The Obsession With a Vaccine Could Hurt Us

happened in virus news today. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it will find people fifty dollars for not covering their faces at airports and at bus and sub way terminals. Since March, the agency has used posters, public service announcements, and other means to promote mask wearing. The new mandate comes as case and hospitalization numbers rise in New York and New Jersey. The states are trying to prevent a second wave of the novel coronavirus.

New York City alone has reported almost twenty four thousand virus related deaths, about two thirds of the state's overall total. The US government agreed to pay drugmaker Eli Lily for three hundred thousand vials of its experimental antibody treatment. The

therapy is under regulatory review for emergency authorization use. The funding from Operation Warp Speed, the White House led effort to quickly secure supply of COVID nineteen vaccines and therapeutics, will only be put into effect if Lily's therapy receives a green light from the US Food and Drug Administration. Finally, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is bracing for another lockdown

in England. New modeling by the UK government's Emergency Scientific Committee suggests the entire country is likely to require the tightest restrictions by mid December. The modeling suggests that the new wave will lead to more deaths than the first, casting doubt on the British Prime Minister's localized approach. The Sun newspaper reported government scientists predict that about twenty five thousand people will be hospitalized with the novel coronavirus by

the end of November. And now for today's main story. The US government's COVID nineteen strategy has been for i on developing vaccines and treatments rather than emphasized measures to limit the spread of the disease that could delay the

return to normal life for most Americans. While the US has committed more than ten billion dollars to develop new shots to fight COVID nineteen, about half of Americans in a gallop pole said they are wary of taking them, and one report suggests that if the vaccine program has any hiccups, we could be living with the virus well into twenty three. I spoke with health reporter Naomi Kresky, who reported on the cost of the government's focus on

developing drugs rather than changing behavior. Many hopes in the US and of course worldwide are pinned on the arrival of a vaccine for con rolling this pandemic. I was just wondering, what are some of the dangers in putting

so much weight on the availability of a vaccine. So one significant danger in doing that would be if you pinned all of your hopes on a vaccine and did not do all of the other things that are necessary to try to um control the pandemic before a vaccine comes um And you know, the fact of the matter is that just the availability of a vaccine. Saying a vaccine is approved does not mean that suddenly everyone will

immediately be immunized. UM. It will take time to distribute vaccine. UM. There will be you know, priorities will need to be set. Probably vaccine will go first to two healthcare workers and two people with chronic conditions. UM. It will take a long time before before enough of the population can be

vaccinated to achieve herd immunity via vaccination. UM. We talked with Marie Paul Keeney, the research director at in Some, which is a French health science institute, and she's a former WHO official, and she told us a vaccine isn't a magic wand UM, it won't be a quick fix, she said, even if it is effective. And let's talk about efficacy, you know, particularly in the US, and you know what has been put out by the FDA, What are the requirements for how effective a vaccine has to

be to be approved? So the f d A has said that, UM, they would give emergency authorization to a vaccine which is fifty effective, which means that it's what it sounds like, it could work in half of people. And the factor at play there is that less effective a vaccine is, the more people need to take it in order to protect the population. As a whole. And so this is one of these um kind of wild cards.

You know, we won't know how long it will take to vaccinate enough people to really protect the population until we know how effective these vaccines that are in final tests right now actually turn out to be. And that raises an issue of trust. Many Americans have said they may not trust the first COVID nineteen vaccines that are available, or may not be willing to take a vaccine at all. So what needs to happen, in your view, to convince

Americans to be vaccinated. Yeah, that's that's an interesting question. I mean, probably some pretty good pr some good marketing. UM. We interviewed somebody who compared, you know, the situation to past vaccination campaigns, you know, back in the day when Elvis was getting vaccinated on TV in order to get

people to take a polio vaccine. UM. You know, reluctance has been shown um to be high, and some in some surveys people are are a little bit let's say, some people are waiting to see, you know, what the what the results will be for the vaccines that are being tested. So you've highlighted a number of issues that even if and when a vaccine is available. As you say, it's not a magic wand the risk of COVID nineteen will not just go away immediately. So let's talk a

little bit more about timelines. You know, in terms of a best case scenario, what would need to happen to significantly lower the risk of COVID nineteen and realistically, how soon do you think that's that's achievable. So we actually went to a consulting company based in London called air

Affinity to crunch some of these numbers. So, according to their calculations, in order to vaccinate enough people in the US to achieve HERD immunity through vaccination by mid July, the government would need for all six vaccines that it has purchased in advance to succeed. So all six of these would have to work and be safe, and it would need to get all of the optional extra allocations

that are in those purchase deals as well. Um, So each of these deals, there's kind of a base level of vaccine and the deal, and then there's an optional extra amount and so the government, the US government would need to get to that base level and then they would also need to get the optional x STRA amount and then obviously all six vaccines would have to work.

And if all of those things can happen, sort of a perfect case scenario, depending on how well how well the vaccine works, of course, they could potentially have quelled the virus by mid July of next year. Now, if let's say only four of the six vaccines are approved, and that would actually be pretty good. You know, in drug development, things are not guaranteed to work, and so it's not unreasonable to think that only four could be approved.

Um and then then let's say production and supply run into some issues, so maybe those are each about lower than expected. Then just based on those things, the US could see delays in achieving that HERD immunity level That would run into the second quarter of according to these calculations. So there's a broad band of potential timelines and really a lot of factors at play. I mean, when we're talking about lowering the risk of COVID nineteen, is there

a threshold? Is there an actual number which we're measuring that by. So one way to look at that would be how many people need to be immune in society in order for the virus not to spread? And who has said that number is probably about sixty or seventy percent. So you need sixty or seventy of people that have

immunity for the virus not to spread. And you know, one way to achieve that would be for those people to have gotten sick, but obviously that's not ideal because then you're running into potentially very large numbers of people who are getting very sick. Um. So when we talk about that sixty to seventy threshold, we're generally talking about, Okay, sixty to seventy of people have been vaccinated and they

have immunity that way, okay. So you know, we've been largely focusing on this timeline as it were to the US and in terms of access, in terms of distribution that might differ in other countries. And I was wondering if you had looked into just what different scenarios we might be seeing in other countries versus the U S when we talk about lowering this risk and and maybe even a potential timeline. So this is such a multi

prompt question to unpack. The US will probably have more access to vaccine than many countries in the world, just because it's a wealthy country. It's a country that has already put a lot of money into finding these vaccines, and it has advanced purchase deals for vaccines. There was an ox FAN study that came out last month that found that wealthy nations that represent just of the world's population already have essentially cornered more than half of the

promised doses of leading vaccine candidates. So they already tied up more than half of the capacity of vaccines that are being developed in advanced purchase deals, which leaves the vast majority of the world's population um looking to get access to vaccine probably later. So that's one factor is that the US, by virtue of wealth, is actually in pretty good shape in terms of getting access to vaccine.

The other factor, of course, is that you can achieve some level of safety and social reopening by controlling the virus through other methods before vaccine is present, and so there are countries that are really doing more with testing, tracing, mask wearing, all of these kinds of really boring, unsexy basic public health measures that have been shown in some

countries to really work well against the virus. Is there anything that either the US government should be doing or or Americans can be doing to try and bring about this best case scenario in terms of lowering the risk of COVID nineteen by July. Is there anything we can be doing right now? Work should be doing right now. So there are things that can be done on a government level and on an individual level. Um On the government level, the w h O is urging all governments

to invest in testing to promote mask wearing. And I also just want to mention treatments. There are treatments that are being developed for the virus and new treatment strategies, and I talked to one company CEO from Novartist yesterday actually, who said that he thinks that in the next year, doctors will slowly refine these treatments. They'll figure out better ways to treat people, figure out when to use certain medicines.

And that also will be a mitigating measure to ensure that if people do get sick, they're able to get better quicker. That was not only risk. And that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating. On Apple podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced

by Tophah. Foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Naomi Kresky. Original music by Leo Sidran. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening, The Brook the Las