Public Safety and Security at the Super Bowl

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. Global virus cases now topping one d four point five million deaths, surpassing two point two million. We've had more than a hundred and eight million COVID shots given around the globe, so let's get into our virus guests. Great to have joining us once again.

Dr William moss He is Executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center, Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology, International Health, and Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which, as you know, supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg ALP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Dot the Moss back with us on the phone from Baltimore. Bill,

Nice to have you here once again on Bloomberg. So I gotta say, I'm starting to feel optimistic because I know people, um in my world that are getting the vaccine. It looks like the flow is opening up. Tell me how you're seeing it. What are you seeing in terms of COVID cases and then the vaccine getting out to people. Yes, thanks Caroline, it's my pleasure to be back with you. Um.

So we are seeing some positive signs. It doesn't mean we can let our our guard down, um, particularly with a Super Bowl coming and and we don't want another super spreading event. But we are seeing case numbers come down in the United States yesterday a hundred nineteen cases. That's down from about two hundred and fifty thou cases in early January. So we're really down on cases. UM. We are still seeing tragically high numbers of death. The death numbers always kind of lag the case numbers by

a couple of weeks. We're still at about three three thoight hundred deaths yesterday, so that's that's obviously still tragically high. Our test positivity around eight percent, still much higher than we'd like it. But we are seeing the case come the case numbers come down, and as you pointed out, we're getting more vaccines out over fifty five million doses distributed. Um, we've gotten over thirty four million doses into arms. That's

about those distributed. Uh, we're doing much better and getting vaccines doses into people. And I think this combination of you know, the case numbers come down. If that we continue that trend and in continue to do better and better and getting people vaccinated, we may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But again that's not going to be for a couple more months. People

still need to practice. They're good public health measures. Yeah, it's it's amazing to hear you rattle off these statistics because it's all relative, right. I mean, we're in a worse place than than we've been than we were in a few months ago, but a much better place than we were in a few weeks ago. So I guess

context is everything. UM. I do wonder about the new Strain bill because these this decline in numbers that we're seeing is also coming at a time where in recent weeks we've heard about the discovery of new and potentially more transmittable strains. You're exactly right, Tim, And you know, uh, this the surge that we saw probably you know, in in throughout January was probably related to the holidays and holiday gatherings, and so we're seeing that fall off. Um.

But you're exactly right. These uh, these new variants of the virus that are more transmissible, and particularly of concern there's some suggestion that perhaps they may cause more severe disease and and maybe able to escape some of the protective immunity conferred by our vaccines, not completely. And and we think these vaccines are still going to be really

good about preventing severe disease, hospitalizations and depth. Um. But but we need to be on guard, um, and we need to be ready for um increasing circulation in our communities of these more transmissible virus variants. UM. So that is something we're gonna have to watch very carefully. And that's what we're worried about, that these variants being more contagious, right and and and circulating as you said, more easily

and more quickly. That even though we're vaccinating. If we don't have enough of our population vaccinated, that can create a whole other wave. Yes, you're right, and it's it's

why it's so urgent right now. UM, before these these variants, these more transmissible variants become the dominant of viruses circulating in our communities, that we do everything we can to decrease the transmission of this virus, and that includes as quickly as possible, getting more people vaccinated and really doubling down on our public health measures to prevent transmission. The more this virus transmits, the more it's going to mutate

UH and create further problems for us. So we I think we have a short window of time right now to really try to clamp this down. What's the best way to increase vaccine distribution because at the current rate we're going right now, which is about one point three four million vaccines each day, UM, it will take months to reach immunity in this country. Right There are a number of steps that can be taken, and I think

the Biden administration is working on this. I think of it UH in in kind of the four d s UH doses, delivery, demand and data, and so we certainly need to increase the number of doses. There are there are limitations on how many vaccines can be manufactured, but there are efforts to increase the number of doses, purchase more doses for the US population, and also bring on hopefully in the next few weeks Um, you know, maybe

new vaccines such as the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. We were waiting for the results of their Phase three trial. We need to improve our delivery. That's increasing the number of vaccinators, increasing the number of sites where vaccines are being delivered. We're already seeing a lot of progress on

that front. And then on the demand side, we need to make sure that we target our public health messaging to those communities that have mistrust or skept or a skeptical of the vaccine and and and build that trust. Dr moss Um, one day, I wanted to follow up on you said something about having a short window to get the vaccines out before these virus mutations really pick

up a lot of momentum. How short is that window? Yes, Carol, you know, the Center's a disease control and prevention predicted that the variant that we know scientifically as B one one seven that was first identified in the United Kingdom would become the dominant virus variant in the United States and in March, in mid March, so you know, I would say, we really need to decrease our trans the transmission in this country, you know, over the next four

to eight weeks, and that's gonna include getting really increasing the number of people vaccinated as well as continuing our our basic public health measures. There was a really interesting story by the Associated Press that came out this morning bill that talked about the need to vaccinate around the world and not just focus on country by country. The

International Federation the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. They found that the fifty poorest countries have received only one tenth of one percent of total vaccine doses that have been administered worldwide so far. Here's why that matters, though, because that inequality, according to them, could potentially backfired a deadly and devastating effect, because areas of the globe that remain unvaccinated could allow the virus to spread and mutate.

So even if somebody is vaccinated against a strain that could be developed in another country. Right, Yes, this is a really important point, Tim, and you know, obviously the pandemic has been particularly tragic in the United States, and the United States certainly has the highest case numbers and debts. But we also need to be looking globally and and ensuring equitable access to vaccines around the world. That's really hard right now when when vaccine supply is scarce UM.

But there are efforts led by the World Health Organization UM to procure vaccines through a number of mechanisms and from a number of vaccine manufacts lectures and be able to ultimately provide enough doses to the population UH in all all countries around the world, and particularly they're focused obviously on the low and middle income countries. But you're right, this is a global pandemic and unless we have a

global effort, we're not going to stop it. And this virus has shown us that it can mutate more quickly than I think many experts anticipated, and if there's ongoing transmission in parts of the world, everyone's impacted by that. Yeah, absolutely, UM. What is you know, in terms of the headlines that you're focusing on right now, what are they? Yes, I think the big one is the concern around the new variants UH that are both more transmissible and potentially UM

we have vaccines that are less effective. We've seen, for example, in the trials of the John's and the Jonasan vaccine and Nova vax vaccine UM that they do have reduced UH efficacy against the variant that was first identified in South Africa. UM. Fortunately, they still seem to protect against severe disease and that should be our number one goal.

We want to stop hospitalizations and stop death, and that was something that came up in the conversation we had with Jay Jay's US Chief Scientific officer just about one week ago. Hey, Bill, thank you so much, really appreciate it. Dr William Moss. He is Professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Of course, as you know, supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder, Bloomberg Galp and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Bill also the executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center. Joining us once again on the phone from Baltimore. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. Let's not forget there's a lot going on. We just heard from President Biden giving his first foreign policy speech. We cannot forget though, kind of on the end of the spectrum is we've got the Super Bowl fifty five is happening this weekend.

We're typically there at Radio Row outside of it, talking to all members of the sports community about the big Game. It's a different world. It's a COVID world. Yeah, it's not just different for us and for the players and the viewers, but of course different for the fans who will or will not be in attendance right exactly, it's going to be much limited and socially distanced. Um. But for most of us we also will of course watch

the big Game from at home. But one of the things that's always there, uh, no matter what year it is is security concerns around the big Game and keeping everybody connected. So great to have back with us. William Bratton. He's former New York City and Boston Police Commissioner, former Chief of the l A Police Department, Chairman of Risk Advisory over to NEO Commissioner. Bratton is on the phone

in New York. Also with us is Andreas Orlando. He is President of the Public Sector and a Verizon connect over at Verizon, he's also a senior VP there, which is investing millions in expanding permanent five G deployments in and around the Tampa area around the Big Game. He joins us on the phone, Atlanta, gentlemen, so nice to have you here with US Commissioner Bratton. I want to start with you, and we are going to talk about security around the Big Game. We've got a nice chunk

of time here. I do have to ask you, though, about President Biden, a new administration. When we are talking about foreign policy, we're hearing about a lot of things. When you look at the security and national security of the United States, how do you see it and what do you see as our biggest concerns right now? Is it domestic terrorism? Uh? I believe it is domestic terrorism

at the moment. They'll always be concerned with international tourism, But this year, I think that has been divide uh thially after January six, uh usue with domestic terrorism is first and foremost. International terrorism, interesting enough, has been relatively quiet as it relates to efforts directed against the United States. Well, you've neific a number of much now, and I think that's one of the reasons why domestic terrorism is attracting

so much attention. Is what had been concerned since nine eleven hasn't fact and diminished significantly. Commissioner written, how do we get that under control? In the United States? It's gonna be much much more difficult. That I've took over the lapt in two thousand two, and at that time one of the first priorities to me was getting the LAPT up and running to deal with the two threat of international terrorism. UH. Local police forces had very little

to do with terrorism Currens prior to Night eleven. That was lastly responsible. After to Night eleven we had to focus on and have focused on for the ensuing now all's point heat is But the issue UH now is Christian poemost domestic terrorism, and that's gonna be much more difficult because very limited in terms of the laws we have that they lost past depth of eleven allow us to effectively deal with all and terrorism issues here in the United States, we don't have a lot of those

laws that work. So wealthless so I do want to talk of the issues. Oh go please finish, No, no, no, please finish. They also had the additional issue in the United States guns. We have more guns than the people. In the last month two million guns and gold the United States. I think that's the highest funds ever and so Paris would have to basically try and bring guns

into it. They've already here that four hundred billion guns and people in many states allowed to carry them overly been in a number of states ports in Michigan the open carry laws that people along with all types of weapons or allowed to park them out with. We have a very different situations that be very difficult yet under control. Now it's not on. Yeah, that's a such a bigger issue. We're gonna come back to some more serious topics, but I do want to talk a little bit about the game.

I think for me, I kind of was like, oh my god, the social it's the super Bowl this weekend, because it just kind of crept up on us in in this virtual, socially distanced world. It's just such a different year. Um, Andreas, come on in on it and uh, we were talking with your team members at Verizon last year this time in Florida, we were there at the game. Tell us about Verizon in their involvement and making sure that everyone who's in and around the game stays connected

and make sure that everybody is safe and secure. Yeah, it's I'm glad to hear you talked to our the last year. We have been doing this now UH, side by side with first responders for decades. Every Super Bowl, every major event like this, we are our teams roll out and have a presence with first responders to ensure that UH they in the communities that they serve or say during a big event like the Super Bowl, and this year is it's no different the same playbook that

we had last year. Obviously we update it and we have to account for COVID and some of the unique aspects of this year's event. But we have again our Verizon Command Center, which is UH something we do every year. On the ground, we have over a hundred engineers and technicians who are monitoring and managing the network around the clock in and around the actual stadium Raymond James where the teams will be playing, but also in the greater

Tampa area. And this is an incredible source of pride for our company h to ensure that the event goes off with with without a hitch we UM. We're also on site in the Florida State Joint Emergency Operations Center. UH. This is where all of the law enforcement in public safety agencies, including of course the Tampa Police Department, have a presence UM and are communicating and uh collaborating real time.

And we have a team on the ground as part of that to ensure that we're doing everything we can to help first responders and public safety agencies make this event as safe as it possibly can. And as I said, you know, COVID changes some of the dynamic um of the game and UH and of the situation, but our commitment as America's number one network for public safety remains

the same. It's twofold one. We're working over time to ensure that first responders stay connected when it matters most um and whether that's on our four G LTE network, America's most reliable, or on our five G network, the world's fastest, in most advanced and two UM. We are working with first responders in the public safety community to make sure they have most advanced solutions and technologies they

need to keep the community and themselves UH safe. And you know what, it's generally a generally a pretty safe event, but a lot goes into making it that way. And obviously there's always, uh, there's always risks for things to happen well and you know, Commissioner Protton, come on, come on, back in on this conversation, because what's different about this securities You know, this year's security plans around the big game versus what we've seen in years past when it's

a much more quote unquote normal year. Double things. First off, significant focus on COVID that ship large part of the public safety focused on the idea of trying to the best of their bility, UM courage the social distancing. Wearing a mask to do that is minimal. UH, if you will, uh use of police resources for that of the encouraging that may be worn in the social distancing. But the

security issue this year is multifaceted because of COVID. Good news is that I was just speaking to the chief of the Camp Police Department this morning coordinating the over seventy agencies will be involved in the public safety effort down there, and they leave at this juncture that there's no direct threat either international terrorism or domestic terrorism corrected against the event. UH. That's good news, and they will watch that very closely in the run up to the event.

But after the events of January six, more concerns with the demonstrations, UH in Tampa around the issues that we're in the forefront of the January sixth event, and there is no evidence that that's going to have to down there, that's in reduced. Well, how how has the role of law enforcement changed in the wake of what we saw on January six How is the thinking a round law enforcement change now getting that clear indication that this is

such an issue in this country. Well, it is the point I was making earlier that they here that they don't have to try to get into the country illegally, they don't have to create a cell. Uh, They're already here, and they are heavily u the incredibly well trained. I'm talking about the the far right militants that some of these militias and probably types that about them, and that is of concern. And we are also very limited ability to wantitor some of their activities because again this is

domestic terrorism rather than international terrorism. So that's a significant limitation. And the technology of today. We've been talking about technology and thankfully visons bringing the latest technology that there is to this event, but a lot of the technology is now capable of being encrypted, so that significantly mitigates law enforcements ability to monitor and keep control over um what's

going on here. But right now, as of this morning, talking to the chief and then the sources, ideal within the lasting world that there's no indication of direct fresh against the event. It's a very different events. Certainly know what was going on in Washington January six, which was political. This is plebitrary sports. And uh, I think we're going to have a very safe event, very happy event. And uh I know which team I'll be looting for. Who

is it in Boston? Inoculator, you sound like our producer Paul Brennan. You can you can take Tom Brady out of Boston right right, New York, l A. I always had to move for not the hometown team, but my

hometown of Boston. So same, same, same thing. This year, Andrea has come back in here because in terms of the way the network is is working at the game, I'm wondering how you and Verise and think about prioritizing certain services at a game like this, for example, making sure fans can access Instagram or communicate with one another, communicate with people back home versus police and first responders be able to communicate with one another. Yeah, it's a

it's a great question. UM. It's something that is relevant to an event like the Super Bowl, but it's something that we think about in the operation of our network every single day. So obviously UM for an event like the Super Bowl, we reinforce the network. We add a lot of capacity and bandwidth so that UH our customers UM will all be able to use the network in

the ways that they would like. Of course, with five G, where we've made a significant investment, there's even greater bandwidth and speed and characteristics of the network that will help customers in Tampa loan. In anticipation of this event, we've invested over eighty million dollars UM in five G. UH. Tampa is one of sixty four UH cities across the country now that have our five G services, and so there will be plenty of bandwidth and capacity on the

network to manage the demand. Now. Obviously, with first responders in public safety, they have the highest level of priority on our network, and we've built into our network not just for the Super Bowl, but for every day and for every part of the country where first responders have

access to voice UH priority and data priority UH. And then if and when our network becomes congested ever UH, they also have preemption UM, where we UH put first responders and the public safety community of of everyone else to get access to that network if if if that's necessary, it's it's not often necessary, given how robustly we build our networks. But yes, first responders and the public safety community have the highest level of access on our network

every day. But that will be true with the Super Bowl as well. So and have you Andreas in terms of working from home? Have you I mean, is this something that all of a sudden we've kind of had to learn even more about kind of managing bandwidth? I mean, have you guys learned a lot with everybody working at home and tapping into networks? Absolutely? Absolutely, Um, we have UH and I think we've talked quite publicly about this

and some of our earnings calls and other settings. But early on in the pandemic, we saw a massive increase in use of our of our network, UM, lots of video as you can imagine, gaming really took off. And while we maintained our our capacity and our usage to capacity, which is a really important metric that we watch in our networks in a constant throughout that period. UM, It's it's clear that people working from home. The pandemic has changed the way in my space I have the I

run the public sector part of our business. We've seen governments work differently, we've seen people work from home, We've seen uses of the network that didn't exist before, and it's been it's been very instructive and and candidly. It's very timely for the nationwide rollout of five G because the character the unique characteristics the five G really are revolutionary.

They're not incremental to four G that the speeds that we've never seen before, the latenty characteristic, these are all going to make the kinds of use cases that the pandemic is highlighted, it's gonna they're gonna make them even more possible. So it's a good time technologically, uh or the changes that we're seeing in usage patterns. Commissioner Britt and I wanted to to shift gears a little bit and and and talk with you about your thoughts around

defunding the police. It's something that we heard a lot about over the summer in the wake of the death of George Floyd, and I think there's a lot of questions around what people mean when they say defund the police. But the Brookings Institution says it means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department in order to fund other government agencies funded by the local municipality. Um, what

are your thoughts when you hear defund the police? Well, I think the issue is that true, uh, was really taken out of context in terms of how it was initially presented, the idea of taking money resources away from the police and putting them someplace else at a time when actually there's an increased need law police services. Police

leaders are not opposed to the idea of defunding. It is for purposes of reallocation of resources to take some responsibilities away from the police that a better situated elsewhere, particularly dealing with mental health issues, dealing with a myriad of issues that wouldn't be handled by other city agencies more appropriately. But oftentimes they would need to collaborate with

the police. That there are very few things that the police deal with it could be handled exclusively by another agency. This is where the importance of technology such as what provis and provides is so important that this this need to have collaborative into operability so that if money has given over to a city agency to improve their mental health resources and ability to respawned to mental health calls

along with the police. They are going to need to have to be able to talk with the police, and then going to need to be able to have radio systems and data systems and video systems that allow them to have seamless interoperability. And what provising has been doing and so exciting, right is Dad these last twenty years they've been able to pull that off. And so going forward, uh, there will be efforts to take resources away from the

police and put the more appropriately elsewhere. The rum defunding, however, is taking on a negative context, right idea no police talking about taking police and reducing the size of police force each other. But all right, got it, Bill, We've got to jump in because they're running out of time here. Um, both of you. Thank you so much. Bill Bratton, Chairman

of Risk, advisor of it to New Risk. And of course Andreas Orlando over at Verizon he's president of Public Sector of course, looking ahead to security, ahead of the big game. Road a journal now, but you let me drive? Oh no, no, no no, no, please, I'll do the riding. L let me I want to drive, Just drive. The question This is the drive to the Globe community. Thanks, we'll try us on Bloomberg Radio. All right, just about levin mids left in today's trading day, it is time

for the drive to the close. Back with us to Sean Crue, senior market strateges A T. D Merrit trade back with us on the phone from Chicago. Sean, Good to have you here with us. How are you? Is Sean there? We might be having some technical problems, so we're hopefully going to get that line connected up so we can bring in Sean. Just Thursday. Sometimes the gremlins coming out at the top of the show, didn't they Yeah, that's what happens. Did I hear Sean there? Sean? Are

you there? Oh? Welcome, welcome, Hey, nice to have you back with us. UM. Before we get into kind of your thoughts on the market and the trade, what do you make you guys are also a zero commission trade platform. What do you make of what has been going out with these meme stocks, game Stop and the like. I mean, it certainly is going to drive a lot of interest.

And there's those names are going to be a vault as you started to see the trade get one side and what you can attribute that to be it um interest from from chat rooms on social media, or hedge funds, short interest, whatever it might be. I mean, those names are going to be a little bit more volatile, So we just try and tell our clients to make sure they understand the risk of what they're they're getting into

when they do decide to enter into these trades. Did you see a lot of trading activity on your platform as well? We saw we saw some elevated trading activity last week, and it's typical of what we see UM just in general in markets. When you start to see volatility move higher, whether it be just the overall dixident of itself or whether you see specific names start to show elevated volatility, it does drive a lot of quiet interest.

And it's not just on the the what do you trade in front, but also on the derivative trading front as well. Are you at all concerned about the type of interest that it drives? As long as we feel comfortable with the overall risk of what's going on and we feel that, you know, the clients are are able

to handle advantage that risk. Um. You know, that's something that we keep an eye on and we certainly want to enable clients to trade whatever it is that they want to trade, but we do monitor these names, and you know, I mean saying pretty much anything else across our book. Our clients are trading, We do monitor that on an ongoing basis, and that's continuous throughout the day. Right, did you guys have to shut any trading down because of these I'm just curious, Um, the last week you didn't.

You didn't shut down trading its clients wanted to come in and buy or sell um these names, they certainly could. We did um increase margin requirements, and we also limited what was clients were able to do on the derivative

trading fronts. For instance, we weren't allowing the just selling naked calls, for instance, in some of these highly volerful names, and that's just because of the inherent risk that and come with you are just short a call in the stock makes uh what happened in some cases last week a seven sigma move. And we also put a few controls on what we were allowed in terms of spread

trading as well. Sean, I want to get your thoughts on earnings that we saw this week Alphabet and Amazon and wondering if that changes at strong earnings, of course, I mean for for Amazon, it was its first year that we saw a billion dollars a day revenue exceeded that for the company. Um in then Alphabet also topping expectations from from analysts. What are the signs that this gives you about the economy and the recovery that we're seeing.

I think it was interesting in Amazon's relief one there was I think a lot of in that Revie spell in the shadow just days in Chairman, but it was an incredibly strong report and I think there was a few interesting things that takey one, the head of Amazon Web Service, is stopping up in that your role, I think gives a little bit of an indication of what

the business is going to focus on moving forward. Um The other thing that was on the retail front actually said, even as we moved into the recovery this year, they still expect demand for e commerce to remain strong. And I think that was something a lot of investors were asking themselves, not just about Amazon, but a lot of these names that thrived over the past year and had

some pretty strong upside move in some great returns. Was whether or not that was all pulled forward and then there's not going to be as strong growth where the businesses is going to maybe fall off a little bit um as we get into this more reopened return to some sort of normalcy whatever that ends up looking like what that would really mean for the businesses. And I think they're able to reassure investors that they are still

expecting to demand to remain strong. And we saw that not only maybe help sentiment around Amazon itself, but names like Shopify, names like eBay also benefited from that because they didn't just say it was going to be Amazon and specific, they said there's an overall general trend. They expect the commerce to remain strong this year. Hey, I'm curious. We talked a little bit about the VICS yesterday. It's definitely come down from the recent spike that we just saw,

certainly last week amid the volatility. How closely do you watch the VICS as an indicator, and if so, what is it telling you right now? So the VICS I kind of view in sort of three three buckets, and so when in the buckets that means there's some cautious optionism out there, and that's where we're at right now thirty is genuine uncertainty, and anytime you get north of thirty, that is there is a caution tone. It's really setting

in across the market. And I think last week, when you had a lot of volatively being driven in a handful of names, the question for Marcuts wasn't his game stop doing? Something's gonna gonna really cause this issue in GameStop itself. The question of markets make sure was would this turn into a systemic issue? And I think that's

what drove it higher. As we get further away and we realize that we are returning sun center normalcy, this isn't gonna become a systemic issue across the board for equities. That that's what allowed the volatility index to really pull back as much as it did. I expected as we got further away from last week that we would see the exposing lower, but I did not expect to get

down at twenty two. But I think that just shows that the market is moving away from focusing on what we saw last week and they're returning to focusing on things that matter. Economic reports are coming out, we're getting continue there's a lot of earnings reports out and those are coming in UM as as as expected, in many cases better, and I think that's really is what the markets focused on, and they're coming more optimistic. And twenty

seconds tomorrow's jobs report, Um, what are you expecting? Looking for twenty seconds? I actually think we're gonna see a little bit of a pullback and wage growth. And that's because in the A d Q report we stall that services jobs and these are in hospitality, had a pretty strong rebound, which is good overall, but that will sort of drag that average wage number down because those tend to be lower pain jobs. So that's I'm going to be interested to see what happens with the wage growth number.

All right, We're gonna leave it on that note. Hey, Sean, thank you so much. Sean Crew, Senior Market Strategies at t D Merrige Trade with Us from Chicago. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the 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. Sara to Bloomberg Global News