues going on with the supplemental leverage ratio that the THUD still hasn't taken action on as far as you know, the lid that banks calculates um one of their leverage ratios. That could possibly affect

the treasury market as well. So there's a lot going on there, and so understandably there's quite a bit of bond market volatility. There's nothing going on, Brian Jacobson, There's there is a lot going on, and I do think we're trying to understand, you know, is the treasury market kind of catching up to the run up that we've seen off of the lows on the equity side of things. Is the treasury market getting ready for Yeah, it's going to be better in the second half of the year,

doesn't mean it's going to be a runaway market. We still have millions of people out of work, and I do wonder how much you anticipate that holding back economic growth or it won't and we'll just continue to see even deeper moves and that K shaped recovery and we'll

see that reflected uh in the financial markets. Well, you know, hopefully as the economy reopens and with the federal Reserve staying very loose for a long time and focusing on the the shadow unemployment rate or whatever you might want to call it. As far as you know, the idea that a lot of people are being misclassified so it's closer to ten percent as opposed to the six percent that's being published, is that maybe that can help close the k a little bit, to make it a little

bit more of a V for more people. Hey, I want to hear your thoughts on international relations right now, because you said that big wild cards when it comes to the market could be relations between the U S and China and the US and iran Um. What could happen Let's start with China. Yeah, and maybe this is just because just looking at what are some of the old fears trying to recycle from those as well, because

they really haven't gone away. Right. We know that at the beginning of two thousand twenty, one of the big concerns was the relationships between US and iran UM and just under President Biden. Now as far as with the rocket launch in Syria, you know, it's like what's going to be happening next in the Middle East. It's kind of always a wild card there. And then as far as with the relationship with China, we know that President Biden.

Our expectation was that not much was going to change except for perhaps the tone and the willingness to work through more of the multi national or the um you know, kind of in a concerted effort with our allies on some of these incredibly important topics. With China, obviously, the the economic numbers have been just outstanding, but we do think that, you know, that's always one of those things that you can worry about as far as what will

that relationship look like going forward. Um, the US has already shown it's willing to impose sanctions, you know, the President Biden has shown that he's wanting to pose sanctions on countries that aren't necessarily abiding by the rules of the road. Well, is there a trade here for you on that or concern about it? Well, a little bit. One of the ways in which we're positioning our portfolios is that we still do like emerging markets. But emerging markets,

you know, it's a very broad area. Well, China, we think that can has done very well. If you think about em Asia, uh, you know, is it e m Asia x China that is the more attractively priced area.

If you think about momentum that's been favoring China, but from like evaluation, not that valuations always mattered too much, but as far as you know the fundamentals with the earnings, there are other areas like let's say with India, Indonesia, Korea, other places within the Asia Pacific region that are probably a little bit more attractively priced for us. All Right, gonna leave it on that note. Listen. Thank you so much, Brian,

appreciate it. Brian Jacobson, multi assets strategist at Wells Fargo Asset Management. We did cover a lot of asset classes there. He's got about or Wells Farger I should say, about six three billion dollars in assets on the management. Brian joining us on the phone from Milwaukee. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Download a podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com, and you can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio

or watch us on YouTube. Search to Bloomberg Global News