Covid Treatment Eliminated Death in Study, Says Eli Lilly

next guest. Now, I'd like to welcome in Dr Dan's Govronsky, who is chief scientific officer at ELI Lilly and Company and ELI Lily of course doing a lot of work on antibody therapies on COVID. So welcome Dr Dann and thank you. First of all, explain to us where you're at when it comes to the antibody work. Yeah, thank you very much. It's it's a pleasure beyond. Today we have a mono clonel and a body called Bamla nevermab, which is a synthetic way of boosting a person's immune system.

It's currently authorized by the FDA and emergency use and it's available in many countries around the world for the early treatment COVID nineteen. So these are patients who are diagnosed with COVID nineteen. They're still early in the disease course. They're not hospitalized, but they have risk factors such as age or obesity, or or hypertension or cardiovascular disease that would suggest they could have dangerous outcomes. And what we've shown here is that, uh, this drug can reduce the

risk that they end up being hospitalized or worse. So, dr where in terms of the United States, where are we with your drug here in the U S. And what is your time frame for you know, really getting it fully out into the market. Yeah, it's it's already widely available. Patients should know that and and doctors should know that. UM about a million doses have been shipped already. Uh. Most healthcare institutions have it UM, but it's still a

little tricky for patients and physicians to find it. The the U. S. Government, who's in charge of distributing it, has has created resources. One is called combat COVID so bet covid dot HHS dot gov. If patients click on that, they can see infusion locator, which will actually show them near their house where they can go to get it. So again, it's for patients who have just gotten diagnosed with COVID and their high risk and worried UM. This is a treatment option that is available to them. So

how does it work? Is it a one time thing? Do they continue to go back for more? And is there any data on what happens if it doesn't work or if it works in a different way than you're anticipating. Yeah, thank you. It's it's a one time infusion. So the the infusion now as of today, we've just quickened it so it only takes It can take as little as sixteen minutes. In some circumstances, you could take more UM, but the patient is infused with this medicine just that

one day for that amount of time. Usually the physicians will observe the patient to make sure they don't have any any adverse events UM for up to an hour after they administer the rug, and then the patient goes home. UM. In a recent phase three trial of a slightly different version of this, which was a combination of two such monoclonal antibodies family never MAB and at seven MAB, we saw that for patients like this, we reduced hospitalizations by

seventy percent, which is just incredible to think about. If if this were widely deployed. If all the patients that could benefit got this, we could have seventy less people in hospitals. We also completely eliminated deaths, so the placebo arm unfortunately, ten out of about five people died UM, which is consistent with what we know about COVID. It's dangerous and people do die. On the treatment arm, zero deaths,

so that's hugely encouraging. Imagine if we can reduce hospitalizations and reduced significantly eliminate even UM the vast majority of of deaths, we could really turn what is the biggest public health crisis of our lifetimes into a disease that's much more manageable. So I just see these monoclon lantibodies in combination with the vaccines UM, which you know, create immunity in advance of getting the disease. This gives you

immunity that helps you treat the disease. UM that those two things take together, you know, we can really turn the corner on doctor, do you have to be sick already to get this or can you get it without being sick? So right now it's it's authorized as a treatment. So so that's for people who are sick We also last week disclosed another Phase three trial for the same drug,

but now used in people who aren't sick yet. We went into nursing homes where you have a very vulnerable population, and we went to nursing homes where they're starting to have an outbreak, and we tested to see whether we could use this prophylactically. And what we we found is a very significant reduction in eight percent reduction for nursing home residents getting sick. So, in other words, giving to them an advance of of illness prevented many of them

from from getting sick. And again, uh, no deaths in the people who got the treatment versus a number of deaths and people who unfortunately got placebo in this trial, So it can work in that scenario. We we have that data which is exciting, but that isn't yet authorized by the FDA. We're taking that forward for their reviews soon. So, Doc, I'm getting the sense that it's it's not fully in the marketplace, that there are some bottlenecks. Is that is

that a correct? Am I correct? And inferring that? And what what do we need? What do you need to do to get it fully distributed? Yeah? Thank you there's uh, it's distributed. It's out there on the shelves of hospitals and infusion centers and health care facilities around the country. Um, there's a couple of misconceptions and a couple of bottlenecks that are slowing down patient used for The first is that patients and their doctors often don't know about it.

It's relatively new, UM, and information hasn't been fully disseminated, So we're we're trying to work with the federal government and to make sure the word gets out in the right way. UM. That's important because people, if they wait until they're really sick and hospitalized, this is no longer an appropriate treatment. So the window of intervention is still early, and that takes some thinking to say, Okay, I have COVID nineteen. I may not feel awful yet, but I

know I have these respectors. So so that's the first step is awareness. The second is actually getting an infusion, which is you know, something that happens all the time for cancer patients or patients with autoimmune diseases, but it's new for infectious diseases. And so hospitals and health care facilities have been setting up around the country purpose made infusion centers just for COVID nineteen and in some health systems these are just running a NonStop and confusing patients

with with good benefit. And then finally is there has been some skepticism. I think this was initially authorized based on Phase two data. It was just a few hundred patients. Now we have Phase three data that involves thousands of patients that JET came over the last couple of days and absolutely reinforces all the benefits we saw in phase two. So that's exciting and I think with that UM more and more doctors will will decide to make this standard

care for their patient. Doctor are pretty much out of time, but can you give us a quick idea of the cost and whether it's covered by insurance? Yes. So one of the principles that we followed is in our discussions with the U. S. Government, we've asked that this should be free for patients. So that is the cost, it's it's zero. People don't have to pay for the drug itself. Um, sometimes there is a price to pay for the doctors seeing the patient or diagnosing them or giving them an infusion.

All of that should be covered by fully covered by by insurance or the government. So so patients shouldn't be inhibited by by cost here, that's that's not an issue. I think I might be running out to my nearer sealth care. We should all be getting this. I'm a little confused here, all right, doctor, thank you so much for joining us. For Dan Scorronsky, he is chief scientific officer for Eli Lilly and Company, talking to us about one of their therapeutics that has proven to be extraordinarily

effective in vannie. It just seems like, why wouldn't you, I guess at this point. Yeah, I mean, I guess you'd have to be a little bit brave to go for it. But at the same time, it doesn't sound like there's much of a downside. Yeah, so certainly, I s you know, for those folks that do test positive, here is a a great, great treatment for them. So

that's good news. Well, it is our great pleasure right now to introduce the honorable David Burt, who is Premier of Bermuda, possibly the best job in the whole universe. Premiere Birds, thank you so much for joining and I hope everybody is safe and well in Bermuda. I know that Bermuda was one of the places that managed to really control and restrain this this horrible, horrible coronavirus done for a very very long time. Numbers were tiny. Can you give us an update on that and how many

people actually move to Bermuda to work from home? Well, thank you. I mean, I know that we had it's a pleasure to be here with you with your listening audience. I know that we had over five hundred applications of persons who wanted to come to the country. Um, I think we had about three fifty who actually arrived on island as far. Uh. Certainly there's people who are in

an out and in Bermuda right now. I think as our latest report last night, we had uh twenty nine oh sorry, twenty seven active case of the coronavirus, three persons in hospital. There was a little bit of an outbreak, but that much has been controlled and I think over the last week we've possibly I think we've reported only one new local case the coronavirus. So I think we are in a good place. We have we are Bermuda is the fourth most tested country on the planet and

we do testing here. Um, we do, we test, test and tests again, so premier. I am a huge fan of Bermuda, been there several times and I greatly look forward to coming back. Give us a sense of how the pandemic on a global scale has impacted tourism for Bermuda. How you respond as well? Oh well, Paul, the pandemic has certainly had a great impact on tourism UM and recently of course with the flare ups that we've seen in the United States, the United Kingdom, the new policies,

the Biden administration, etcetera. UM, it's an exceedingly difficult period, no question about it. But this is our traditional low season and tourism, so we are just taking the time to recalibrate. But we have events that are scheduled. We have an international sale in Regattas that's going to be taking place Berbuda in March Sale GT, and we are

we have off sites which are happening from UM. You know companies the United States who want to still you know, travel and have their persons in a safe environment and have those things off site. So our tourism industry is focusing more on the niche markets, the long term tourists of people who are working from Berbuda. So in that case an instance, that's that's how we are managing to recover.

And I think that following that there's going to be um other chances for us if the Biden administration extends the no sale policy. There are some cruise lines that are looking to possibly launch their cruises from here in Bermuda, um which is very close to the United States of course, out of the New York market, and people can cruise from here. Yeah, we just got word literally in the last six minutes that Canada is stopping airline service to

Sun destinations including the Caribbean and Mexico. So obviously there will be stopping starts with countries, you know, banning people from traveling or banning people from entry and so on. So there's be a lot to catch up on in terms of growth and GDP and so on. How concerned

are you that Bermuda will suffer? And is there any way of stimulating or relieving the economy in the sense of pandemic relief like we're looking at in the United States here the mainland, Well, we've implemented a very aggressive program of stimulus. So when the pandemic first started, we provided a general stimulus to persons to businesses to make sure that they can couldntinue to UH survive and making sure that we gave direct money to persons are our

funding was at five minute dollars per week. We made sure that we continue that for persons who needed those fundings. But in the issues of stimulus from the from Bermuda, what we're doing is we're making sure that we take this opportunity to established leadership in many things, and so we are continuing to build on our digital asset industry here in Bermuda, which has seen a growth which is working.

We're continuing to attract big names to our shores and as we see what's happening now with the markets and the attention that is being paid to decentralized finance Bermuda, we are very fortunate that we have been preparing ourselves regulatory and regulation wise this for a number of years and now it's coming to the force. So we are very excited of what the future may hold. So Premiere, when I think of the economics of Bermuda, I think of the insurance industry long had a strong presence on

the island of Bermuda. But I know you've been also developing crypto and black chain technology, trying to attract fintech. Tody I talked to us a little bit about that. Well, fintech has been going well. Um, we're building off of our insurance space. Insurance is going well and the combination of insurance UM and fintech. So I mean, we are have exchanges that have haded licenses so far, including Bittrick's Global, who's been using our regulatory framework to launch token eyed

stocks and so people can trade stocks. Seven. We have other big names like Circle and i G International getting license. We have people in our sandbox UH companies like stable House and Cross Towers and market makers. And we also have insurance market innovators such as Naims, and we have other insurers that are coming to offer insurance for digital assets as well. So we are well positioned, I think, to take advantage of the the attention that is now

being paid to the coming decentralized finance boom. Yeah, it's pretty amazing, sing Why did you decide to do that? Are there risks in a country embracing one industry so much? Well, I wouldn't say it's one industry. Bermuda is a well regulated financial services uh jurisdiction, and so we are well

known for our high regulatory standards. Bermuda is one of the there's only two countries of the world that have regulatory equivalents when it comes to insurance with both the United States and the European Union, and that's Bermuda and Switzerland. So are not a fly by night jurisdiction. We have

very high standards, so the risks are managed appropriately. But at the same point in time, when you look at the way that finance is changing, we recognize that there is an opportunity and we want to be a place where companies can innovate in a well regulated space with a respected global regulator. So we can bring innovations to the markets. And we have companies right now under our regulatory regime that are able to offer you know, the

trading of token icebox seven happening today. So we are um, we are certainly pushed. I wouldn't say pushing the boundaries, but we are allowing companies to come here and to go ahead and to offer innovation to the world. Talk to us about the insurance business where how's it evolved on the island again. You know, I've always thought of You know, it's such a big, big presence for your economy. It's been such a good business and a good environment.

Talk to us about this state of insurance business on Permuta these days, UH, state of the insurance business. The insurance business is growing. Certainly. There's been a lot of new capital that has come into insurance, UH, due to certainly the pandemic and the losses of which some insurance companies have seen. We've seen an incredible flow of new capital Bermuda. We've seen new companies that have set up to take advantage of this new capital that is flowing

into the market. And we're also seeing innovation which is happening through UM distributed leisure technologies and other things to make insurance even more efficient than it has been through the innovations that the Bermuda market has bought for the global insurance industry. So it's certainly growing UM and we continue to see that growth with companies setting up here and looking how to ensure not only the risk of today but the risk of tomorrow in the new markets

which are emerging. So how do you attract companies and and outfits? What is your pitch in terms of I don't know taxation or you know, things that might be attractive other than the obvious. I mean, who wouldn't want to work in Bermuda right, absolutely, it's very strange. Our calling card is actually our regulation. That is our calling card. Our calling card is to be able to work with a regulator that you can have conversations with and speak to.

Our regulator is very tough, but however, there is the opportunity to innovate here in Bermuda, and that's what it is. People always will point to the tax argument, but for there are a large number of our insurers here in Bermuda. They elect to be u S taxpayers. They prefer to access the regulatory clarity and the regulatory um certainty that they have here in Bermuda, dealing with one regulator versus multiple different regulators at the federal level and the state

level on other places. What's the in terms of tourism. What percentage of your your economy is tourism? Here? Tourism and from a foreign exchange earning basis, only represents five percent of the country's foreign exchange earnings. Most of our foreign exchange earnings come through international business. Oh, that's interesting, so and and so what are you expecting. Fourism has a larger size. Tourism has a larger size for employment

on the island. But when we're talking about foreign currency exchange, a lot of that comes from international business. And you high season typically in tourism is UH the summer months. So you call up from April to October and just real quick, premier, are there commercial flights coming in or most of the people coming into the island on you know, special chartered or private airplanes. There are commercial flights coming

in every day from New York City. Um, we have flights coming in from Europe as well as the fact is Bermuda now that the Biden administration has implemented UH testing regimes, but Bermuda has had those in place since we reopen our airlines where we require people to have pretests. We test people on arrival, we test people four days after arrival, eight days after arrival, fourteen days after arrival,

we test people on the way out. So we have, as I said, the most tempted country in the world, and that's the reason why we have been able to maintain our our connections to the world and maintain our niche tourism which is taking place been able to host um events from our stores because we get confidence in our tests and Premier I can promise you and see a pale kid wandering around the streets Bermuda next week and Paul, I'll see you in two weeks. That's right, okay,

the honorable David Bert, thank you so much for joining us. UH. Premiere Part is the Premiere of the Government of Bermuda, located obviously in Hamilton's Bermuda. Very interesting story about what's going on on the island of Bermuda. It's it's not just tourism, it is insurance, UH, it is diversified financial services, it is fintech, crypt currency. So interesting developments there on the island of Bermuda. And again I am a huge fan, look forward to going back. It is time for Bloomberg

Opinion Today. We're joined by Aaron Brown. He's a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion also the former chief risk manager at a q R, a Capital management based in New York City. Aaron, thanks so much for joining us here. So as we take a look at this day trading phenomena, the game stops the a m c s of the world. First of all, are you surprised that a hedge fund the size and the expertise of Melvin Capital Management with billions

under assets under management. Are you surprised that they were hurt so badly at the beginning of this, You know, no, I'm not um. Shorting and market arbitrage has always been a very risky game, and uh it's uh it's just power for the course. Normally you uh make some easy money, but once in a while you get killed on a trade like this. It's just part of the short selling game.

It's time a little bit reminiscent of LTCM, right, I mean you would have imagined that he either wouldn't leave traces gay plot in that is, or that he would have some other kind of trade on that might mitigate any potential danger to this huge short. Well. You know, hedge funds of this type are in the business of taking risk, of making big directional positions, and you do take your lumps sometime, and we've seen some of the most successful creators. LTCM is a good example. Amrith is

another example. Uh blow up and and all it takes is is one bad trade. The people who are low risk, the people who are hedging everything, who get out you know, with stop losses, those people survive, but they don't make the giant profits of you know, John Paulson. So, Aaron, I mean short selling. Short squeezes have been around since

the beginning of financial markets. I guess what's different about this one is the advent and the use of social media number one and number two of the zero fee UH or zero commission trading, which really opens it up to a much, much wider audience. Here. Are you surprised that robin Hood yesterday and some other of these platforms um chose to limit trading in some of these names.

You know, I wasn't surprised by Robert Hood. Robin Hood has been under a very intense regulatory pressure, a lot of suspicion, and I think, you know, robin Hood is going to have to protect itself from this kind of thing. I was very surprised at some of the larger and more established brokers did it as well. UM. It reminds me a little bit of the scene in Casa Blanca where Claude Rings is shocked to find the gambling going on.

To see, you know, all these politicians and and and people are suddenly shocked to find out their day leaders, they're gambling. There's lots of you know, irrational volatility in the stock market. This has always been with us. It's just a lot more prominent, you know, Reddit redetit and uh, you know some of the robin hood concentrated and make

it more obvious. But but this is this is really an old story that just for some reason has become you know, metastasized a little bit in two thousand twenty one, Aaron, would you have approved this trade or if it started smaller, would you have approved the you know, the the expansion of it as time went on. I mean, I mean did the Melbourne trade is what I'm saying, not not

the trade. Well, yeah, I was a risk manager for a very different kind of hedge fund, a very you know, a quant fund that that runs very low risk uh strategies, very carefully calculated. But if if I were hired as a risk manager or like that, which I wouldn't be, I'm not that kind of a risk manager. But if I were, um, yeah, I would ask you. I would have to say, you know, if you've got high conviction, you know you you've got to do it. If you're not willing to take these kinds of risk you gotta

get out of the business. Wow, are do you expect regulators, Congress, regulators, the SEC to step in here in a meaningful way or is this something might just blow over? Well the problem, I mean, they're all obviously, you know, excited about it. They would love to do something about it, but nobody knows what to do. Um. I suspect what's going to happen is there's going to be more restriction on small investors are going to and then this will be damaging.

Um the you know the people on robin Hood who are playing with a hundred dollars. This is a great Everybody makes mistakes in the market. You know, you don't want to make these at fifty when you're betting your house and you've got a family to support your retirements at stake. Do it at a hundred when when you're a college student, and this is how you learn about the market. Um. So, I think it's great that people are betting small amounts of money they can afford to

lose and learning about the market this way. Uh, what is kind of scarier is the billions of dollars my big institutional investors who are I think really driving these ups and downs in these big stock but nobody knows what to do about that. You would love to take the volatility out of the market, but nobody can do it. Just as we speak, is schwab is announcing it's adjusted marginal Quarmans and some stocks as well. Be clear, and where would you want to work next in markets? What's

interesting to you right now? I'm actually looking kind of beyond the stuff. I'm thinking, you know, it's sort of the end of the year where it's really interesting. What will the world look like when people are going back to work every day and things are reopening. I think we've done some very fundamental shifts over the last whole month now um in the economy, and we haven't seen their underground. Well, Aaron, you have to come back and tell us more about that, because it's uh, that's a

that's what they call it. Teas. We'll lead you back to in Aaron Brown, former chief risk manager at a QR accout Little Management. Sarah ponzach Is in studio Crossross Order here at Bloomberg and Sarah just you know, we could begin anywhere, but I kind of like this headline on our m Live blog. It says, more juice to be squeezed in the land of the shorts. It's a very intriguing headline. Are there still shorts out there and are they hiding right now? Yes, there are still shorts

out there. And you can just see that if you look at short interests as a percentage shares outstanding or as a percentage of float on many of these stocks, and you see some of the juice, if we want to call it, being squeezed this morning. Game Stop for example, currently up fift cost the headphone maker up a m C, up forty six percent as we speak right now. So after we did see the sell off yesterday broke which is placing restrictions, now there has been an easing of

those restrictions. At the same time, you have the likes of Citron Research coming out and saying that they are going to stop their short selling research. And we see a comeback in the making for many of these socks. So, sir, we see the markets trading off today. Um, do we have evidence that part of this market movement day to day here this week has been in fact influenced by some of these hedge funds looking to liquidate some of their bigger positions across the market to stave off some

of the losses on these shorts. Is there evidence to that effect, so that that is the understanding right now. As a loose proxy, if you look at an e t F that trades under the ticker g v I P, you can see that over the one, two, three, or four or five, six of the seven last days have been lower. Wednesday a drop of four point three percent. Today we also see it down eight tenths of a percent.

My Calli lou Wing has actually written a lot about this too, and she's gotten data from Goldman Sacks Prime brokerage unit, and what it shows is that outflows from hedge funds and degrossing has actually been happening at the fastest rates in October. So there is some evidence that shows that hedge funds have had to d risk, and you can see it in certain pockets of the market, particularly like this e t F which tracks favorite hedge

fund long positions. Not only have they been attacked on the short end of their book, they're having a hard time on the long end of the book. To Sarah, explain to us a little bit more about the Citron Research decision. I presume they're still going to short stocks, they're just not going to publish their research. Is that

it had been open before. And then, as part of that question, does that leave us open to to fraud like for example, Enron and all of these other major fraudulent instances that we may not have found out about if there haven't been short sellers. So what what Citron said, uh in their announcement was that they will focus on giving longside multibagger opportunities for individual investors. Now, I'm sure we'll get more information. My understanding is that yes, they're

just not going to publish the research. Um. But then again we're still this is still developing. I'm sure we'll get more information. Um. But that's the issue right now. Why would any short seller want to be an activist short that publishes their short list if they know that a Reddit community with now six million users is just going to gather to try to create a short squeeze

h and hurt their position. We know that the likes of Citron other hedge funds that had short positions on some of these stocks have have suffered billions of dollars worth of losses this week. And you see that culminating in Citron's decision today halting twenty years of their short

selling analysis. So unsure what this truly means, and also going forwards, we know this is now being looked at very closely, not just on Wall Street, not just on Reddit, but in Washington, d C. And the SEC is looking into this as well. So the question really is is there going to be a new regulation that comes out from this saga, and too, if so, where is it going to focus. What are the changes that can actually

be made? And you wonder if any of that will fit on the short seller side of the equation, because Paul, I mean, the likes of Jim Chanos has done a lot of good for the market over the years. It would be an awful pity to see people like that just go into into the corner and hide. I agree. I think it's revived kind of this discussion we've had from periodically over the years, you know, since for a long time, about the value of short selling. Is it a valuable um? You know, is it a valuable practice

in the marketplace? And while a lot of people think no, there's a lot of people that says, just like you're saying, Bonnie, that it does. Uh, it does do a lot for market integrity, Sarah. One of the issues I was looking at was so many of these companies are seeing their stocks, you know, rally so much. Are any of these companies coming to market trying to sell stock and take advantage

of this? They certainly are. There's a story on the terminal right now, the headline Reddit favorites I stock sales after retail fueled rallies, And I mean, you can't really blame some of these come and needs for doing so. They're taking advantage of market like they're taking advantage of capital markets. American Airlines, for example, announced plans to sell

up to one point one billion dollars of shares. Uh. We've also seen Sundial Growers, which has been another one of these favorites lately, that's been a part of the mania, which is a pot stock. They announced a hundred million dollar stock sale at a discount to yesterday's closing price, So certainly companies are taking advantage of this. Has happened earlier in the week as well, with AMC taking advantage

of the pop in their share prices. They raised three hundred five million dollars, So you can't really blame these companies for doing so. They're taking advantage of an opportunity. Yeah, that's for sure, Sarah. Thank you so much for joining us that we have to talk to you next week as well about various other things, including the dollar and the VIX, which actually I had other parts of the market besides the game stop. You have to focus on other parts of the market across a sad. Exactly did

you see the A vix up to twenty nine today? Well, yeah, exactly, and then you know, Tom Keen really tracks the VIX very close to new point a point of that at this morning. And uh, but it just goes to show that, you know, again the volatility then certainty in the market bonny, Yeah, for sure. Sarah Ponza across as a rewarder at Bloomberg News, thank you so much. I do want to point out that the tenure yield is absolutely just flown up there as well. We're back at one o eight oh eight.

We wear below one yesterday, So this volatility is really across the market and crude oil as well. While we're looking at it is very close to fifty three dollars. And I'd be your miss if we didn't talk about Bitcoin up eleven and a half percent now trading north of thirty seven. If we didn't, this is Bloomberg. 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 Bonny 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 m