We May Never Have A Vaccine

But first, here's what happened today. Early forecasts about the spread of coronavirus in the US may have been to rosie. In an NBC interview, former f DA chief Scott Gottlieb said the country has not seen the clients and infections that experts predicted. Gottlieb said he had expected by now we'd see sustained declines in new cases around the country. In fact, cases are actually increasing and around twenty states.

GOTTLEIEP is one of the advisors giving guidance on reopening the economy to President Donald Trump, and he is also advising several states. As the virus spreads in different countries, it's becoming clear there's no one size fits all solution. For containing it. In Sweden, for example, the infection rate seems to have stabilized despite the light touch the government

has taken to locking down the country. But a team of Goldman Sachs economists said in a note today that we shouldn't view sweden as a model for others to emulate the country's decision to keep schools, gyms, bars and shops mostly open during the pandemic maybe working for him because of uniquely Swedish demographic factors. According to Goldman, it has a far lower population density than Italy and a

high proportion of single occupancy households. Meanwhile, in New York, the virus death toll seems to have jumped because of some newly revealed numbers. The state is reporting more than seventeen hundred previously undisclosed deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities. New York is under scrutiny over how it

has protected vulnerable residents during the outbreak. Nearly five thousand people have died from COVID nineteen in the state's nursing homes since March one, according to numbers released by the Governor's office late Monday. Exactly how many nursing home residents have died remains uncertain despite the state's latest disclosure, as the list doesn't include nursing home residents who were trained asferred to hospitals before dying and now our main story.

New Jersey is one of the U S states that's worst hit by coronavirus after New York. So when Governor Phil Murphy looked for experts to help understand how to provide the state's businesses safely, he tapped doctor Richard Besser. Dr Besser was the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in two thousand nine when the H one N one swine flu pandemic broke out. He's a physician turned epidemiologist who now runs the Robert Wood

Johnson Foundation, the philanthropic health organization. Dr Besser's expertise is in health equality, and so he has a lot to say about a virus that disproportionately affects communities of color and low income people. Dr Besser talked with reporter Riley Griffin about what happens to those most vulnerable to the virus as states begin to relax social distancing rules. I bring the perspective of really having learned to make decisions

during periods of incredible uncertainty. You know, what we know about this virus is far exceeded by what we don't know in a period of incredible uncertainty. What people want a certainty, and that's just the one thing you can't give them. You have to you have to be reacting to what's going on. Uh. You know, as states try things and start to open up parts of their economy, do you think there could be ramifications of reopening too early in the near future? And most importantly, who would

be most impacted by that? Well, I think that who will who will be most impacted by that are are the same groups who have been impacted so hard by by the pandemic so far. When you look at at death rates, hospitalization rates for Black Americans, Latinos, indigenous people, UM, there are two three, even more times their representation in the in the population UM. Low income workers tend to get hit harder frontline workers. UM. Part of the problem

is mixed messaging. You're seeing messages that, uh, this is serious, we all have to do our part. We have the social distance, and then you're hearing politicians say we have to get everyone back to work. You it's a challenge when the messaging that we're getting, when what the public is told to do comes more from politicians and from public health leaders. It it at its face leads half of the of the public to say, I'm not listening to this person because I didn't vote for them, uh,

and others to say, yeah, I'll support them. But is it really based on science. You want you want to do all you can to have a response being nonpartisan, a political and based on the best available public health science. And you think right now the discourse is primarily a political one. Well, it's the challenges you can't tell. You can't tell what things are are being put forward for politics and what things are being put forth for for science.

You know, they're The other aspect of a pandemic that that I bring from my experience at CDC is just a recognition that when a pandemic hits, or any new emerging infection, it doesn't hit every community at the same level at the same time, and so it does make sense that different things will take place in different parts of the country. But you want each of those things

to be best based on the best available science. And data, and right now we're not even able to get the data that we need because we don't have the level of testing available. We don't have states providing data broken down by race and ethnicity, and gender and disability and income, so that you even have the ability to see who in your community may be doing fine and who in

your community is really struggling. What can the government do to alleviate some of those discrepancies at the state level and help inform decisions that are made at the state level. It's really important to have standards in place that protect workers UM or those or or workers are really going

to pay the price for for that reopening. UH. What you'd really like to see is the c d C, through NIOSH, which is the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and OSHA, which is in the Department of Labor, coming together to develop not voluntary standards, but mandatory standards

for for each sector. Having federal standards that can be adopted UM and adapted locally makes a lot more sense and leads to more trust that things are being done based on on good science, based on principles of of of safety first UM. Right now, it's a little challenging to to know how all the decisions are being made.

Following two thousand nine, after you had this experience navigating the swine flu, were there certain recommendations that you made, UM or others made to help prepare health agencies moving forward in anticipation of other pandemics. Well, I I left c d C a few months into the swine flu pandemic,

and so um I wasn't there for those recommendations. But I can tell you I I started my job as head of emergency prepared to some response the day Katrina hit New Orleans, and so I was very involved in that response and very involved in the post Katrina commissions and reports, and they all said the same thing, that we were not prepared for a hurricane of that magnitude, that we weren't prepared for the wide array of public health and agencies that could hit our our country, That

we had to invest more in public health, in our public health system, in emergency preparedness and response, and we dropped the ball, as we have time and time again. Drug makers are certainly already building and buying infrastructure to be able to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses of a vaccine. What are your personal hopes for a vaccine, and how long do you think until we have one

easily accessible across the board for the public. You know, I I think it's terrific that there is such a push to develop a vaccine, to develop treatments for the virus itself. UM. It's great that there's now an antiviral that's showing some some effect against the coronavirus UM. When it comes to vaccine, I worry that people assume we definitely will have a vaccine. All of the efforts that are going on are terrific, but there's no guarantee that

we will ever see a vaccine for coronavirus. There's quite a number of viruses where researchers have been working for decades and haven't been able to develop a safe and effective vaccine. HIV, danky fever, those are two. Those are two where the efforts have been there and they just haven't produced something that was both safe and effective. I'm hopeful that these efforts will pay off, but we have to be planning for both scenarios. What do we do to ensure that your income or the color of your

skin doesn't determine whether you get a vaccine? If you look over history, Uh, that's been the case. And so you know, domestically in the US, how do we ensure that everyone has has fair access to that vaccine? And then globally, how do we ensure that the vaccines are not just for the wealthiest nations. I think it's much more likely that we will see more rugs to treat the virus in the short term, then then we'll see a vaccine. Everybody wants to get that sense of certainty

that that you're addressing is missing. It's the first question I get every day, and I imagine it's one you get most frequently. What what's the timeline look like? Are you able to provide some kind of general idea of when you think we will return to some subblance of normalcy or are we too far from that question? If there isn't widespread available availability of treatment or a vaccine, then you have to envision some form of social distancing,

uh continuing for an extended period of time. Yeah, you know we're talking years. We're not talking months until the virus mutates or changes or or Uh there's there is immunity in the community, herd immunity that develops UM but that's that sense of uncertainty that we were talking about earlier, is it um? You know? Dr Fauci said it really well a couple of months ago, that we don't we don't determine the timeline here. The virus does, and we can't.

We can't fully predict what this virus will do as the weather gets warmer over the summer. We can't predict what will happen this fall, whether it comes back stronger, whether it hits hard during flu season. These are things. These are all different scenarios we need to be thinking about planning for so that which ever one comes to fruition, we will have done the legwork to be ready. Where

do you see the role of philanthropy right now? You know, as as the public sector the private sector, they're looking to expedite the drug and vaccine development process. But what can foundations like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and others,

even individual philanthropists, what can they do right now? We very quickly, we we put out some money for humanitarian aid fifty million dollars to to target groups that were being hit particularly hard here, uh, people of color, Indigenous people, people with disabilities, domestic workers, groups that that we're falling through the cracks in a lot of the federal relief that was coming forward. Um, that's not our normal approach

humanitarian assistance. UM. We take a longer term view, and we're working to help change how people think about health. So it's uh, it's not just about having access to health care. You need that, and twenty eight million people don't have health insurance in America. But health is about the conditions in which we live in our communities. It's where we live and where our kids go to school, and and where we work, and and having access to

to to high quality food in places to play. One thing about pandemics over the course of history is that they have frequently led to reshaping of society. So we have the opportunity to say, what kind of America do we want to see? Do we want an American which people truly have have that opportunity for an American dream, which which is is purely aspirational at this point, or do we want to continue to have in America where how much wealth you have, how much income, where the

color of your skin determines how long you live. That's the way it was coming into this pandemic. I live in Princeton, New Jersey, where life expectancy at birth is eighty seven years. I volunteer as a pediatrician in a clinic in Trenton, which is in the same county. It's fourteen miles away, and children born there have a life expectancy of seventy three years, So fourteen miles and a fifteen year different. Fourteen year difference in life expectancy. How

can we accept that as a society. So we're working to lift up policy changes that could make a difference, not just during this crisis, but for the America we believe we should have. That was Bloomberg's Riley Griffin, And that's our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one 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 hosted by me Laura Carlson. The show is produced by Me Tophor Forehead, Jordan goas Pure and Magnus Hendrickson. Today's main story was reported by Riley Griffin, original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Francesca Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening one