3 Million Vaccine Doses Ready To Go Out Next Week: JHU's Sauer

Lauren's assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, which of course is assisted by the philanthropic efforts of the owner of this radio station. But Lauren, thanks for joining. Very thrilled today because Reuters is rewarding that the first doses of vaccine could be dished out to seniors and nursing facilities and nursing homes December twenty one. What's your reaction?

You know, I think we all needed a bit of good news, and we all were watching with um a lot of anticipation to see how the meeting went yesterday with the SBA, and so it's just great to see everyone collectively working towards this emergency use off rezation the outcome looks promising. I think we're waiting to see the final details of what will be within the Emergency Use authorization, and then we're hoping to see you know, almost three

million doses go out sometime early this next week. So, Lauren, there's an interesting fascinating story on the Bloomberg terminal today saying how the US ranks thirty second in vaccine buys on a per capita basis. UM, where are you? Where do you think the US is in terms of having a proper supply, sufficient supply of vaccines to vaccinate its population as I guess, you know, quickly as possible. Yeah, I think we would like to see, Um, we would we would have liked to see more doses secured, but

the the challenge will be an administration. So the one benefit of this UM somewhat slower rollout will be that we really are very careful with these initial doses. UM. I think I saw that about two point and nine millions, So the of the initial available six point form million fiser doses will go out UM in this you know, hopefully early this week, and that will give us time

to really UM perspect the supply chain and the distribution. UH, as everyone knows us and find now the Fiser vaccine has some challenging cold chain storage, some challenging distribution issues, and so UM using this time to start a little

bit slow, not super slow. I mean, we have a vaccine in the year which is absolutely incredible UM to to really make sure that we're not going to waste any doses, that we have a plan for how we're accessing these harder to reach populations, UM, that we're getting it to the people who need it most right now is critical. I do think that there's going to be a need for massive scale up UM that we're not really quite ready for UM and and I haven't seen that story yet, but it does make sense to me

that we will need to improve UM that capacity. I think as more vaccines come online, particularly ones with more improved cold chain storage issues, UM, we'll see that number tick up. Is there any reason to suspect that it will be difficult to scale that up? And given the difficulties we had, you know, bringing in PPE for example, or other sorts of things that we needed very badly earlier in the year, Yeah, it's I mean, that's a great question. I think it's something that we're all a

little bit worried about. You know, we have not seen significant changes to how our national supply chain has improved. We have a little bit of improved PPE situations, but we're still having tons of challenges with not with national level testing, with a you know, a national level strategy for testing, a national level strategy for resource allocation. Um, and this is this is no different where relying on

the States to truly figure this out. And um, we're getting support, but but the scale up is going to be critical, and I think we'd like to see more activity maybe around the Defense Production Act, around um, some alternatives to production scale up. And then um, you know many of us are seeing backups in our ability to obtain freezers and dry ice and so these all have to be worked out in these next few weeks or else. Um, it doesn't matter how much vaccine we produced, we won't

be able to distribute it basically and effectively. So Lauren, I guess initially here the market's going to look like, you know, the demand for these vaccines is going to exceed the supply. But at some point presumably next year, mid next year, you know that that dynamical kind of change and we'll have plenty supply, and the question will be, UM,

will enough people want to take the vaccine? Do you expect at some point some type of public relations campaign may be needed to to get people to convince them to in fact take the vaccine so that we as a siety can achieve her community. Yeah, I mean, I absolutely think that. I think rebuilding the trust in science across our country is going to be incredibly important in

these early weeks of vaccine distribution. I think people trust their primary care providers, people us UM individuals they know we're getting the vaccines UM to be spokespeople. But that's a heavy burden on the people who are getting these first rounds of vaccine UM. So we can't put all of that reliance on them. We have to build UM an education campaign and a trust building campaign and roll it out as soon as possible. We can't wait until

we already have the vaccine ready to go UM. And I actually think that there we're going to see a little bit of this in this these first two phases. So I think there will be health care workers who are hesitant, and I think there will be elderly and vulnerable populations who are hesitant to receive vaccine, and I think we need to we we many people have already started working in this space, but we need to have

this as a primary focus, not a secondary focus to production. Yeah, because we do have a couple of days head start on the UK, but there are some reports out of the UK that might make people a little more hesitant allergic reactions and so on. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean I think everyone is watching the UK with sort of fat breath to see what happens, and we have to be prepared to learn, you know, in real time from what's happening there and um and apply very rapidly lessons learned.

And I think that will happen even within the process of writing out the eu A building distribution strategies, you know, all of those things will be impacted by what's happening right now in the in the UK. Hey, Lauren, thank you so much once again for joining us. Always appreciate your perspective. Laurence so our associate Professor of Eburgency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, joining us for

the weekly discussion of COVID and the vaccine. It's time to bring in Barry Rittle's expert opinion provider, and he is a great column ount today. Of course, Barry, just to remind everybody, is a Bloomberg Opinion contributor, also founder of Rittle's Wealth Management and the host of Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. So, Barry, I presume that you've been watching this week's activities with absolute combinations of disgust, horror,

all the amusement, just like the rest of us. You have a great column today saying that Airbnb in door dash Show caused the best and worst of Uber. Explain what you mean. Sure, we'll start with the basic model that Uber created. You know, we all got consumed by the frat house and the Travis getting thrown out as as CEO. But really they created a fascinating model where they identified a massive inefficiency in a high margin business. They created an app that made it really easy for

consumers to consume those services. And you know we've all used the Uber app. Uh, the ability to say I want a small car, I want a big truck, I want a luxury car, and track when it's going to arrive and and not have to mess around with cash or anything. That they just made that sort of transportation service so much better than it was. And both door

dash and Airbnb have followed that same basic process. Um. With Airbnb, it's a massive addressable margin with an average transaction price of a hundred and sixty dollars and a an enormous profit margin. Uh. The problem with door dash is that we can't say the same thing. So it's interesting here Yet investors feel, what what do you make I guess of the market this week and and the the markets willingness to bid these stocks up so dramatically, What did you take away from it? I you know,

someone saying that the bankers really blew it here. Um. You know, how often do the bankers get it right and and be aware there's a ton of hindsight bias involved when oh, you should have priced it higher. Well, yeah, you say that after the fact, so to be fair to the bankers. Yeah, it's it's easy to tell what the demand is after the fact, but very often the

companies want to really high um number. The bankers want to make sure that there's enough appeal um in the shares, that there's demand not only for the I p O shares, but the quote unquote shoe that comes out afterwards the subsequent shares that the bank seals, and and they want to create a little excitement and buzz around the name, and and you know, you could argue they could have priced this ten twenty higher. Um. Ultimately, the founders, the shareholders,

they all benefit the insiders. So the company ends up with the four or five billion dollars in cash instead of six or seven billion dollars in cash. In the scheme of things, when the price runs up, if they want to do a secondary uh in six months and put some more stock out, it's certainly an option. The

clue sitial. I suppose really that we'll have to wait some time to see the answer to is can these companies, you know, have a quarter off a quarter of revenue growth and profit berry well, for Airbnb with the much higher transaction price, I mean, you could go look at homes for rent for two three four thousand dollars a night on Airbnb. What's the most expensive pizza you're gonna get delivered from from door dash. That's the big difference between the two business models. They both are sort of

positioning themselves as pandemic plays. Hey, get out of the city, get out of your apartment, come rent a place out in the burbs, or where you can drive. You don't have to go through t s A or on a plane, drive to an airbnb and and you know, wait out. The pandemic seemed to be a pretty good line that that investors UM brought into door Dash and some of their compared it is like Uber eats and and grubhub and all the others. There's been a series of mergers there.

I don't even know who's who anymore, but UM they also try to make that same sort of pandemic. Hey, you don't have to go out to eat. You know, we'll do a touch free delivery, you pay for it on the credit card, will leave it on your doorstep. And you know that they certainly have been growing very very quickly. The differences the people I know who are who are currently using airbnb. UM. Almost to a person, everyone says, of course, we're going to continue using it

after the pandemic. The food delivery services are a short term substitute for going to a restaurant, and I suspect that post pandemic, the various food delivery aps and and that certainly includes do our Dash and all the rest we have to presume there's going to be some sort of fall off in usage. The question is is it modest? Is it big? Is it giant? I don't think it's modest.

I think it's going to be more substantial than that. Yeah, Barry, I actually I agree with your analysis of door Dash there, and again I was, I guess surprised at how well embraced UH that I PA was in evaluation. It's garnering. So that brings me to my my question, Barry, are you drawing any conclusions as it relates to the state of the overall equity markets about how these two deals were received and how they are being valid as it suggests you maybe a certain level of frothiness in the market,

akin to maybe what we've seen in some past bubbles. Um. So, frothy is a great word because it doesn't commit you to saying that this can't continue any further. So I'm with you on that. And and remember Alan Greenspan's infamous irrational zuberan speech in the middle of the dot com boom that eventually blew up. That was if you were a seller on that speech, you missed an ungodly amount of gains over the next four years. Remember a market

didn't peak until March two thousand, so frothiness. And we certainly have seen this in in some back issuance UM and some bit Clean Person and other crypto related UM items. Yeah, there's definitely some speculation going out there. And I'm not in the camp that wants to blame Robin Hood on everything. That's an aspect of it. Boredom, people lacking the ability to go out and play, to go to casinos to

watch you know, sports. We we keep watching one football game, whether it's college or or professional, after another get canceled. So you know, you have a lot of people who are homeboard that might count for some of this um and and you know, it's been such a long time since we've had a sexy, exciting run of I p O S. Companies have been staying private yea for longer. You know, Airbnb is a perfect example. That's a fairly mature company that has um both strong revenue and and

profit growth. And you know, they had a few missteps in the beginning of the pandemic, and they writed the filter pretty quickly. They did pivot pretty quickly. Barry Riddh Holtz, thanks so much. For joining us here. Barry ridh Holts, Bloomberg Opinion calumnists and host of Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio also found their chairman and chief investment officer of rid Holts Wealth Management, giving us his thoughts on the markets. Well, I'm sending a trend here in the

world of business. First it was Stevie Nicks selling part of her catalog to some investors for about a hundred million dollars, and then just recently Bob Dylan selling his catalog to Universal Music Group for what is expected to be at least two hundred million dollars. What is going on here when we know we have somebody who has the answers. Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg Entertainment reporter joins us here. So, Lucas, it seems to be a trend here is maybe some

of these aging artists really cashing out here. Yeah, you know, they are seizing on something that that has really been happening in the music business now for three to five years, which is that the value of these copyrights has soared because of streaming services which have more broadly listed industry revenues and so and they've also made them a little bit more stable, and so that's mein that's meant that a lot of other investors have looked at music as

a really appealing asset after years of dismissing it frankly, as an industry that was that was dying um and then the pandemic only added fuel to that fire. Because you have a lot of artists who might ordinarily be going out on tour and making money. Instead they're stuck at home. So they're doing a mix of, Hey, I want some extra cash to pay for more X, Y and Z, and maybe I'll start planning for whatever my

future is. In the case of Stevie Nicks and Bob Dylan, who are both older in age, lucas, are they going to get secured tied to these these securities or how does it work? Because I could imagine that in the future, people are going to be listening to, you know, Bob Dylan's top you know, boots of Spanish Leather for the next you know, centuries, but something like Dark Eyes might

get played once in a million years. Yeah, I mean the thing so what Bob Dylan, and what Bob Dylan told was his songwriting catalog, which can make money in a couple of different ways. You know, songwriters get paid if the music if a song gets listened to on a streaming service, or if an album gets purchased, but they also get paid if song gets played in the radio. They also get paid if you do what use uh perform a sync. You know, you licensed that song for

an advertisement, for a movie, for a TV show. So people can get pretty creative with someone like Dylan as you know, you know, people are listening to his music. Although he's not a huge act on streaming, I'm sure that a lot of his money also comes from licensing it for for advertisements. Um. You know, you will have people who will just a math enough assets that they think it will be a kind of a consistent generator of revenue. And we've seen that play out time and

time again in the music business. I mean there are um you know, there are investment firms that investment in publishing catalogs as well as more traditional music investors. It's something that has long been seen as a relatively stable asset and something that people go to often kind of in times of uncertainty in the market, because even as people are losing their jobs, they're still listening to the radio, still listening to music Lucas you know, it's it's interesting.

I followed David Crosby on Twitter and he admitted that basically he's going to pursue a similar type of deal for his music because because of the pandemic, he's not touring and that's a big source of revenue for a lot of UM music acts and streaming doesn't pay really anything at all too publishers and artists, do you think we're going to see more of this maybe from some against some aging acts who may own their catalogs. It's

a kind of a financial access that. Yeah. I think a lot of those acts that have relied on touring to continue to pay the bills will go this route. As he's noted, you know, streaming has generating additional returns for the broader industry. On an artist by artist basis, the numbers are pretty small unless you're a Drake or a Taylor Swift, or a Post Malone or an Ariana Grande,

especially if you're an aging act. If you're if you're a David Crosby, chances are that a lot of your fans are those that may still not have converted to streaming. They're buying physical physical sales have gone off a cliff uh during the pandemic, or you're able to get them to go and see you perform, and you can't do that either. So really your only source of money would be selling your catalog or if you can get somebody to, you know, put an old Crosby Spills Nash and Young

song on the radio. Excuse me? In the TV show well speak you of Taylor Swift. What happens when she gets old and wants to get rid of her is does she have to? Does she sort of have a bidding war between her and the private equity firms that bought her already recorded songs? Well, so that that's again to keep in mind what the people who just bought her first six albums, those are the recordings and she will own her She owns the recordings for all the

new music she's putting out. Universal distributes it, but she ultimately owns the master's Does right pervert to her publishing? She actually changed her publishers in the last year. She used to be at Sony ATV she is now at Universal. I don't know the particulars of that deal, but I would imagine she worked out sort of more of what's called an administration or distribution deal, where in the long run,

Taylor Swift can own her music. When you're as powerful as Taylor Swift or in the case of Bob Dylan, you get to demand ownership because everybody wants to work with you. So the re recording, Lucas what what what does that change for you know, the stream of money with the recording her old albums. Yeah, So, because she does not control the recording rights or the actual recordings from her first album, what she would do is she can control her publishing right the songs that she wrote.

She would then make new recordings based off of those lyrics and re release it and try to make it so that those are the songs that people play. But what we don't know is, let's say Taylor Swift does end up rereleasing her her first six albums in some form,

which she has talked about doing. If you're Spotify and you're put putting together that this is Taylor Swift playlist, which is like their equivalent of the best the greatest hits, and you want to put one of those early Taylor Swift songs, do you pick the one from the initial album which is the version that everybody knows, or do you put the re record on there if you are putting together some curated playlists for a user who really likes, you know, who wants to listen to kind of country

pop and that some of those early Taylor Sist songs Again, which version and that's gonna you know, I'll be very curious like to see what the streaming services decided to do, because they obviously want to maintain good relations with Taylor Swift, one of the biggest acts in the world. But there's no telling, there's not really a precedent for fans gravitating

towards the rerecord over the original. Um So it's it's a tricky situation and one that you know, we'll learn a bit more about when we actually see what Taylor

Swift is doing with the rerecorded music. In the meantime, she just put out her second album of the year and album I was listening some of this morning, evermore let's give her add while we're at all, right, Lucas not note we all sort of drifted off there into a little bit of daydreaming as we think of Taylor Swift on the British Moor's recording music with American pop stars and uh, you know, getting groups in like Jack Aunt and Off and so on to make sure that

she has another hit record. And uh, Lucas, thank you for giving us up to date. Lucas also out with the story today about the top streamers and Ariana Grande being the top act in the world right now, which is fascinating read. So, Lucas, thanks for joining us, and Paul, thank you for for indulging me in that last reverie there. It's amazing story. The economics there, this is Bloomberg. All right.

Let's get something just a little less optimistic now, and that is the one billion empty hotel rooms for the year. We've been obviously looking at various numbers throughout this year. It's been a year of numbers, and this is not one that we enjoy talking about. But Patrick Clark is our real estate reporter and he will talk about it to us. Patrick, how on earth did we get here? A billion rooms have gone unsold or practically at least nine sixty two million through last week. Yeah, well, when

was the last time you stayed in a hotel? Good point? You know, there's there's the conference business, which is about a third, hotel demand is completely on ice. Um the you know, there's very little business travel happening. And while there are are you know, some hotels that are in the right end of beach locations where you can drive to them, uh from you know, from big city that are doing okay, you know, across the board. Uh, this is this is really been the worst year and probably

the history of the modern lodging industry. And uh when you stack up all the empty rooms, pretty soon we will cross, um the one billion unsold rooms. Mark Hey, pat, when when you talk to these hotel companies, what is there thinking as to how uh their business may recover As we start getting vaccines into the market place, there's a you know, expectation of a big ramp up in the first half of the year. How are they thinking about the timing and and you know, the back half

of this year and so on. I have to say they're less optimistic than I am. I'm thinking about my next vacation as soon as I get vaccinated. My family is going to the beach. But but um, the I think the I think there, I think hotels tend to be more focused right now on the tough months that they have ahead of them. Yeah, I mean the question I have is we know that, you know, we didn't pay to spend nights in hotels, but how many of these rooms remained empty? How many of these hotels got

involved in schemes to rehouse homeless people for example. I think that's been fairly marginal. I mean, I do think there there there certainly has been a you know, a downward drift in the types of business hotels have been willing to take. Right. So like, if you're you know, a business traveler who is booking the room on their corporate credit card and not thinking a ton about the

price they pay is a good type of business. Um, And you know, the I was just sort of more, you know, the richer of the expense account, the better of the business that is for the hotel um the you know, I but I have The last time I was in a hotel was about a month ago, and it was a nicer hotel than I normally would have stayed at because because it was offering a good rate. And I got there and there was an airline crew

checking in. And you know, I think if you talked to big hotel owners or managers, they'll tell you yeah, well, we we are starting to take um, you know, types of business where we have to negotiate a lower rate than we would have otherwise. So you know, your flight crews probably are staying at better hotels. UM. You know,

there's certainly are medical workers. There's probably some government travel. Um. You know, even even people who normally would have sort of recovered from uh you know, maybe like a minor surgery or something in a U in a hospital or instead possibly checking into a hotel thinking that, you know, better to be outside of a hospital environment. So there's there's there, there are bits of business available, but you know,

none of it makes up for what the hotels have lost. Well, Patrick, I'm with you as soon as I get the shot hopping on a plane and going somewhere, that's for sure. Patrick Clark, real estate reporter for Bloomberg News. He joins us on the phone from New York City, talking about

again that same very difficult situation. We're here for the leisure and hospitality businesses, and now the question becomes for a lot of them as vaccines get into the marketplace, what is the patient scope of the recovery that you can expect from an airline from a theme park from a hotel um and I guess a lot of it is just we'll have to wait and see, but expectations are starting to build positively. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg

Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever a podcast platform you prefer. I'm Bonnie Quinn. I'm on Twitter at Bonny Quinn, and I'm Paul Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio