Coronavirus Is Dominating The U.S. Due To Failure To Control It

to podcasts, and on Bloomberg dot com. Well. In a video released shortly after his return to the White House from Walter Reet Hospital, President Trump sought the play down the peril of the virus that has killed more than two hundred ten thousand Americans since Let's take a listen. Don't let it dominate, don't let it take over your lives. Don't let that happen. We're the greatest country in the world. We're going back, We're going back to work. We're gonna

be out front as your leader. I had to do that. I knew there's danger to it, but I had to do it. I stood out front. I lead. That was President Trump speaking in a video. Let's get some color on some of those points there. We can do that with dr amish Abalgia senior scholar, Ineffectiousness East physician, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School

of Public Health. We should note that the JOHNS Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP, Bloomberg Philanthropies. And this radio and TV operation. Dr Dodger, thanks so much for joining us. What were your thoughts as to President President Trump and his comments since leaving the hospital that don't let it dominate you. He even made it in a tweet today comparing it to the flu. What are your thoughts there?

I think these are kind of misguided statements. And the fact is coronavirus is dominating us, and it's dominating us because we've failed to control it and we haven't still no ability to test, trace and isolate, and until we do, the virus is going to dominate us, whether or not we want to or not. And this isn't something to compare it to influenza. This is at least six times more fatal than influenza, and influenza isn't a worldwide calamity

and disruption the way COVID nineteen is. So I think this is the President getting back to his standard down laying misinformation and outright lies about the virus that he himself luckily has survived, dr adlda. Should everybody get the exact same course of treatment that the President has gotten. No, each person's treatment is individualized based upon what types of

symptoms they're having. So if somebody needs oxygen, they usually do get rem desevere in DEXI methods, and that's part of the standard of care for individuals who require oxygen. The regeneration antibody treatment that he got on compassionate use, that's not available to the general public in the clinical trials right now, So that isn't something that we give to people. We don't know if it works yet. We don't know if it works even in the President's case.

But the steroids and the remdesks of your are our standard of care for oxygen basically oxygen. Docay, I know the President is not your patient, but in your opinion, based upon the knowledge that we have publicly available, should he have left the hospital, well, I think I've had patients that do well and they get discharged pretty quickly and turn around quickly even when they've been on oxygen, So so I do. I do think it's something that you have to look at. Is he on a good trajectory,

have his symptoms improved? Is he no longer requiring supple metal oxygen? And then the other question is where are you sending him to? Are you sending him to somewhere that faith where he has support in case he gets into trouble again. And obviously the White House is not the same thing as sending him to an apartment somewhere where there's nobody to help him walk up four flights

of stairs. So the White House has a sophisticated medical unit which can give supplemental oxygen, which can give intravenous drugs. They have around the clock doctors and nurses and other medical professionals there. So he really isn't going home in the sense that you and I might be going home.

He's going to basically an advanced almost almost an advanced hospital in many by many standards, apart from putting other people at risk when he takes off the mask indoors at the White House or when he takes a car ride with Secret Service agents, albeit in Ppe. Potentially, what about the idea that he is being active on these drugs doesn't mean that he's doing himself some damage If he feel feels good and gets active or is that totally fine? If you feel good, then you know, make

use of your body while you can. Well, we want people to re engage with their activities of daily living in a measured way. We want to We don't want people to go too fast, too quickly, So I think it's important that his doctors gauge it. And it's very hard to do that from a distance because I'm not his position to know exactly how much trouble he has doing activities of daily living. But we do want people to not be bedridden and not not do anything, because

that also puts you at risk for complications. So if you are able to be active after you've recovered from COVID nineteen or even during COVID nineteen, it's important to take a measured amount of activity and titrate that based on your symptoms and how you're doing overall. And that's something that his doctors hopefully are helping him to decide. Dr do we know whether he is still in sexious?

The president he he is still infectious. We we know that people are infectious for at least a period of ten days from when symptoms occur, so he is still still contagious to other people, probably or a couple of

at least several more days. Doctor, There's probably not much you can say about this, but isn't it concerning that cases are just proliberating now throughout the White House and all sorts of people that were involved in debate prep We're at the Rose Garden, you know, and and and even staff at the White House, and presumably they'll get medical care, but this will put pressure on DC medical resources. Again, Yes,

this is unacceptable and inexcusable. What's going on this White House super spreader cluster needs to be investigated appropriately, in inappropriate action taken. This is the biggest super spreading event we've seen in DC, and it was in the White House, in the most protective place on the planet. And I think that this is something that we need to understand what the dynamics are transmission were there. We need to contact race and case investigate to understand how far this

will reach. Because these people, although they were on federal property in the DC Public Health Department doesn't have jurisdiction there. There are a lot of them are DC residents and the DC Public Health authorities need to contact trace those individuals to make sure that they're not starting to change the transmission that are going to land on vulnerable people. We've already had the President hospitalized and we have former

Governor Christie hospitalized based on these events. So we don't want more people hospitalized because of the failure of the White House to actually take an event that they caused and perpetuated. Seriously, do we know whether there is contact facing going on for those people that were at the Rose Garden event. What we've heard is that the DC Public Health has not had much cooperation from from the White House. We've heard the CDC had a contact tracing team,

but they're not doing it. So this is being handled internally from the White House. So like most things that have happened, are regarding this is probably this is going to be characterized by opaqueness and obfuscation, and so I'm not sure how much contact anything is going on. We're hearing that people were not contacted. For example, uh, the governor of of of Ohio said he was not contacted about the fact that people that the debate had positive

people there. So I'm unclear to how robust is contact tracing is going on. And in the president position, Dr Commy has been no help in this manner. Uh So I don't have a great confidence that they will be able to stop these changes of transmissions because they're choosing not to soft this change of transmission. Wow, just let that thing in for a second. Dr Amish Adulga, thank you so much. Really a great pleasure to speak with you always. Dr Adulga is senior scholar and infectious disease

physician at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. That is a pretty stunning turn of affairs. We we knew it, but to hear somebody who has treated patients, who has released patients, who you know largely is you know, watching what's going on and assuming the best, to hear this is pretty stunning, Paul, It really is. It just flies in the face of all the science that we know that we know has worked so well, which is you know where your mask keeps six ft apart? Wash your hands.

We know that here are the people in the Metro and York area no better than anybody, and not to see it followed by our leaders is frustrated. This is Bloomberg Markets with Paul Sweeney and Bonny Quinn on Bloomberg Radio. During these tough times. Do you find yourself looking for

images of puppies online? Well, if you do, then you definitely want to listen into our next interview because we're speaking with the CEO of Petco who joined the company in two thousand eighteen after having worked for HP PepsiCo for decades, So a lot of experience in corporate America and a little experience with pets. I'm sure let's welcome now. Ron Coglan, against CEO of Petco. Ron talked to us about the rise and pet adoptions and fostering during the pandemic.

It seems like it might be a good idea if you're ever going to do it, to do it now when you're probably more likely to be at home. Absolutely well, first of all, great thanks for having me. Um. If you look at people at home, people may be looking being a little disconcerted through the pandemic pets for a way to have accompaniment and nurturing and seeing growth like we haven't seen in years in pet adoptions, pet fostering

and new pets and households. Bank America just did a study and thirty seven percent of households and that study reported having a new pet. We have people calling our stores waiting to see when we'll have new reptiles, birds, fish, etcetera. So that's so ron just give us a sense of how your company, Petco has been dealing with the pandemic and and maybe some changes you've been forced to make

and how you're thinking about your business. Yeah. Well, first it started with keeping everyone's safe, whether it's our customers or whether it's our employees. We put a lot of effort into shipping swimming pools of sanitizers, football fields of masks um in New York. We shifted our format, closed the front of the store. I went to Delhi order

format where our team members shopped for you. So we did all that and I was very out and I'm proud that our COVID penetration amongst our team is one third the national average, despite folks interacting with humans all day long. We also stood up curdside pick up. In two weeks, we added five hundred ship from store locations, so our stores now are mini distribution centers. So a

lot of fast work. But what this really solidified for us is we have a role to play take care of pets and our mission of improving lives and being a health and wellness company for pets. Ron, what's the update on I p O plans? Listen, we have more customers coming to us for more reasons, which is good. And whenever you have success, people start talking, but we don't comment on any such such things. So Ron talked to us about you know, how, how's how's your business been.

I'm guessing its sales are up. We see the industry sales presumably a pet sales or pet adoptions and pet owners ship is up. Is that translating into your business? Like I said, we have more customers coming. Um, they are buying more food, buying more grooming, vaccinations. One of the things that's interesting is people are home all day, right, so they know that Fluffy needed to be groomed. They

remember that Rover needed a vaccination. Uh so Um that the explosion of pets and people say more time with our pets has been good for us. But one of the things that you know, we take very seriously is our role. And today we're announcing that we are eliminating shock collars. Um. We codified our mission of being all about improving lives and pets and pet parents, and we

just decided that shock collars aren't consistent with that. So we are eliminating shock collars from our stores starting today and actually starting a petition to have other retailers do similarly and offering folks um free training class online to replace it. Well, that sounds very reasonable. I'm sure pets, even in the training process, will be happy not to be shocked. Seriously. But that said, that just brings up the idea of people getting sort of you know, having

strange tastes, let's put it that way. And I wonder after the launch of Tiger King on Netflix, did you see an increase in requests for sort of strange animals, wild animals, unusual animals. Yeah, our our companion animal business is doing very well. Uh in terms of strange animals, will leave that to the to the Tiger King. But are our folks in our stories do a great job? You said reptiles, they're pretty strange to me. Well to come,

they're strange to others. Their their accompaniments, and we're very proud of the teams that handle those products. Ron, how do you gives a sense of how pet Co competes with some of the big Amazons of the world and some of the big chain department stores, where the pet department is just one department of a overall bigger enterprise. How do you traditionally compet against those bigger players. Yeah, so let me let me start at the top. I talked about our mission of improving lives of pets and

pet parents. No other company in UM, whether it's the general merchandise like the ones you mentioned, or even in the pet space, is dedicated to health and wellness for pets. So I think of us as the CBS or the Whole Foods in the pet space, and we think that's a unique place. One two. Nobody else has a fully integrated solution from the training, to the grooming, to the veterinary care to UM food that has no artificial flavors

and colors. Nobody else carries that whole has that whole suite of services for a one stop shop for a pet parent that's looking for health and wellness products for their for their pet. And what we launched last week was vital Care, and that is a membership program for a monthly fee. You get that nail trim, you get that vaccination, and you get the counts on your food. And nobody else can do that because nobody else has

a fully integrated solution. Briefly wrong because we're out of time, but any COVID nineteam protection products or any inquiries on those things, um in terms of our our stores and our partners, absolutely, you know the pieces about COVID and pets. It's it was one in a million anecdotal. So we have not seen that as any issue that people need to worry about. That's good. Ron Coughlin, CEO of pet Co, joining us to talk to us about how the pet industry is doing in the pandemic and pet adoptions uh

and sales up of four percent. That's kind of the headline for me. We're going to consult Ira Jersey right now, chief US Interest Rate Strategies for Bloomberg Intelligence. All right, we had a little bit of a move yesterday sort of walk everybody up, but that looks at the bond markets. It wasn't massive in historic terms, but it was good five basis points for the ten year and you know, another few basis points for the thirty year. But we're back to sort of stagnation again today. Do the bond

market price in a less contested election and now we're done. Yeah, I don't. I don't know if it was as much as uh, not contested election, but I think the market is thinking that there's a higher probability of a Biden victory and and and so what that means is you're going to have, uh if, if Joe Biden wins, more likely a larger fiscal stimulus plan. And that's going to

do two things. One it should theoretically be better for the economy in general then um then then say a smaller fiscal stimulus that you'd probably get with the split government. And two, and I think this is just as important, is um, if you do get that larger fiscal stimulus, you're gonna need there's gonna be more bonds out there are more supply. So so that's one of the reasons why you saw that steepening of the yield curve. And

and we we broke some pretty important levels Fannie. So so one point five seven on the thirty year bond was h is the high from the post covid Um crisis period. And now that we've broken that, we now target yields that are actually about twenty basis points above where we are now. So so I think that that's like that those are the numbers you have to think about now as we get closer to the election. If it looks like Biden wins um, you know, we might

creep higher and yield with the yield curves deepening. So we pat Chairman Pal speaking to a group of economists today, which sounds just like a hoot. I'm sure, Um, I've been there, yeah. Um. It seems like we hear from Chairman Pal almost on a weekly basis here, so I'm not expecting much here. But is there anything different here? Is this an audience that wants to hear something perhaps different, or has the ability to ask questions where we might

get some news out of this. I don't. I think that he'll continue to be pretty coy and and basically reiterate what has been said at press conferences. I mean, one of the things now, Paul, is because we have press conferences at every single meeting, it's going to be really difficult for the FED chair in particular to say anything that's significantly different than what he said just you know, just a week ago or two weeks ago at at

the at the press conference after the last meeting. I think it's so important to listen to the mosaic that's coming out with all the different FED members because you know, having an idea about what each member is thinking about for future policy matters, so you know, what are their own individual tendencies when it comes to how long that they'll let inflation run hot before they want to be hawkish. So obviously some some members of the committee or are

going to be more hawkish. O there's more devish and and understanding the dynamics between those individual players will what will be key. But but to your point, I don't think Powell today is going to say much much that's gonna gonna be new. He will have to give his opinion on this bond market move though, right, I M not just that. But Charlie Opens is out yesterday sort

of saying two and a half percent. At some point we'll need to know exactly what Powell things beyond two Well yeah, yeah, So so certainly Powell as a member like he'll wind up maybe saying something like, um, you know, my personal opinion, this is not the opinion of the committee, is that we should let it run hot until it seems like it's sustainable and we'll have to hike. But but you know that's gonna be you know, kind of um, nondescript enough that it's not going to give us that

much new information. Um. When it comes to you know, the the bond market move, it's still within mostly the ranges that we've seen. So, you know, the tenure yield is still well within the ranges that we've seen over the last four months. So UM, So I don't I don't think that they'll he'll talk about it. I think that maybe he'll couch the steepening of the yield curve as a positive sign that the market thinks that the

growth and inflation are going to be higher in the future. Um. But um but but you know, other than that talking about it being optimistic and optimistic view, I don't think you can say much more about the bond market move. I wrote, what is this reserved actually doing in terms of being in the market buying bonds? How active they've did? What have they been buying? Yeah, so so well, they

haven't actually changed very much at all. We put out a weekly note every Friday with what they've purchased in that week. Um, and the basically they're still just buying every day a little bit and uh, all throughout the curve. They haven't changed that, and most of their purchases are actually in the front end of the curve, so they're in low risk, shorter maturity bonds and uh so, so you know, that's keeping that part of the yield curve

very tame and timid. So even though you had a pretty decent move yesterday and say the tenure in the thirty year, the front ends still didn't move very much. Um partially because interest rates are expected to be low for a long period of time, but also in part certainly that because the Fed is buying just about everything that it can in uh in that kind of five

years and in maturity range. So I what would you anticipate after the election, say we do get that Biden when at the bond markets pricing in do we not see much movement? Then yeah, I think you'll see still see a little bit. I mean, I think the market is still going to be a little bit um on edge and not fully pricing a Biden victory unless it's

absolutely obvious. And I do think that the market is a little bit concerned about whether or not there'll be some hiccups, and you know, counting ballots and and uh an account by mail. Uh. So, I do think that once it's there's a declared victor, regardless of who it is. I do think that the bond market will reprice a little bit um. You know how much that is is

always a matter of subjectivity. Um. But I do think that we could reach For example, certainly the yield highs that we saw a couple of um um a couple of months ago, kind of up near one eight percent on the third year UM. So again like constrained but not um but not a massive move. Hey, I rank so much for joining us IRA Jersey, chief US interest rate strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence. He covers all things for

the FED, all things in the treasury market. Uh he puts out there only note he has a weekly Lots of great stuff in there, all available on the Bloomberg terminal by typing b I go. It is time now for as you heard, Bloomberg Opinion. We want to get to Bloomberg Opinion technology columnists based in Europe alex Web.

And the reason we want to get to alex Web is because with many stories to discuss with him, we want to talk about the Cineworld group closures, which is very, very sad we were talking about this yesterday and other things. We just got worried that a judge is going to hold a hearing on November four is on Commerce Department order banning TikTok. So we can talk about that later in the conversation, But first, Alex, you know, obviously it's a very sad day when all of the movie theaters

goes down. Basically, any hope that these theaters might reopen at some point, yes, I think that that is. We don't know when, but Tenny World has said it's going to shut down. It's plus theaters in the UK and the US. Um that isn't a permanent closure, but it does potentially leave forty five thousand people out of work. The kind of note for optimism here is that this straw that broke the camel's back in a sense was was MGM decided to push the release of the new

Bond film until April. But it is doing just that. It's pushing it to April. That means that it hopes clearly that there will be a cinema audience by then, and it hasn't decided to push it online. Alex, to me for somebody who's filed this industry for close to thirty years. It's kind of a chicken in the egg issue for me. Are people not going to theaters because there's not enough good content or they not going to theaters because they don't want to be stuffed into a

confined space? Uh during a pandemic, what are the companies saying are the real reasons for I guess, you know, temporarily closing down these theaters. So the companies are saying it's the lack of the films they have reopened or had reopened screens with quite strict under the quite strict guide, and that, for example, exists in the UK where ultimately they're only allowed to feel about thirty of each screen.

But they had been saying that, you know, they were they were filling that thirty percent and they were hoping then that the release of No Time to Die that's the title of a new film, the new bomb film, would reinvigorate a certain to a certain extent, cinema going the other sema chains. For example, in the UK we have Odeon still open on weekends a MC in the US as well, so they still think there's an audience.

There is just a company like Single World in particular, which has significant debt exposure because of not least the acquisition of Regal cinemas in the US. That means it has higher operating costs in the sense that it's got to service its debt. And um, so it's trying to reserve its cash in order to be able to do that more effectively. Yes, it's said, according to your column, it was burning through as much as sixty million dollars of cash a month with screens partially open in September.

What are the margins for a screening, Alex? Obviously the the movie theaters have to pay the studios and so on, and they do count on things like popcorn sales to help out and obviously that's not happening now either. So how you know, do we have any idea what kind of capacity would need to be filled in order for a movie theater to be able to operate, you know in the green and it is quite hard to get

the full granularity on that. Probably speaking, their relatively healthy in a sense of recession recession proof businesses, you know, silly world typically reports if its are revenue that is of course massively dropped off right now. Um And and the way that the kind of breakdown of revenue. The way the revenue is broken down is that maybe is actually the ticket sales, and then they have merchandizing and

food food sales on top of that. About half and half clearly getting people into the cinemas me just still able to sell um, you know, popcorn and drinks and all those sort of things. A lot of cinemas in the US we have seen have been offering discounts getting them into the cinema and the hope they make the

money up on some of those other offers offerings. So the difficulty right now is cinema studios having to work out whether they can make enough money back from just putting something online, whether by selling it or just selling it to a streamer, or where they need the cinematic release to make up. In the case of No Time to Die, there two fifty million dollar budget and that

probably excludes the marketing costs. So it seems as though the studios think that they do really need to release these things cinematically in theatrically sorry, in order to cover their costs and make the sort of returns that warranted that upfront investment. And so that in a sense he's good news for the the cinema industry or cinema operators, because they hope at least that when we're clear of the virus, the audiences warturn and the studios will return.

It's interesting, Alex. Another problem for the film exhibitors is a problem that the studios have been effectively shut down for six to seven months. No film or TVs have really been made because everybody has been kind of shut down. So that suggests that even when they do open up,

there might be a lack of supply. From that perspective, I think interestingly, that's more likely to be a problem for the streamers because, um, you're still getting TV shows and films released on the streaming platforms because we're not seeing stuff released in cinemas and theaters that is being pushed back to when the theaters open again. So you're getting a kind of a build up of supply there

which will all of a sudden drop hopefully sometime next year. Meanwhile, there is perhaps come the spring next year, because we haven't had much production for the past six eight months, Um, there's going to be perhaps the dearth of supply for the streamers and and the TV networks and and I think that might be more of a concern for them, um than it is for the cinemas themselves, so that I don't know, would you disagree with that sort of interpretation.

That's what some people have been suggesting to me. Yeah, it's interesting, you know, it's we'll have to see it. But there really is going to be a lack of supply here, I think for everybody, and it's going to take a little bit of a catch up, I guess, um. And you know, as you're you're pointing out the broadcast and cable networks, you know, have really cut back on their scripted programming because there's just not that much there, and they're relying more and more on the on you know,

kind of reality TV. So it's a real problem for everybody just in terms of lack of supply there. Alex, Can I jump in and ask Alex what he makes of this Reuter's report that a judge will at the hearing in November four the whether to block the Commerce Department order that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States. Alex, you got feeling what will happen with TikTok? Can it really be banned? I think it seems unlikely they'll be you know, an out right back on it. Did there's

the risks. I mean, obviously this is getting into real legal sort of a legal labyrinth here. But then, um, it's hard to know what on what basis exactly it is being banned. The Commons Department is trying to impose things upon it, but that doesn't have the legal basis to do so, and obtomately that's when the judge that has has died upon it. I'm really I'm sure the risk of retaliate reactions from China for other pieces of

the US tech economy, it seems quite high. But equally a judge isn't necessarily it's not his job to take into account those kind of um diplomatic considerations. So it's very very difficult one to protect. Well, does something else happening that day, right, that's right, a little bit of an election coming up, So alex wellb European technology calmness for Bloomberg opinion joining us from London again kind of the key issue here. For the film of businesses, not

a lot of films out there. The films that are out there, they're getting pushed the next year. So If you're a uh, you know, you know, a movie house, what do you do. If you're a theater, what do you do? You don't have any content people are concerned about coming into your theaters. You close down temporarily. At least that's what we're seeing across the globe. 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 Bonnie 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