This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. We're here every day bringing you the latest news from the world's of business and finance, plus technology, politics, economics, all harnessing the power of Bloomberg Business Week reporters and editors, not to mention our journalists and analysts more than a hundred and twenty countries. You can download Bloomberg Business Week
on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot Com. You can also listen to our radio show weekdays at two pm Eastern only on Bloomberg Radio. All right, so let's get to that, folks. To date, AmeriCares has delivered six tons of protective supplies for the COVID nineteen pandemic, and more international domestic shipments are planned. The company works with more than four thousand health centers around the globe. Dr Julie um for verhe's forgive me. I just want to make sure I had
that right. Julie Ver, He's he's. She is chief medical officer at America Cares UH and she joins us on the phone from Chicago. UM. Dr for He's nice to have you here with us, fast and furious. Where are we in terms of those protect active supplies for our healthcare workers. Thank you so much for having me UM. As we've seen, we are having significant challenges in terms
of sourcing protective equipment or healthcare workers on the front lines. UM. You know at America's we have sentshipments of personal protective equipment, particularly in hot films UM here in the US in Washington State, California, New York. But UM have, similar to other organizations, been having a significant, significant number of challenges in terms of sourcing supplies that are so critically needed
right now for healthcare workers. I think one of the concerns was, and I certainly saw this over the weekend, Jason, you probably did tune watching the press conferences between governors and what we got from the Coronavirus Task Force that there seems to be you know, is there the flow
of equipment. Is the government kind of taking central control of it and making sure that supplies are getting to where they need to go, because what we're seeing is price gouging as state try to access the needed supplies. Are we getting that coordinated effort that seems to be necessary at this point? Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's a lot of action that is taking place UM and and there's a lot of coordination that is happening,
but there's still more that's really needed. UM. You know, we are seeing a lot of the individual states taking significant measures UM, but certainly this is a cross sectoral effort. This is an unprecedented time that we're in. We have not seen these types of shortages in previous help grips that we've been involved with, and so certainly there is a call for even more action UM and collaboration and coordination amongst the various sectors within government but also in
the private and public sectors as well. And so Dr Brahe's help us understand. You know, with this limited amount of protective gear, how does that play through to you know, what everyday people should be doing in terms of when to go to a hospital, when to go to a clinic, how to sort of deal with with their own stuff in order to not uh, sort of way too much on the system unnecessarily. Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And I think the general public, you know, I can't over
emphasize enough the importance of social distancing. We're seeing so much of that emphasized in the media. Um, you know, folks really being urged to stay at home to the best of their ability. Um. You know, certainly there's needs to go out for medical care and growth rates, but really trying to stay home as much as possible. And I think that every single person has an important role
to play in contributing just slowing down the spread. We're hearing a lot about flattening the curve or slowing down the spread of infection, and so I think implementing social distancing, really focusing on preventative measures like basic handwashing, cough etiquette, UM, not touching your faith are so important. And and I would say, really we're focusing not just on kind of
containing the infection, We're focusing on not overwhelming the healthcare system. Well, Dr Varkis, and I forgive, forgive me, I think I've been mispronouncing your name, so my apologies, but Dr Archie's I think that's what I was seeing a lot of
questions about over the weekend. Where are we getting to a point because of shortage of supplies of this protective gear for healthcare workers that UM, medical personnel, doctors and others will have to make choices about who they can treat or who they can provide equipment on, whether it's based on age or based on how vulnerable somebody is. I mean, are we getting to that point? I don't think we're quite there yet, but will we get there in a week potentially? It's hard to know exactly what
the timeline could be. And I think all of the efforts were trying to put into place currently um both at the state and federal level, really trying to help decrease the risk of getting there. Certainly, the healthcare system and healthcare workers are already McCoy taxed in terms of limitations on personal protective equipment and other types of equipment.
But we're really trying to help slow down the spread and and how fast we may find ourselves in that type of situation like we're seeing, you know, in Italy and other places. And Dr Argy's what are we learning about, especially as we think about the biggest cities in the country and you are there in Chicago one of them. You know, we've seen these restrictive measures, the essential shelter in place, even if we're not calling it that, in all these different places in California, here in New York,
uh and also in Illinois, where you are. We're seeing other states take similar measures. What are we seeing in terms of the efficacy of that or when will we know how effective that is? Yeah, so it's it's hard to know exactly how soon because we're seeing varying levels they say of the whole shelter in place concept. But certainly UM just urging people to social distance and to shelter in place, I think we can truly slow down
the spread. UM. It may take still a week or more to really understand how that kind of impacts the next wave of cases and how much of an increase or increase we're seeing in terms of these having these measures in place and the impact in terms of the case counts. I do wonder about underserved populations and whether or not they're getting the necessary care and able to get out there. What are you seeing on that front or what are we doing to make sure that they
are taking care of along with everybody else. Yeah, certainly we UM and Americas are concerned about low income, uninsured and underinsured individuals and community. We have clinics, four clinics here in Connecticut. I'm actually located in Connecticut where our America's headquarters is in UM and so we have four free clinics where we are serving low income, uninsured and under insured individuals UM and really trying to maintain primary care services as well. We have clinics in El Salvador
as well as the community of Mumbai. And what we've seen in our previous experience with outbreaks is that while there is a lot of attention and resources put behind containment of UH the spread of infection, there's also a need for continuation of services, especially primary care services. We saw this in a BOLO where you know, people were dying of their chronic disease such as hypertension or diabetes because there weren't enough resources and access to services for
their chronic care conditions. And so UM as an organization, we've really tried to, to the best of our ability, keeping in mind the safety of our health care workers on the front line, continue those primary care services in addition to the screening and referrals that we're doing for COVID ninet teams. All Right, we're gonna leave it there. Thank you so much for your time. Dr Julie Vargis is Chief Medical Officer for AmeriCares, joining us on the
phone from Connecticut. Some good information there and a reminder that ultimately, Carol and Ute, we did something to this effect earlier the healthcare crisis. You know, we talk a lot about the markets in the financial world, but this is very very much a healthcare crisis and one that a lot of doctors are trying to deal with. Trick here and trick here. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Let's get down to d C now. Josh wynd Grove is their
White House correspondent for Bloomberg. Great story today on the terminal, as we mentioned about where the president's head maybe on this stay at home advice that we've so many of us have been given. Josh, great to have you back with Carol and myself. Tell us what the president is thinking right now. UM, it's hard to say the mind that there is some sort of way to have your cake and eat it too, that you can signal two
Americans that you know, it's dawn again. We're getting through this. UM. You can start, you know, stepping back a bit from the measures that we've all started taking in the last while. UM, but health officials are going to push back on that and say we are not out of the woods yet. For instance, the caseloads are still rising. We have no idea when the when they will plateau in terms of
new cases. The deaths, of course continue to rise. America has a shortage of testing and of medical supplies to treat it, everything from masks to hospital beds and ventilators, and so there's a lot of uh, you know, clouds on the horizon, and it would be it seems like a weird time for him to be preparing to sort of declare victory and start coming back towards the more normal life. Yeah, safe to say that. I think most people believe that. To josh Um that all of a sudden,
that's that's kind of a thinking. I think crucial to this, right is that health side of the story, in that you know, if you've had the virus, you know, don't we need to have some testing to see if you build up some immunity to it so that you can go back. Because I think the fear is all so I feel like we were talking so much last week about the second wave. As we start to go back, I think there's been some concerns about that happening in China, uh,
and elsewhere. So are we thinking it all about that? It's a good question. I mean not really, because we don't really have the capacity to test people in that regard. I mean, you know, like I like to think of like I want to think of workspaces. Let's think of like the NBA, right like if they wanted to start playing basketball again, they would have to test every team and the and the referees and coaches every game. And
they just don't. They just don't have that. And so you start to scale that, and that's even what what would that be? Thirty people? Maybe? You know, it was so bad bare minimum to run a game in an EFT the arena. Scale that to look a big company, big employer, what do you do right? One person coming back could potentially carry it when you know, you just you,
you have no idea. So I think Trump there is a clear movement in the last twenty four hours among Trump and the people he listens to to say that the economy can't stand to be on the mat all that longer. You've got to give some sort of signal, even if it is only a signal that things will start moving back to normal life at some point. Uh, and the inflection point to do that is in one week. That's when Trump's fifteen days tops to stop the spread
strategy expires next Monday or so. Um. But health officials say, look, if we don't have a handle on the upbreak, reopening things is only going to make it worse. Right. Well, and it's clear and and this has been not I was gonna say it's been nuanced. It actually hasn't been that nuance. You know when you see Dr Fauci and Dr Burke's up there, you know, sort of gently correcting
the record sometimes at these briefings. And you know, it's interesting, Joshua I read something this morning that essentially said, part of this is because these briefings every day have become I dare say political, to to a large extent, confrontational with with the media. They are not necessarily just delivering the latest and greatest when it comes to the medical outlook. Right. Um, yeah, they're they're the length of like an eighties comedy. Every day.
I mean, we're there forever um tonight, god knows how long it will last. We'll see. Um. But you know, for media, the White House doesn't provide a lot of information that briefing is the only way to ask basic things like how many masks do we have? What is the caseload? Do we have ventilators? Arguably we shouldn't be wasting national airtime asking the president for the numbers themselves, but you know, this is our only opportunity to So, you know, I think Trump is out there every day.
He's he's trying to look like he's leading on that. His his sort of orbit is touting elevated approval numbers and is handling of this. But we are not out of the woods yet. Absolutely. Yeah, no, that's for sure. Um, Josh, really appreciate all your efforts and all your reporting, and thanks for finding time for us. Josh wynd Grove joining us from Washington, one of the most read and one of the most read guys. It's just true. Joe, No Sarah,
he joins us on the phone from Southampton. We're gonna set that aside for a second, because then we would just go down the rabbit hole of the shrink next door, and we'll save that for another day. Joe. Joe Webber also with us. Uh, he is in Brooklyn. That's where we're finding him these days. So no, Sarah, I want to start with you, Uh, this is a provocative look to some extent about what could happen uh down the line as it relates to vaccines and basically forcing people
are forcing an issue. I should say, tell us what you found. Well, well, I just I went back and looked at what happened, um during swine flu. That was that was my idea. Uh, you know, excuse me, what what sort of measures were there were state governments able to take, um to to kind of get people past that.
And one of the things that I discovered was that in the state of New York, the health the head of the health department had ordered UM all health care workers to take the vaccine under the threat of being fired if they didn't do it by you know, like they were given like a month and a half to do it. And what happened was, um, you know, they got sued by some uh by some nurses and by UM a union, a workers union, and UM the judge
ordered to stay. So in other words, that the judge said, you can't do this, and I'll you know, then I'll rule on the merriats later and and in the meantime, the vaccine turned out to be in such short supply that the governor, Governor Patterson at the time, decided it was pointless to try and enforce this, and so they just kind of gave up. So what it means is that even when there is a vaccine, we really don't know legally what right people and particularly health workers are
going to have in dealing with this. And I can guarantee you that if somebody tries to enforce a vaccine with the anti vax movement being what it is today, uh, there will be an uproar and there will be a lot of litigates. Come on, come on, Well, that's why Joe, what was the name of the case, because it is one that I think is going to be in the headlines. Um, if and when there's a vaccine, you would have to
ask me that's Binian Binian versus danged. And what I what I actually thought, what I thought was remarkable about this little bit of slicing on Joe's part, was that we've actually been down this road before, right Like we've been We've seen like the swine swine flu at the time that was a pandemic and there were a lot of people who got sick. And here we were racing out.
Um uh, you know, a vaccine. And one of the elements that the I think is important to keep in mind here was that the healthcare workers said, we don't want to be giddap in this case. And that was actually one of the one of the things that the judge decided when he decided on this day. Um So when you kind of when you when you think about this, like New York State was where this case was centered, um and and it will be probably a state issue
before it's anything else. Is that not? Right? Without without question, it will, especially given how lacks the federal government has been dealing with this pandemic, it will definitely be a state issue. You can definitely see Cuomo saying you have to do this, and you can definitely see enormous pushbacks from um and and and by the way, the same is happening here in terms of the vaccine itself. You know, everybody's talking about we got a rush the vaccine out,
We got a rush the vaccine out. Right, you usually take a year and a half to two years, right, exactly. Well, and I also think about the bigger worker issue, especially with some of the conversation. You know that we heard just from our Josh Wing Grove who covers the White
House and Washington. You know about the President talking already about people workers getting back to work, and you do wonder, you know, could we get to a point where, Okay, if you want to go back to work, if you get this vaccine, and if you don't take it, like, it just opens up all these weird questions. Joe, right, right, absolutely, and that's true that you know there's another vaccine. Uh, people who kind of hold, excuse me, another test. It's
an antibody test. It's supposed to be fairly closed. And the importance of the antibody test is that it can tell you if you're immune. So so you can definitely see a situation where the government says, you have to take this antibody test because we have to know whether you are immune. And if you're immune, you gotta go back to work. Well, you gotta go. You know, you've got to be part of the economy again. So you know,
you could see the same set of issues. It's not quite the same as a vaccine, but you could definitely see the same set of issues. They are well, and guys, I do wonder, and Joe, I would love for you to weigh on this as well. I mean, we are in this moment where it feels like in the name of public health, public safety, our own and those of
our communities and whatnot. Maybe you know, we're starting to think about some very basic you know, rights and what we can and can't do in sort of a different way. And you know, if you spend too long on Twitter, you can go down some rabbit holes about what the government can and can't do here. Right, well, you know
make sense. I think I think about like nine eleven, right, and you think about what a tales beIN um that put our society for for you know, a decade plus in terms of civil liberties, and didn't to some extent like we might be terrunning a similar phase here which will test our social fabric. And I wanted to go ahead to come at it from a different from a different angle. You know, when the polio virus came out, I was a little kid, and I remember my mother takes you to get a polio shot and that was
not that was not that was mandatory. Everybody in the country had to take a polo shot. Nobody complained about it because everybody was so terrified, terrified about polio. And so what I think is that we could see an era when we go back to that where if this virus is bad enough, you could see the court upholding a government saying you have to do this for the greater good. And I feel like the greater good is something that's kind of been forgotten the last couple of decades.
And you know, however you feel about mandatory vaccines working on behalf of the greater good is something that society really needs to recaptured. No, it's a eight point and certainly it's something that we have been talking more and more about. I mean social distancing really only what you know, if like only a couple of people are social distancing themselves, then it really it doesn't work so well, all right, Jonah Sarah always thought provocative. Thank you so much. Johning
us on the phone from Southampton, New York. Joe Webber joining us on the phone from Brooklyn. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Now. We often talk about this with our Andy Brown, about globalization and the factors that have been shipping away at it. One factor to consider is the virus and how it might ultimately kill globalization. Andy Brown is Bloomberg New Economy editorial director. He's on the phone in New Hampshire. Andy,
good to have you back with us. First of all, you guys all doing okay, we're doing great up here in uh in New Hampshire. Actually the terrific part of the US to be in right now. Yeah, we'll tell us a little bit about because as we watch the rest of the world. Um, you know, it's really certainly tough going. You have talked to us in the past about the things that are really chipping away at globalization,
this virus. We have seen a lot of fighting. Certainly it feels like our tensions between the US and China as a result of you know, kind of finger pointing at who cost h Um talked to us though about
the broader implications potentially for globalization. Yeah. So so you know, the way I look at it is, you know, ultimately globalization, economic globalization depends on trust that you know, essentially, you've got these incredibly long and complex supply chains, many of them running through China, and companies and countries have got to believe in the integrity of those chains. Um, and they haven't really been tested in the last several decades
that much. I mean, you had an episodes, for instance, in two thousand and eleven, you had floods in Thailand, you had an earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and parts of the electronic supply chain came down. And now you have massive global failures of supply chains. And you know, not just that, you have you know this uh, simultaneous erosion of trust between the big actors in the globalization dramas. So you know, uh, most notably uh and most disastrously
right now between the US and China. And you know, uh, we're seeing that in medicines, in pharmaceuticals, where it's become clear that the US economy is highly dependent and many would argue dangerously dependent on China. And indeed, we've had insinuations from the Chinese media that you know, what would happen if China denied active pharmaceutical ingredients to the US industry, And this has rarely raised red flags uh here in the US, you know, is the US has the US
become too reliant on China? But you're also seeing it in in Europe with borders going up with with you know, Germany France accusing each other of holding face masks, Italy begging in vain for help for emergency equipment, you know, from the neighbors, and in the end having to look to China for help. And China is seeing all this, by the way, and really trying to take advantage of
it well. And and obviously the political rhetoric is really escalating to uh andy, you know it that I was listening to something this morning that was talking about even the way that the President United States is framing this, you know, continuing to refer to it as the Chinese virus, and this relationship that's always been complicated, to say the least between him and President She getting more complicated in a lot of ways. Now, how does that contribute to
the overall ethos here? Yeah? So you know what's what's so tragic we talked about this last week is right now, the US and China ought to be collaborating on everything. On the search for a vaccine, They ought to be working together on the manufacture of face masks, of ventilators, of gowns, on on, on, and distribution of all of this.
This this emergency gear which hospitals right now in the US so desperately need and in fact, this coronavirus has just opened up a whole new battleground battle front between them and Steve Bannon was quoted in New York Times that day saying, you know, we are now in an information hot war, uh, in addition to economic hot war, by which he meant that, you know, the narrative around the coronavirus, where did it, where did it begin? You
know who's to blame? Um has become now you know, a deeply contested area between these two countries, and they're using it in order to gain geopolitical influence and leverage. And he asked you to be quick. Just got about thirty seconds. But as the horse left the barn, I mean, could someone else fix the situation? Maybe somebody else in the next administration, or is this how it's going to be between the US and China going forward? Just quickly
if you could. Uh? Well, I mean, unfortunately U S China relations in this country in the United States are very much a bipartisan issue. Uh. That It's not at all clear that a democratic, democratic president would um, you know,
would would alter course. I don't, however, think that a democratic president, or indeed have any other president would go to the length that Donald Trump does right now in deliberately fanning Miss Trump and deliberately infuriating China by calling at the Chinese virus and Pompeo calling at the Wuhan virus, by the way, least with terrible backlash against Asian Americans in the United All right, Andy Brown, always good to
catch up with you. Thank you so much, Editorial director of the New Economy here at Bloomberg mac A Journal. But you let me drive. Oh no, no, no no, no, honey, please, I'll do the righting drivel. I want to try it. Just drive, baby, it's the questions trying. This is the drive to the clobes. Communings well, un Radio, it is time for the drive to the close. Charlie, Bobrinskoy is back with us. Why, Chairman, Vice chairman and head of
investment group at Erroal Investments. I've got roughly thirteen point two billion in assets under management joining us on the phone in Chicago. Charlie. Really nice to have you with us. Tell us, um, first of all, I hope you, your family, your team, everybody's doing okay, Yes they are. I'm spending a lot of time with my family. How's that going now?
I'm just kidding, Um, what is it like in Chicago, Charlie, You know, I mean that we're so focused, you know, being here in New York into what it's like here. But you know, your governor JB. Pritzkers has made some similar steps to to ours in terms of, you know, really locking things down. It's an interesting question. I think, Um, the coasts have been hit much harder in terms of
actual cases, impact on hospitals. Obviously, New York, Washington State, in California account for the majority of the cases and deaths, and we are seeing some activity in the Midwest. Uh, this is more concentrated in cities, but in general very little impact. So this is one of those situations where obviously a lot of farmers, a lot of rural areas in the middle of the country that are frankly not
affected on a daily basis. So, Charlie, when you when you hear what's coming out of Washington, what you've seen the FED do at this point, um, and what you're seeing obviously in Chicago in terms of the impact and just the impact on global markets overall. I mean, do you agree with the steps that have been taken so far, and what do you think Congress needs to do. You know, obviously there are people that are more knowledgeable than I am.
But clearly Governor Cuomo said something today which I think a lot of us agree with, in which the Washington the Wall Street Journal editorial page has said, which is that this is having a big effect on the economy and it is not good for the health care of the health of our citizens to have an implodeddc to me. And so there are going to be times in the future, not tomorrow, but when we have to get back to work, and that's going to be done in a prudent way.
It's going to be done, um, when it is not going to endanger our citizens, but it is going to need to happen because we cannot have all of us staying home and um, imploded economy is not good for anybody. And so Charlie, put on your investment hat here as you talk to the team, Uh, what what are you guys thinking about in terms of where where the market is trading at this point and how you approach this
as savvy investors. So what we do is try not to look at the market as a whole, but look at individual companies and the basic analysis is try to find names that are going to have a very tough time on the short term, because the market always looks at the short term, but are going to be fine in the long term. And one key um differentiator in that is good balance sheets. If I had to say one thing that the stock market doesn't do particularly well,
it's analyzed the credit of companies. And so we are real pride ourselves on doing good credit work, investing in companies that are sure going to have a tough quarter but are going to be fine in the long run. So so where does that lead you to? I mean, we always talk to you about Tiffany and as we know, um, you know l v m H is in the process of of taking it over. You you know, send some notes over and you said that if LVMH wanted to get out of the deal, they could by claiming a
material adverse change. Do you think that's likely? Yeah, So to be very careful, I'm not saying that they would win in the end and if they claimed the material adverse change, but they clearly could if they wanted to get out of the deal. We saw in two thousand and eight, there were a lot of acquisitions that got canceled because of either financing outs or material adverse change outs. And so at this point, I think Tiffany would be able to make the argument that there hasn't been a downturn.
I'm a material downturn in their actual results. But I again, if if the leadership of m VH wanted to uh St Louis Bitton wanted to get out of this deal, I think they'd have a legitimate argument. So far, it doesn't look like they want to get out of this um. But obviously that's why the stock is trading at a significant discount to the deal price. And so take us inside a company or inside your analysis of a company
like Tiffany in this particular case. You know, a few months ago we were talking about it's like, oh, you know, maybe they're going to be impacted or they are impacted by Hong Kong protests at the luxury market there and maybe the luxury market in China. This is now a global pandemic. How do you look at a luxury name like that and how does that extend into some of
your other analysis. Yeah, so Tiffany is a special case because there's a takeover, but if it was a standalone private that would be the exact kind of company that we would on. There's no doubt that they're going to have a short term down turn in in sales. People are not going to be making big luxury purchases. But in the long run, this is not going to affect people's desire to own jewelry. And it had a great balance sheet, it had a great brand. All of those
things are gonna be fine. Um, whenever we get to the other side of this, and the difference between this downturn and the two thousand and eight downturn. In two thousand and eight, we really had to worry about whether the whole banking system was going to survive this time, I think we can all see the other side of this. It's just a question of whether the other side is three months away, six months away, or a year away. Did you think we are at or near the peak
of bad news? So it's a great question. So when we spend a lot of time thinking about, because it really is the question when the bad news right now, the bad news is coming faster and faster and faster, and the number of deaths is accelerating, but that's gonna turn in a relatively short period of time, and we think we will reach the pace of bad news is probably right now the worst. We're gonna actually reach a peak of bad news, which is sort of the first
derivative um around. We think within less than a month. And so once from now, the bad news is not going to stop. People are still gonna be passing away, but we will the pace of bad news will be better, and people will be more convinced that we can see the other side. And so we think we could start to get a rallying confidence in inside of a month. And in the meantime, can I just say, I'm just gotta sitting there with the month, Charlie, I saw it.
I'm the only person, Charlie, by the way, in our in our current setup, that can see Carol's face because we're connected by video conference. And I saw it fall when you said inside a month, which you know, I think is is hard for people to sort of get their heads around to you. Well, frankly, there are some people thinking it's gonna be a lot more than a month. So so I think I don't want to to be Palianish here. I don't want to tell you everything is
going to be fine next week. I think we're gonna Governor Pomo has seen the numbers and he's saying that the hospital's situation is going to get worse. Um Now, I will say this Carroul, to try to brighten your day a little bit. I think there's a chance that businesses are going to start to open up, maybe in eleven or twelve days. Um So it could be it could be less than four weeks, but it's not going to be this week. Yeah, all right, Well, we always
really appreciate your inside so thoughtful. Charlie Brinskoye is the vice chairman, head of the investment group at Aerial Investments, looking after about thirteen point two billion dollars. You're going just on the phone from Chicago. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com. You can also listen to our radio show every weekday at two pm Eastern only on Bloomberg Radio