Wearable Devices for Virus Early Detection

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. President bind planning to announce that n of US adults will be eligible to get a COVID nineteen vaccine in three weeks three weeks, and that his administration will more than double the number of

pharmacies where shots are available. This according to officials familiar with the matter, we are expected to hear from the President shortly to know where we should everybody to d c when we should be hearing from him in just a few minutes. We're also seeing some other headlines. The reason the President will be able to say that is

because states like New York. Just announcing that the vast majority of adult we'll be able to get vaccines starting very soon, doesn't mean that they can get them just with the you know, they can access to them, they're eligible to them. This comes to is ahead of the CDC pleaded with Americans to wear masks again. Listen, hospitalizations are going up, cases are going up, and deaths allogging

indicator have also started to rise. Again. Let's bring in doctor Heather Failing, chief scientific officer at Clinical Reference Labs. She is on the phone in Kansas, doctor Failing. Nice to have you here with Tim and me. That bulk of headlines again, great that there seems to be more vaccines out there. Not so great that cases, hospitalizations, uh,

and the like are going up. How do you see it? Yes, absolutely, I agree with that, and we definitely need to stay vigilant, you know, in our mask wearing as well as in our testing measures. I think that's key, you know, keeping everyone safe and especially as the variants are uh, you know, continuing to spread, which is affecting transmissibility. Why do you think we are seeing this uptick? Is it because people are are just not being vigilant? We saw so many

images in the last few weeks about spring breakers. People have been cooped up for more than a year at this point. Maybe people saw the numbers going down and thought they were safer than they actually are. Why do you think we're seeing it? Yes, I agree, I think it's all of that. I think we've seen a little bit of COVID fatigue. Folks are you know, a little bit tired of all of the COVID measures. Uh. You know, we've come against spring break and as well. You know,

a lot of folks are getting the vaccine. Uh, you know, and it's starting to cut down on some of the masks wearing. But they really need to to stay vigilant, and yeah, keep those measures up so we can really curb this bread. So we have to stay vigilant. We know that masks social distancing. We're gonna talk shortly with our own Riley Griffin about COVID pill that could come from Mark uh and kind of a way that would give us a new treatment and a weapon against coronaviruses

and future pandemics. You guys are also involved in creating tools, you know, for ways for us to man something like a COVID nineteen tell us about wearables and the role that they might play going forward. Oh. Absolutely, and you're at Clinical Reference Lab. We're really excited by a partnership that we put into play with Stanford to use wearables

for the early detection of COVID nineteen. And how this works is eligible study participants are provided a wearable that's made by Impatica as well as thirty days of CRLs at homes saliva based rapid CRLs. It's a it's an at home saliva based collection kit for COVID nineteen and it has FDA Emergency Use authorization for self collection. And so the study of using the individual's biometric data from their wearable like body temperature, heart rate, and even electrodermal activity,

which are basically just micro sweats. It's a form of a stress sensor. And these metrics are then used to track changes that might indicate possible infection and the CRL rapid response COVID testing comes into play uh to confirm actual infection. So in other words, like is it going to tract a higher temperature and then that can tell you to go get a test, because I'm going to

say I get warm just running around this office. So so how is it something that's actually intuitive and actually maybe a really reliable indicator that there's something more than just a spike in your temperature, a normal spike in your temperature, right, And there are different levels of alert.

So the algorithm is programmed to understand that there could be temporary elevations caused by stress or you know, alcohol or working out things of that nature, and so UM it is trained to understand, you know, more serious alerts, and it will alert the user or the participant in the study. You know, have you had exercise yes or no? And so it'll just kind of mark that and then the more serious alerts UM. You know, they definitely need to, you know, do this year all rapid response test to

confirm potential infection there dr fail. How how are you thinking about this being endemic when we're on the other side of this pandemic, because it does feel like with

you know, what we're going to hear from the president. Reportedly, according to sources you tell Bloomberg News of the country has access to a vaccine or is eligible for a vaccine at this point that we are getting close to to at least having the ability for almost every single American adult to have to get this vaccine, and if that is the case, then we can be on the other side of this pandemic. Like the President said in July, correct,

I think we are going to see that. I think, you know, COVID will become more like a diasonal flu as it becomes endemic, and we'll need those booster vaccines that are variant specific and and just kind of a regular watch of symptoms. And that's why I think the wearable technology is so important, because it's more of a

passive testing technology. It's just sitting there in the background, monitoring, and it can then prompt you that you know something is amiss here, you need to pay attention and potentially get it past. And what's nice is it identifies you in that pre symptomatic phase when you would be uh, you know, more higher to transmit the disease as compared

to other stages. Are you guys anticipating that the likes of Apple and others, some of these high tech firms already Apple Watch and some others that are out there, that this is going to be something that they're going to be pursuing. I'm curious if you guys are having any conversations with the likes of Apple and other high tech companies about you know, amping up their health monitoring applications. Oh. Absolutely,

and others are involved in similar requests for different applications. UH. Fit that has has been involved and even they've donated devices as part of Stanford studies and UM as part of Stanford's program. If that you do have a wearable UH, you can actually go to the Apple app store and UH there is an app there that you can download called my PhD UM and this is their study app and it doesn't require a p HD like the name says,

it actually stands for my Personal Health Dashboard. And so you can download the app and roll in the study and then use your own wearable UH, including an Apple Watch to to monitor COVID nineteen as well as as other potential infectious diseases. What's the regulatory approval process like for this? You know, if you're using it in more of a general wellness sense, UM, it's it's not as strict,

but correct. When you do get into a disease diagnosis, UH, you know, you do need to pursue some sort of a regulatory pathway like an FD You have to get FDA clearance as a medical devices right, if you're doing a diagnostic that's is this going to do that? Um? I know there have been discussions about it. It's because it's kind of That's why I ask about the idea of it's going to be endemic versus pandemic, because that type of process can take a significant amount of time. Right,

it can take time. But you know, I believe with the f d A, I mean CRL, we've taken a test through the FDA and with the Emergency Use Authorization path A. You know, that's a great pathway to be the process of review and an authorization. Hey, one thing I'm curious to, well, what does this cost? What will it cost an individual? Um? I'm not sure exactly on the cost of the app itself. Right now, it's available

for free for download. And you know, we've talked with you in the past about your COVID nineteen saliva tests. In terms of it's been a year and counting since we all began all of this. What have we learned about those saliva tests and those you know tests in general that so many of us have done so many times. Have they gotten better? Have we learned how to do them better? What have we learned in this process, Yes, I definitely been. Folks have learned to do them better.

And here at Zero, we've done over six hundred thousand saliva tests in our lab and we've really demonstrated of utility and the accuracy of our saliva based tests and UH. Since we've launched and since we left Folk, we've partnered with DNA Geno Tech as well of the CDC in

our local public health lab to do viral strain analysis. UM, so we've recently we've been learning a lot about the different strains that we've been seeing, and we're seeing Brazilian variants like p to the UK variant, California, and a whole host of others. So it's really been fascinating to look at those different variants and transmissibility within schools and workplaces. So vaccinations and UH testing are certainly a part of it,

but another big part of it is is treatment. And in just a few minutes a little later in the show, we're gonna be speaking with our US healthcare reporter Riley Griffin about a great new piece that's in the magazine about Mark's COVID pill being a frontrunner in the elusive

anti viral quest. How do you see treatments playing out over the next couple of years, Considering the US and the UK and Israel are really the only places in the world at this point that have huge, significant vaccine programs that are underway right now, I think, yeah, treatment is definitely going to become key, and I think if we can get in a treatment that's similar to a Tama flu, I think we're going to go a long way into comparing this virus. But I also think the

early detection is even you know, also have a big part. Yeah, good to know covered a lot of ground. Dr Heather Failing, thank you so much, Chief scientific officer at Clinical Reference Labs, joining us on the phone from Kansas. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim

Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. The force liquidation of more than twenty billion dollars in holdings linked to Bill Whang's investment from drawing attention to the covert financial instruments he used to build large stakes in the companies. The stock market may be largely shrugging it off, but the individual stocks that were the target of his trades, they are not let's get into what you need to know. And certainly

the banks involved are not shrugging this off. She not Arajan is finance reporter at Bloomberg New is on the phone in New York City. First of all, who is Bill Hwang? Because all of a sudden, we're talking about this individual that is not very well known to Wall Street Tree Um and kudas to you guys for breaking this. So what do we need to know? Try try try asking the who's Bill jeg question to Nomura and Curt exactly Bill Huang, Let's do a quick biography on him.

In the ninety nineties work for Julian Robertson and Tiger Uh went off to set off his set off and started his on hedge fund Tiger Asia got the title of a so called Tiger Club. He was feaded by Julians Robertson was doing really well and hedge sharted a short rise in a quick rise, But then came two thousand twelve when he was charged over inside and trading his hedge when admitted to wire fraud and effectively had to shut down the hedge fund, return all the outside

money and turn into a family office. But since then he seems to have had this improbable second chance were again he grew into a major force in the market, largely with the use of borrowed money to make massive, massive wages on a few concentrated positions. And uh, that's pretty much water has led us to this breathtaking unraveling

that we've seen over the last two days. Okay, so let's go back just to you Thursday Friday and what happened last week, specifically with Viacom, CBS and and and Discovery. Talk to us about the big block trads there and

why Huang was exposed. Sure, we're still trying to piece together exactly what all triggered this mad dash to unload stuff, but from what we understand, the main source of Quang's funding with these swaps that he had struck up with major Waltreet finances, prime brokers from Goldman Sax to Morgan Stanley to Kred Sweets and Deutsche Bank and Amora, which which allowed him to have a big exposure Wednesday afternoon. We know that there was a Viacom equity deal that

sent its stock slumping some. There were some other moves that we speculated were also positions in which Wang was present in a large visible manners that had also gone against him. This led to some panic that many of the big banks, which were worried about their exposure and whether margin limits were going to be breached. They tried to work out an arrangement, but by Friday it was clear that each on their own they tried to save the collateral, make sure that they could find bias for

that block and stem their losses. From what we can see, Goldman Sachs seems to have emerged from this incident, at least as of now. They're telling some of their clients that largely unscaped. But on the other hand, you have places like Nomura, which says it has a two billion claim against this client, which could expose them to a significant loss in credit s ways, which hasn't put a figure to it, but it's also clearly flagged that there is a big possible hit that they might have to

take shreck. What strikes me and all of this is that if the VIA companies didn't come out, and if fire Colm Shares didn't start to maybe tank, that maybe we would have this wouldn't have happened and we would have never known about it. What seems to be a somewhat risky trade with incredible exposure that has gone horribly wrong, and it just makes me think about the system overall

and the lack of checks and balances. Oh absolutely, as we as we pick up the pieces from this garnage and we move ahead from this point, one of the big things that will play out, and I think something that the regulators may very well pay attention to, is this idea of on a non leveraged house bit that one family office could the mass positions of this sizing tens of billions of dollars without anyone really knowing about it.

If you were a regular hedge fund, that is going out and buying, if taken a company you need to in the U S company you would have to put out if I think then there are various sec supports you have to file when you have outside money. The fact that he was using spots, the fact that Bill Hongs was Bill Hongs family office and not and did not have any other outside money, you were left in a situation where none of those requirements apply, and you had a from that was effectively a large will in

the market. And yet barely anyone talked about this from and now everyone's sitting up and taking notice. That is a problem. Yeah, imagine regulators are going to be looking

at that question pretty closely, Sree. I wonder when it comes to risk management, how a financial institution thinks about somebody who may have had some regulatory challenges in the past, charge of it trading regulatory I'm trying to I mean, is it rare that That's look, Wall Street is full of second acts and third acts, But is it rare that somebody of this profile would be able to build such a sizeable war dress chest with several different banks,

given this history like Goldman and Morgan and the venerable Wall Street firm Street. Oh look, I mean, Timm, you do say that Wall streets for the second chances and third chances, But just step away two blocks from Wall Street on the main street and ask people how how often do people get their second chance in the third chance? The question here really is how did someone who was so publicly shamed they were inside a trading hedge fund admitting to wire fraud such a rebound to become become

a big force in the market. Was to your of the commission and the interest that flowed to all these dealers so blinding that they were all willingly happy to give this film a second chance. And maybe maybe the argument in right be but crimes that took place in two thousand eight, more than a decade it past, and it was it was located to do business. But it is definitely something that does not sit well with everyone, like why would Well should be so eager and willing

to do business with him? And what does it say about our markets? It's the repercussions for something as serious as the charges of insider trading are so minimal. Yeah, listen, I feel like there's lots of questions out there, and you have to wonder about the phone conversations and phones ringing cell phones, you know, the text messages and ringing with David Solomon over at Goldman everybody who heads up one of these firms like what's our position? What's our

risk here? Uh? And all of their risk teams kind of looking at the situation and how it got there. Shre unbelievable reporting. You guys breaking this? You breaking this? Our finance reporter at Bloomberg News on the phone in New York City. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. Let's get into our next story because it's in the magazine.

It's a story about Mark's COVID pill, and Tim, it's about how it could be a front runner in the world elusive anti viral quest. This might be just another tool in the toolkit that we need. Yeah, and we need a big toolkit with a global pandemic. Joel Webber is editor at Bloomberg Business Week, joining us on the remote from Brooklyn. Riley Griffin, us healthcare reporter for a Bloomberg News joins us on the phone from here in New York. Joel, we talked about vaccines. We heard from

the President just now about the vaccination efforts. Where does treatment fit in, Well, we haven't had any reason for it to fit in, and that's because we just have not had that many tools in the pipeline. And that's what's significant about the story that Riley and or co author Cynthia Coon's brought to this week's issue of the magazine, Um which you know, there's this little pill that Mark

has been developing. It's one of several hundred different varieties of treatments that are basically underway right now, but based on on the reporting, we think Marx is maybe closest to some data which could be forthcoming within a matter of days, and that will really give us a look at UM. What we all hope is another chapter in this fight against COVID which would start to look like treatment, something that you could give someone when they get sick. UM.

That's different than the vaccine. Obviously we need the vaccines too, but what happens if someone has a vaccine, is vaccinated, get sick or for all of those people out there who might not have a vaccine, and that's where this merc development comes in. So so Riley talk to us a little bit about what an anti viral with the promise of an anti viral like this anti viral is that hundreds of thousands of people continue to contract COVID each and every day, So we need those therapies UM

to get to patients quickly at the beginning of their disease. Cynthia, my colleague and I like to bring this as tama fluper covid, something that could be deployed broadly to your sister, your grandparents, those high risk, those low risks at the earliest course of their disease. As you said, there are hundreds of anti virals in development, two hundred fifty about so to speak, Um, and viruses are really uniquely difficult

to attack with drugs. I don't think we, you know, in the press, speak enough about the complexity of developing therapeutics. These viruses hijack human cells and set up machinery to turn out copies of themselves within the body, which creates a real challenge. How do you destroy the virus without harming those cells? And success when it comes can be quite fleeting because, as we've already seen, viruses mutape to survive. So Mark is the leader of the pack. We could

see data before the end of the month. Um, should it prove safe and effective? Which is a real question. Um, it's likely to be that data is likely to be the backbone of an emergency use authorization here in the US. So if it happens for emergency use authorization here in the US, and we're at a point where we've been really gotten on a good job with becoming vaccinated, does then that does that then mean that this moves into the global fight against COVID. Yeah, that's a fabulous question.

For one, I think there will still be need here. We've got a great population that's vaccine hesitant. We've got um a population under the age of sixteen that doesn't have access. But globally, this is definitely necessary and compared to some of the other tools out there, like the monoclonal an embody like gileads RUM does a viere, it's also poised to be much cheaper as an alternative. It's not in hours long infusion that is required to be

given in specialized settings. UM. It's what we call a mall molecule, which means the manufacturing is much more simple. And Mark says it can churn out about ten million courses, which is a hundred million pills. You take it twice a day for five days UM within the span of this year. But in our interviews Mark also said, and mind you, Mark is so global health oriented. They said that they want to create licenses that basically allow other manufacturers to make this pill to should it prove safe

and effective, thereby um creating greater access worldwide. Well, let's just stick with Mirk here, because Murk is very well known for its public health work. Uh it fell short on its vaccine efforts. What's that stake here for for Mark when this data comes out Joel, that was a big disappointment earlier in the year when Mark two vaccine

candidates both showed lackluster data in early clinical trials. I think they need a big win, not just because they want to put their stamp on the pandemic and show that they can have an impact here too. Of course they're helping manufacturer jane Ja's vaccine, But let's think longer

term about Mark's business model. This is a company that has become highly reliant on one product alone, key Truda, a cancer product UM that is making up a great chunk of their revenue, and investors keep asking what's next in the pipeline? So Muli peer of your could partially be that. And I think what Mark has said to us UM they're very eager to know is whether this has broad spectrum activity? What does that mean? Can this pill work not just in cobon nineteen, but in other coronaviruses,

in other viruses period, thinky bola. And if it does have that broad spectrum activity, and mind you, that's quite rare, um, it could certainly be more like a ten billion dollar drug rather than a one billion dollar drug per year? What about And I know the company is studying a variety of dosages as you report, but what about risk concerns? And I'm wondering, is this the kind of thing you've got to wait a couple of years to really understand the risk impact. So the greatest risk that we've heard

broadly from the scientific community comes to genetic beauty. And that's back to the fact that this is a kind of drug. It's called a nucleuside analog that basically works by interfering with the replication of the virus by inducing errors into the viruses RNA that are then rest replicated until it's defunct. Put much more simply, somebody explained this

in this analogy. If you put a grain of sand into the gears, you might stop its motion, but you don't know where the sand end up elsewhere in the body. Um that has been a concern. I think molecule has been around for decades, so that's been a concern for a little while. But Mark, there are very conservative presence in the pharmaceutical industry and they have conducted a number of tests um to to study whether this could potentially be UH cause genetic mutations, and they say the data

as far as clear. Of course, everybody's going to be looking for that in the phase two three data that comes out within days. But from what we know now, Mark is confident and comfortable. And some who have previously been critical of model in the pier of year have actually changed their tune since Murk came in UM to the picture and actually began developing this alongside a smaller biotech.

And let's just talk about that smaller biotech for a second, because I always think these stories are are amazing, Like to take us back even at the beginning of before the pandemic UH struck Riley, and what was what was how did this all come together? What was the players? Who were the players? Just got about seconds? Riley. Yeah, this is a little bit of pharma industry one oh one.

A lot of the time, big pharmaceutical players come in and they actually acquire or they licensed assets from smaller biotech. In this case, that biotech was ridge Back Bio. And if you take if you go back to the outset of January at one of the world's biggest healthcare conferences, JP Morgan, they're UM the chief executive Officer Bridge Back Bio. Wendy Holman was meeting in a hotel in San Francisco with George Painter of Emory University and she actually could

a deal with Emery for the for the drug. Eight months later it was in Merc's hands. So that's the story history. There's a lot that goes into it. Check out the story. It's incredible, guys, Thank you so much. Jill Webber, Riley Griffin. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. I'm bloom the Journal. Yeah, but you let me drive. Oh no, no, no, no, who's going to run? Please? I'll drivel. I want to drive. Just drive, baby, it's

the question Dry. This is the Drive to the Globe Comics. We'll drive us. Dawn on Bomber Radio. All right, just got about nine minutes left in today's trading session. Let's do the drive to the close. David's back with us, managing Principal and senior portfolio Strategies at Pepack Private Wealth Management eight billion in assets under management. David joining Tim and myself once again on the phone in Summat New Jersey, David,

nice to have you here. Uh, what's interesting is we are focused big time on this hedge fund actually family office, and this kind of unwinding of twenty billion dollars worth of trades. I'm just curious. We're talking about Articos Capital Management. We're all kind of continuing to gather more and more information, but it helps explain some of the crazy trading that we saw in some names like Viacom and others last week. What's your view on this. You're someone who's been trading

in the markets for a long time. How do you see it? What is it that we need to know from your perspective? So, Carol, good to be with you and Tim. Um, So we're watching this closely. We don't have all the fact X. I think it's obviously not a positive for the markets, but I would caution our clients and investor generally not to overreact. A couple of

rolls of thumb. One is hedge fund implosions, unfortunately are not an infrequent occurrence on the landscape, but typically they do not provide systemic cause systemic crisis, and and that's kind of what we're saying here. Um, we're seeing extreme volatility in some media names via Common Discovery as two of them, and of course some of the Chinese tech stocks. But overall, uh, you know, the market is the that was in positive territory today. The Dow ended up strongling

on Friday afternoons first broke. We're seeing some volatility and the banking names um, which is worth watching, but again we're not hearing or seeing anything that would cause the systemic risk UM going forward. What would I watch for one, is you know, to what extent does this cause banks to be a little bit more cautious in lending, which perhaps is a slight a cloud on the recovery here.

And of course we're coming up to these all important stress tests when the Federal Reserve is going to be looking at all the banks and deciding who can um start returning money to shareholders and who can't, And maybe those stress stress tests will be tightened a little bit. Maybe there's a little bit less cash in the coffers of the banks to distribute even if they pass the stress tests. So that's something I would I would watch closely, but you know, I don't think it changes a long

term positive themes here. Okay, fair enough, Well, let's talk about some of those long term positive themes, David, David, because we have this conflicting sort of outlook when it comes to coronavirus. Vaccinations on the one hand, are going really well, three days in a row of more than

three million doses each day. Some great stats shared by the President earlier in the day about just how many people and how quickly are getting vaccinated at the same time that we are seeing cases go up and hospitalizations go up in on areas. How concerned are you about a potential fourth wave? Well, it's definitely on our radar. Is probably, of course, was the factor in causing the downturn last year. It's been the factor as the vaccines

were announced to lift us out of it. You know, I think investors have to realize it was never gonna be one, two, three, four or five, rather than like two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back. So I think the good news is we're having a great at least in this country rollout of the vaccines. We've got three now Fiser, Madonna, J and J. I think Astrodnica will soon be approved. Novavax is on

the horizon. You know, here's what we have to watch for, of course, is the fact that there's lagging vaccination overseas. To what extent does that blowback in the United States? To what extent is that a damper on international trade? Of course, you've got the mutations. To what extent did the current vaccine is going to handle that? We're optimistic,

but you've got to watch it. And of course I think we're realizing now that we've got to get the approval for the U stegious vaccines with the kids, because without the kids being vaccinated, we're going to be unlikely to develop her immunity and that's going to be the final nail in the coffin, we hope in terms of this epidemic. So, um, David, when it comes to trading in the equity market, do you set up for you continue the recovery trade or do you do how much?

Do you be a little bit cautious here because we don't know if we'll get another wave? How do you play it? Yeah? So, um, we remain constructive here. Basically as we just discussed, COVID nineteen, progress going well and ultimately we have the low interest rates now I know they just touched another two thousand twenty one high here just over one point, but basically that's still low interest rate. It doesn't get retirees to where they need to be.

It does not allow endowments and charitable funds to make the distributions they want. So we still think that there's a wall of money into stocks. And guess what this economy is recovering. The forecast GDP six or more. Core earning is going to be as much as versus last year and another ten percent last year. So we really think if you roll up your sleeves, there's lots of opportunities relative to keep in cash under the mattress. Now in terms of uh, you know what areas of the market, Well,

you want to be diversified. But on the other hand, you know last year growth with scary stre in the pandemics to people chase the megacap text this year, I think worth is going to be more plentiful, so you can go for the value place, all right, Canna leave it on that note, Hey, David, Thanks David Eats, he's managing principal senior portfolio Strategies at Pepack Private Wealth Management. Joining us on the phone from New Jersey. 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