The Misinformation Export Industry

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 just talked about some of the day's COVID and vaccine headlines. Dr Anthony Fauci, who's the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he spoke to Bloomberg's David Western earlier today at the Bloomberg Business Week Live event, and they talked

about the possibility of another COVID wave. We don't want to declare victory prematurely, but if we can get thee of adults vaccinated with at least one doze by the fourth of July, the way the president to set the goal. I think the chances of there being a surge or

a rebound is extremely low. That's the reason why we want to continue to get people vaccinated, all right, And that, of course, was Dr Anthony Fauci, director with the National Institute of Aology and Infectious Diseases, catching up with our David Weston at the Bloomberg Business Week Live event. Let's

talk about the latest on COVID and the vaccine. Suberklin is Professor of Molecular microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, Founder, Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Her research on covering the mechanisms mediating how males and females differ in their immune responses to viral infection and vaccination. She's also co director of the Center for Women's Health, Sex and Gender Research.

She's with us on the phone in Baltimore. Sober nice to have you here with Tim and me. So Dr Anthony Fauci I think surprised us by some of the things he had to say about maybe we won't need a booster, talking about the passa ability of another COVID wave. What's the reality, What are the discussions you all have it Johns Hopkins about maybe what's next from here? The

good and the bad? I think I think the good the good news is that the vaccines are proving to be excellent and they're proving to be protective against some of these variants UM, including the variants that was initially identified in the United Kingdom UM, which has is quite prevalent now here in the United States. So I think that is very good news, and I think that likely contributed to the CDC's UM recommendation that that those of us who are vaccinated are allowed to be unmaked um

outdoors and in some situations indoors UM. I think the the what we see in other countries cause us to pause and probably cause Dr Fauci to remind into all of us that that just because we are our numbers of cases are down here in the United States UM, and we're getting so many people vaccinated, that we're still

not completely out of the weeds. So, you know, I think they're trying to, you know, emphasize that for anybody who is hesitant at this moment about receiving the vaccine but want to go and be in public settings without a mask. They've got to get vaccinated. And we have so many millions of people who have been vaccinated that our understanding about the safety and efficacy of these vaccines

it's tremendous. They are safe and they are efflications. Yeah, to that point, Dr Klein, it does seem like and look, it's been a week since we got that news from the CDC about being able to take masks off if in certain situations, if we are vaccinated, it does really feel like and and look, this is my impression, but correct and correct me if I'm wrong. But if you have been vaccinated with with one of the vaccines available for emergencies authorization in the US, it's it's like, seems

like it's back to life. Is as normal it is,

it has, it has that flavor and that potential. And I think, you know, I think this is this is so important, and I think from a public health perspective, this is so important because if if those of us who work with these vaccines study these vaccines, know these vaccines to be both safe and efficacious, if we believe in how well they're working, if we believe the data, which I do, that have come out about the effectiveness of these vaccines against the variant, then we should be

able to take our masks off and trust that we will be protected, in particular against severe disease. UM. No vaccine is going to be a hundred percent, so as your listeners may have, you know, those those one off stories that somebody who got vaccinated but who's still got infected. I'm even thinking about our story about about the Yankee UM. You know it is going to happen. But I think what needs to be appreciated is this is precisely what

can happen during a typical flu season. Is as we prepare for the flu season in the coming fall, we know that vaccines they reduced the probability of severe illness and death, they may not completely prevent you from ever getting infected. And I think that's what we're seeing in in some circumstances with the current um current stars Kobe

two vaccines. And the other thing is Tim and I were talking about before we got going about how scientists are racing to figure out the so called correlates of correlates of protection against COVID, in other words, which test results a shore immunity. I mean, we don't exactly know when the protection from these vaccines is expected to wane. It's tricky and we don't necessarily the tests yet right to tell us exactly that You phrase all of that beautifully,

That is all completely correct. And you know, I think as these companies were, were, you know, very acutely aware of how important it was to get these vaccines and determine their safety and define their efficacy based on the ability of the vaccine at present preventing excuse me, severe disease and illness they weren't going, and then doing the more detailed assessments that researchers like my myself typically do. So now you've got to let the rest of us

catch up. Do our very detailed analyzes, study this durability, study the types of immune responses, and see which of those immune responses best predicts Okay, so when we say a correlative protection, we're looking for what is that measure of your immunity that sessed predicts protection. I want to get right into it when it when it comes to the questions that so many people have about pregnant women and vaccines, what do we know right now? What we know right now is we have through them the PBC

Reporting system. UM, there have been thousands of pregnant women who perceived the available COVID nineteen vaccines. They have been proven to be safe UM in pregnant women. There is no evidence that these vaccines are causing UM adverse reactions either serious or non serious, at at a higher rate

in pregnant women. So and and I think now knowing and having considerably more data over the course of this pandemic, that infection can uh results in you know, serious effects on preg that se outcomes including things like pre term birth UM. I think pregnant women UM. And the recommendation by the CDC is that pregnant women in their second

or third trimester should definitely be getting getting vaccinated. Excuse me, what do though, pregnant women need to understand about kind of how this vaccine works to kind of feel more self assured or are confident about getting it. Absolutely so, you know, I think the nature of these platforms and the terminology that's used for these platforms m r N A virus vector vaccines these confound quite intimidating, as though they could do something off target, either to the pregnant

women or their baby. And there is absolutely nothing to be concerned about. These are not causing infections in US. These are vaccines that, through their delivery mechanisms, are stimulating our cells um to to make in this case, the spike antigen um, which is what our immune system um recognizes in the stars Covey two virus. It's just proteins, so it can't replicate, it can't in fact, it can't do anything to harm either the pregnant woman or her fetus.

So um, yeah, Professor Klein, I just want to jump in because, well, how would you answer the question if somebody came to you and said, but wait a second, we don't yet know if the vaccine has an effect on a baby in two three years. Absolutely, I would say that there's no evidence from any vaccine ever that

there are those types of long term effects. But what there is ample evidence of is in utero infection during pregnan can have long term implications on the baby one to five ten years later, even in cases where the virus itself is not transmitted to the baby. So I think I think pregnant women need to be considerably more concerned that the probability of getting inspected in and getting sick, very sick, and having to potentially be hospitalized is greater

if you're not vaccinated. It's greater for pregnant than non pregnant women. And the one way to mitigate this is by getting vaccinated. All right, some good advice, And I want to just mention one thing because I heard somebody talking about this to the CDC recommendation that women who need mammograms try to get them before vaccination or six weeks after a vaccination because of swollen lymph nodes under their arm. Like, we are finding out more information so

that you have an understanding about when to do these things. Again, this is I don't want to say it's a Senex experiment, but we're watching the research play out in real time right now, and each day we do learn more and more, but still so many questions, especially when it comes to that question that you ask, Carol, to what extent does do these vaccines last past six, eight, ten months? Right? Exactly? We don't know yet, right because we've done it a

little bit differently. Dr saber Kline. She's Professor of Molecular Microbiology Nammunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, co director of the Center for Women's Health, Sex and Gender Research. Great to have her back with us on the phone from Baltimore. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovic on

Bloomberg Radio. Bloomberg Sarah Fryar. She has been following how social networks circulate information for years, and our latest reporting in the magazine covers how social networks are exporting disinformation about the COVID vaccine, and Tim exporting is the keyword. Yeah, it certainly is. Content that's blocked or flagged in the US often continues to circulate in other languages. The Joel.

The question that I have whenever I read a story about content moderation and Facebook is these companies are most powerful technology companies with the brightest minds. Why can't they get this under control? Well, they can, um, and they've been cracking down on it. But in the case of the story that Um Sarah did, the problem becomes um that things get lost in translation, or that more more accurately,

translations are still getting out there with the mins information. So, so, Sarah, can you help us get to the bottom this Why does it keep happening. Well, in this case, the global pandemic, it's a different situation than we've seen in the past. We've had this debate about Facebook and YouTube for years, the fact that they really just don't have people who understand and can moderate content in all the languages that

they offer their services in. Their machine learning for finding vaccine misinformation and harmful misinformation is only proficient and about a dozen languages, and Facebook has offered in more than a hundred languages. So just just keep that in mind. Um. But the difference with this pandemic is it's it's a phenomenon that is global, and the information that is coming and circulating globally it has a similar potency to US pop culture. Researchers told me, I mean, this is just

it's what's what we're talking about here. We've had access to the vaccines sooner here than they have in other countries, and that culture of the debates, the rumors of things that have already gone viral and gotten banned or gotten labeled in the US on YouTube and Facebook have then been translated into other languages and and are having a whole other cycle elsewhere and outside of the realm of these tools that can can really bring it under control.

And just for our audience, you recognize her voice. Bloomberg News technology reporter and author of No Filter, The Inside Story of Instagram, Sarah Friar. She's with us from San Francisco, and of course Bloomberg Business we get out or Joe Webber right here to a friend that I forgot to

tell everyone. Sarah, you know, we do have the technology available to us, and I believe Skype does it like real time translations in many different languages, and it's just so hard for me to to understand why if this type of machine learning is available, it is still so challenging for these companies to get this under control. Well, every time something new occurs, you have to train a model to find the images that UM that correspond with

that problem and and understand the local context. Maybe people don't call it UM the same. There is a lot of colloquialisms around how you describe immunizations. There are a lot of UM, a lot of content that that may go viral in the US and and may not pop

up for months elsewhere. And so I think that the UM the issue really is one of investment, is the fact that these companies have only just started to crack down strongly in English, and even then, I don't know about you, but I see so many rumors still circulating in English. People who are talking about, you know, the false notion that that the fiber maderna vaccine can shed to others, or cobb in fertility, all of those, all those things, those harmful things are still spreading. So the

English version of this is not proficient. You just need to imagine that if you are witnessing this media environment in English, that is definitely worth in any other language. I thought that was particularly interesting. There's a paragraph in the story about Arabic subtitles in particular. Can you tell us about that one? And what a review by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue found. So, the Institute of the Strategic Dialogue found that there were these US originated videos

of women shaking and convulsing purportedly after getting the shot. Um, but they were obviously, you know, lacking in context, and it wasn't verified. And then um they were labeled as meeting to be fact checked in the US on Facebook. But those same videos exactly the same content, just with Arabic subtitles. We're not caught by the same machine learning

algorithms in in Arab language countries. So so I think that this is what we've seen happen over and over, is that the US drama occurs and gets evaluated and and we saw it also with the even before the era of vaccines, we saw with the planned Demic video. And if you guys remember that was the highly conspiratorial video documentary that you know, went and had millions of views on Facebook and YouTube before it was taken down

finally by the platforms for its harmful impact. And that video was circulating in other countries for days, becoming a problem before it was addressed in other languages. So what do the social media companies, say, Sarah, when it comes to basically policing platforms outside the US, It is really not that transparent. Facebook skills is not disclosed, how many moderators it has in a certain language. Um, you know, any comparative data on how it's work in the US

compares or in Europe compared to work elsewhere. Um, we get bulk statistics from from companies like like Alphabets, Google and YouTube, but we do not have any transparency into the actual effectiveness we are relying on this anecdotal research from people who who spend their whole career looking at this problem, and they're telling us that this is the

trend that they're seeing. But Um, but I really think that in order to get to the bottom of this, we're gonna need a lot more information from these companies that have now had had so much control over our global information diet Sarah, I know you've spent months reporting on misinformation when it comes to vaccines on these platforms, in years reporting on these platforms, and in the research

for your book. UM, give us the motivation for people who do spread this disinformation in just the lass thirty seconds that we have with you. It is about being a personality on the internet, about getting that engagement, and in some cases about making money. I mean, the people who are telling you that vaccines are are scary and possibly harmful, they're also trying to sell you alternatives. They're saying, by my supplements instead, or you know, come to my

mindfulness retreat instead, UM, listen to my podcast. And so I think there is a commercial aspect, there is an ego aspect to this, and there are some people who really have fallen down the rabbit hole and believe it and are trying to to keep each other's safe. And those are the people that we need to make sure get the right information. Well, great continuing coverage, Sarah, Thank you so much, Bloomberg News technology reporter, author of No Filter,

the inside story of Instagram. Sarah Fire on the phone in San Francisco. Are thanks to Bloomberg Business we get out to Jill Weber in our Interactive broker's studio. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. This is I'm just checking. It's our most red story in the Bloomberg in the past eight hours. It's about Morgan Stanley, now the latest big US bank to shake up its leadership.

So here with this scoop is Bloomberg News Finance reporter Street n Uragan. He's in our Interactive Brokers studio. So you know where I want to go. I'm looking at the visual. I know everybody's saying it. So four white guys and Goodwind on radio and good thing. We're on radio, but on YouTube. I don't know if everybody can see this. Wait, I'm gonna low. It's all over Twitter here it is, Yeah, it's all over Twitter. Um, did James Gorman not get

the memo? Look, I think, to be completely fair, Morgan Stanley would probably tell you that this is a moment in Times snapshot, even before diversity was a buzzword on Wall Street. This is a firm that had Ruth poor At as it's CFO six years ago. She left and went to Google and rose higher there, and then there was Zoe Cruise before the financial crisis around around that time two thousand seven two, when she was the co

president of the firm. So Morgan Stanley has had women in senior leadership roles because it's a separate question why they have not been able to climb to the highest rank. But it would not be totally fair to say that Morgan Stanley stands out different from every other bank. But at a time that we are in right now where you're seeing succession planning everywhere, and you know, when the senior leaders are thinking about and the heels of JP Morgan what the future looks like, it does it does

strike a bit of a discordant note. But if you're CEO S sixty two and the next generation is in the mid fifties. You still have a Wall Street that is populated with you know, old white men in that racket who have that experience, who have rose through the ranks,

who have got that divisional experience across the board. The real pipeline, and it is coming up elsewhere, perhaps not as fast as it should be, but the real pipeline is probably in the late thirties, in the early forties, mid forties generation, and that crew is still a while away from getting the top perch at any major institution. Yeah, the new co presidents are are ted. Pick is fifty two Andy sapristein who are these people and who is

this quartet? Well, that Pick is, of course, uh, you know, seen as the turnaround artists at Morgan Stanley. He started his career out as a e c M banker equity capital markets. He out with the ip of Google, he helped with the IP of Blackstone. But then of course his real climb at Morgan Stanley is considered with what he did post crisis, and the crisis was a really difficult time for Morgan Standay like most other banks, but for Morgan Stanley in particular. But post crisis he helped

rebuild the trading division, the equities group. He took it to the dominant player, to the number one standing on Wall Street. Then he was tasked with repairing their fixed income division, which really was, you know, to be completely blunt, a train wreck, and he took some hard steps there, and hard steps in Wall Street means a big number of job cuts. But since then it does seem to

have rebounded. The trading group has done really well. And then he was given oversight of its traders and dealmaker's head of the Corporate Investment Bank. So it made sense for him to be rising to the position of a president because the c IB is about fifty of the

firm's revenue. The other half of the majority of the other half comes from wealth management, and the Sapperstein has helped Bill Morgan Stanley into this wealth management powerhouse, and that has been carried out really in the course of the last ten years. You think about the Smith Barney acquisition in two thousand ten, from there all the way through to the e Trade purchase last here, which was

a Jumboard deal. The biggest bank deal in over a decade or probably even since the Smith Barney deal again was carried out by Morgan Stanley, and that has shifted the center of gravity at the film. It really has his balance of you know, they have the standing among the elites of investment banking as well as such a big operation intending to customers his money. Concidal living anytime seeing that it doesn't sound like he's keen on leaving

anytime soon. Our understanding he's already told the board, the scenior management that he wants to stick around for at least three more years. And who can blame him? This is the best performing major US banks talk in the last five years. And the wind going is this good? Would you really want to walk off into the sunset? So what happens now is these these four individuals and as as you write, the shuffle thrust the quartet into

a public bake off to succeed Gorman. What happens now, well I did speak with Gorman and he said it gives them time to spread their wings. So it really is going to play off as a bike off. You have these four people right now and these would be seen as the leading contenders. But that's now, that's six months from today, that's nine months from today. Three years is a long time on Wall Street, her stock at record high, your businesses that are firing on all cylinders,

something might go wrong. Other contenders might come about the bye side is of Washington liquidity. Some of these people might get pushed away too much. Higher paying jobs are a very different jobs. So just because these four other leading contenders right now doesn't necessarily mean this is how it will look three or four or five years from today.

In the meantime, do they do anything there to increase you know, the amount of women in terms of leadership, you know the pipeline here and just got about twenty seconds here. I think they will tell you that they are doing everything that they can and to boost that bipline. They will tell you they have a number of senior women. Susie Huang, who's the cohead of their investment bank, is one of the most senior Asian women across Wall Street, and they are trying to promote other women as well.

But when we see the big headlines like this, when we see the contenders, it does send out a message that maybe they would should have thought of the creative solution when it comes to thinking about successes, just a little diversity, little diversity check out that story at Bloomberg dot com if you want to see the picture to gain an idea of what we're talking about. Trinadaraj And broke this story. He got the scoop financial Bloomberg News

in our Interactor Broker studio, Marc a journal. Yeah, but you let me drive, No, no, no, night, please out of the riding vel. I want to drive. Just drives the questions. Your job. This is the drive to the globe. Thanks well, try us on Bloomberg Radio. All right, just about ten minutes left in today's trading session, so let's get to it in his time for the drive to the close. Back with us is margat Bittel. She is senior portfolio manager at Wells Fargo Asset Management, billion dollars

in assets under management. Market back with us on the phone from Boston. So market, It's been an interesting week, an interesting couple of weeks. Whether it was inflation news that sometimes made investors a little bit nervous, certainly in the equity markets, and then sometimes not. You know, we're watching the crypto markets, which fell out of bed yesterday, bounced back and they're bouncing back some more today. How do you make sense of what really matters fundamentally to

the equity trade. Well, I think what the market is looking at most of all is the sense policy on interest rates. Uh, that's what's really I think relief that from the FED minutes that the FED is nowhere near thinking about raising rates because of inflation helped to draw the tech sector which was over sold anyway. And I think the market is really looking for large themes and

narratives at this point. But that that's the most important thing is is their inflation is a feed very tighten and I think a review of their minutes and that isn't the case. So the market is having a little bit of a relief rarely here. But I guess the question is is what changes the Fed's mind? What what? What are the inflation numbers that makes people and the FED start to think differently about their targets for raising rates. Well, I think that's the problem is because the Fed has

not made that clear. Whether that's deliberate or they'll strew up deciding among themselves what the signals would be. Uh, But basically they haven't made clear what exactly be a trigger point to change and begin to draw liquidity out. And also the Feed is talks about inflation, but the definition of inflation and the numbers that they look at is inflation is not necessarily with the markets looking at with consumers, with businesses looking at for their price increases.

So I think it's a little bit of confusion of well, exactly what is the inflation rate that people should look at to try to figure out what the FED would would be sensitive to moving And so there's a lot of uncertainty, and so I think people are just really trying to get a grip on what will make the

FED react market will look. I'm a little confused that because those Fed minutes came out Him and I were on air, and you did see equities take a little bit of a of a dive on the FED minutes, especially because the FED was talking a little bit about acid prices and some concerns um and seeming to that there are members of FED starting to consider maybe talking about kind of what was the next move for the FED, and we did see rates go up. So how do you see today being a relief rally off of that?

Did you think there was a rethink a little bit after that initial reaction to the FED minutes yesterday? Yes, because I think people are trying to parce out what will be the FEDS reaction to what specifically, and that isn't very clear. Uh. It's just we need to take the FEDS pulse to figure out what they're looking at and how close they are. And that's what the market

was doing yesterday. Today the market feels a little relieved. Um. And so I think that I personally think it will be a long time before we see the FED do anything in the way of titan need to try to race rate. What do you mean that long time? Uh, certainly for the rest of this year, well intil next year, the rest of this year, well into next year. So is that something that with you when you see these, when you know the text off a few weeks ago.

Is that something that you think is a widely held belief? Uh? No, I think people are really trying to figure out what they can match onto because we've never had a recession like this COVID recession. It hasn't been driven by economic conditions. Uh. The FED has a monetary policy that we've never seen before. And also the set is saying, UM, watch for our reaction, as opposed to saying these are the data that we're

looking for that will be our trigger. So the market is sort of flailing around saying, well, what inflation numbers have been looking at? Uh, certainly in the real world we're seeing that, but the fit isn't reacting to it. So and then I think that keys into the biggest sector, which is a tech sector that's been the most overvalued performance wise, and so it's the most sensitive at any time we see any any wobbly in what the ten

years doing that makes weakness in tech. They ten years rallied text up, especially text have been I think gotten pretty oversold here over the short term. Worrying about interest rates, Well, how do you think investor should think about tech specifically? Should you even be thinking short term or do we no longer term? Especially some of those big momentum players that they're going to be around for a while. That's where we're still going to go see some growth. That's

what we're gonna still see some momentum. And it makes sense fundamentally. Yes, I think that those companies, the high quality, proven growers, are going to continue to be above average performers over the next few years um. But still we have a lot of short term trading nervous money that's come out of check and when they come out of chech they come out of the small, risky names and the big names too. So I think you're just seeing

a little bit of market volatility. So we're trying to look through that and not really time to trade the tech sector based on the short term moves, but just a long term we think we'll still see higher growth out of that sector than most other market sectors, so we still like the sector a lot. What are your thoughts on cryptocurrency? Yesterday we saw quite the decline, with bitcoin more than before making up much of that, and

bitcoin at last check trading higher on the day today. Um, what are clients asking you about bit quinn and how are you feeling about it? Uh, we're not seeing many questions on that. It's because our clients are really broken advised, so when they get nervous about that sort of thing, they talked to their advisor. He calms them down and

then they feel feel better about the world. We think it's it's a speculative development and it doesn't give you the information say that if you look at the price of gold might give you about market sentiment and risk and so forth. That's any more questions about it that

is interesting. I mean, I don't know, how do you think about you you know, have seen a lot of different cycles, a lot of funky new wave investments, whether it was high yield junk bonds way back when that have now become kind of a norm normal part of an investors portfolio. How do you think about digital currencies? Well, I think it's mostly um market, that participants are short term traders, opportunistic investors, short term and maybe new people

to trading. So it seems very exciting and new and fresh, and that's how we always learned and until the market. This is a good lesson about fundamentals. So I think it's it's just really reflecting liquidity, a surge of new investors, something that seems on the surface very exciting and new and techie, and but not much to do with fundamentals or relative value of currencies for example, or anything about inflation.

It's just too volal. I should say, Bitcoin pair gains as the Treasury seeks a tough and tax compliance, but now is back above so up another eighteen hundred dollars today. Yeah, we've seen we've seen really, really dramatic moves. One quick last point twenty seconds here, Margie, Um, what do you want to avoid in this environment? We think that some of the smaller tech names are still a little vulnerable here because we still seek some money coming out of

those sectors. And we think some of the economically sensitive sectors who have gotten way ahead of themselves with market enthusiasm on the rebaild, we think they're going to be kind of dead money for the next six months. All right, Good to know, Good to check in with you. Market Patel, Senior portfolio manager at Wells Fargo Asset Management, five billion dollars in assets under management, joining us on the phone

from Boston. 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 search Bloomberg Global News