The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Some Serious Vaccine Talk

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

Time for a new Bridge Daily survey of listeners on an increasingly key question: should Canadians provinces close (or keep closed) in restaurant/bar dining/drinking? Let's read your answers: [e-mail]

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily now if you were listening yesterday after my week off, I still keep dreaming about, if you were listening yesterday, you heard me start the podcast with, I guess in a way, a kind of depressing mode on my part, in the sense that I was really quite concerned about the numbers that were starting to pop up in different parts of the country. And, you know, some of you thought I was overreacting to some of the numbers. You may be right. I hope you're right. Others are kind of in the same camp as I'm in.

They're worried about what they're hearing and what they're seeing in terms of these numbers. Well, I got to tell you, today didn't give me any more pause in my concern. The numbers are still, in many places, going up. Now, numbers are strange because you're never exactly sure at what time period they are reflecting, and some provinces report differently than others, and some provinces report at different times than others. But I'm going to run through the latest numbers in terms of, and these are all spikes, these are all numbers that are going up. Now, you know, listen, we look at the numbers in south of the border and they're staggering. They're high, very high. These are not very high

numbers, but they're higher than they were. And that's the issue. The issue is, are we losing ground to the position that we had accomplished through a lot of sacrifice on a lot of people's parts. So let me go through this because, you know, these are not good. These are not good numbers. British Columbia, which has been kind of the jewel in the crown in terms of a big province, a big population that had had a major threat and had it early on and had terrific leadership in both Bonnie Henry, the public health official in charge,

and Adrian Dix, who I believe is the Minister of Health. Both were getting credit for the positions they'd taken and the numbers as a result that BC had seen go down. Well, BC's had 102 new cases over three days. Now, 102 doesn't sound like much when we're looking at the tens of thousands south of the border. But 102 in BC is a big deal, especially when they were getting single digits.

Only a week ago. is a big deal, especially when they were getting single digits. Only a week ago. Alberta, 368 new cases over three days. That's up. Manitoba, and Manitoba had gone, I think, like 10 or 15 days without a single case. Manitoba reported 18 new cases over three days. That's the last three days. Saskatchewan reported 19 new cases yesterday. Ontario, today, with its latest number, 203 new infections today.

Now, they'd been down just over 100 a couple of days ago. And then it started to go up. 102 to 116 to 138 to 150-something, and now 203. Do I need to draw a graph? I don't think so. None of those numbers look good. Now, why is it happening? You know as well as I do that the most common theory is it's happening because bars have opened in some places,

not just in the patio, but inside the bar, and restaurants have opened in restaurant dining, not just in the patio, but inside. Now, the problem here is that's just happened in a lot of places. So we wouldn't be seeing, unlikely to be seeing, infections registered yet from that. In some cases, could be, but unlikely. More likely, the Ontario numbers today seem to be centered around Ottawa,

big new numbers like almost 50 new cases in Ottawa just reported today. And the thinking there is there were a couple of parties that young people were going to. And that's kind of the depressing thing about some of these numbers is in Ontario, I think half the cases were people under the age of 39. Well, hey, it's depressing no matter how old they are. But it's a signal that something's going on. Now, what do under 39-year-olds do at this time of year? but it's a signal that something's going on.

Now, what do under 39-year-olds do at this time of year? Well, one of the things they do is they party. You know, they have picnics, barbecues, campfires. And those can be breeding grounds. Is that what happened in Ottawa? Could be. Is that what's happening in other parts of the country? Could be. But if we're not seeing the cases yet, because it's been too soon, that are prompted by bars and restaurants, then these numbers are going to keep going up.

And people are going to start to get really edgy. Now, I watched Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, today give his kind of daily assessment of where he thinks going, and one of the reporters from, I think, Radio Station 1010 in Toronto was grilling him, and, okay, like, how long are you going to let this go before you've got to do something, before you've got to peel back on that bars and restaurants thing, close them down inside? And he said he was really disturbed by the numbers he was seeing,

but he wasn't prepared to go that far, not yet anyway. Well, he wasn't willing to say what it would take for him to go that far. But I think I'm not a health official. Okay, so I've got to be careful about what I think. But I've heard a couple of health officials in the country say in the last 24 hours that we're in a moment, We're at a critical moment. If this thing's going to dip into territory that we really don't like, then that's going to happen in the next week to 10 days. And so governments across the country, I assume,

have to be prepared for that. And this is where we're kind of the same as the U.S., not in numbers, not in the management of this thing, not by a long shot, but in the sense that the central government in the U.S., Washington, doesn't control some of these things. They can say what they want. Trump can blather away as he does. But it's the governors in the states who make the different decisions. And here it's the same thing.

The premiers make the decisions. That was settled early on in this. Remember there was all that discussion about whether or not the federal government should have emergency powers so it could dictate what has to happen right across the country? Well, that didn't happen. They didn't do that. Brought back memories of the War Measures Act when another certain Trudeau did that in 1970. So the decisions now are made by premiers. And most people kind of like it that way. But it does lead to a kind of a checkerboard country.

Or as Pierre Trudeau used to say, a collection of shopping centers. Maybe we should change that to a collection of infection centers. But let's hope we're getting overly worried here. Let's hope there's just been a spike. Just happens to have been in every province or every region of the country, just about. Atlantic's still doing well, really well. And for them, we pray it stays that way.

But you heard that list I read. Not good. So let's keep our fingers crossed crossed and we'll keep monitoring it. All right. The cover art today suggested vaccines. And I do want to talk about vaccines again. Oh, wait a minute. Let me just back up on one thing. A couple of weeks ago, when the issue about the border came up. We kind of pushed it here on the Bridge Daily, and we said, let's do a poll. Let's do our own poll of Bridge Daily podcast listeners.

Do you want the border closed, kept closed, keep the Americans out, or do you want to see it open? You responded in huge numbers. You know, for our little podcast, they were huge numbers. Well into three digits. Which, you know, let's not kid ourselves. A lot of polls that are done that you read or you see

are done with three-digit totals. Anyway, the listeners to the Bridge Daily voted overwhelmingly to keep the border closed. Don't open the border. That's what you said. It was between 85% and 90%. And I thought, well, that's good. But obviously the people who want the border open, maybe they're not Bridge Daily listeners.

But you probably saw, as I saw, last week and the week before, long after we'd done our survey, that the big professional companies, the big research firms, came in with their data after doing their surveys. I think our friend Bruce Anderson at Abacus Data was one of them. And my gosh, what was the result?

Gee, Peter, what was the result of those big, high-falutin research companies? 85% to 90% keep the border closed. So, given that background, let's try something else. Let's try another Bridge Daily podcast survey where you can respond at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Here's the question. Should provinces close down now, if they'd already reopened them, indoor restaurant dining and indoor bars,

should those be closed down? Because we're not out of this yet. Yes or no? I don't need a big theory about it. I just need an answer. If you want to write something, go ahead. We'll make it into the Friday show as well. But for starters, why don't we get your sense?

And we'll leave this open for a couple of days. I want to know what you think. For provinces that have already entered a phase where they've reopened bars and restaurants for the inside of those establishments, should that be reversed? Should they now be closed down? Yes or no? The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

Love to hear what you have to say. Let's set the table again for the big firms that are going to come in and do their surveys as well, as you can imagine. All right. The cover art suggested we do something on vaccines, and we are. Because the Financial Times has had a great piece this week. And we're going to rip it off and talk about it. Vaccines, the FT says, have never been so hot.

On Monday, yesterday, the United Kingdom's GlaxoSmithKline paid £130 million for a 10% stake in a German maker of CureVac. Early-stage trial of the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine made by UK rival AstraZeneca showed promise. Last week, news of a robust immune response to a vaccine developed by Boston-based Moderna pushed its shares up 16 percent. Those of Germany's BioNTech also jumped when it received fast-track status from U.S. regulators a day earlier. There are vast differences in approach to all these. AZ is unquestionably ambitious, targeting 2 billion doses. But it's not a vaccine specialist, does not expect a profit from the vaccine developed at Oxford University, though success would enhance its reputation. Okay, so that's the kind of headline. But what I found most interesting in this Financial Times article

are a couple of graphs. Now, the first one, think of an accordion that's stretched wide open, okay? So think of it as the normal development time for a vaccine, up until, you know, six months ago. The normal development time was 10 years. So in that stretched out accordion, you've got anywhere from two to five years for the discovery of the vaccine. Then you've got a couple of years of preclinical trials.

Then you go into phase one, which is basically, is it safe? That can take one to two years under the old scheme of the way vaccines were developed. Then you go into phase two, which is whether there's an immune response. That's two to three years. Then phase three, which is protection, okay, ensuring that there are no big side effects, two to four years. And then three months of regulatory approval.

So that's the old way of looking at things. Well, not old way, but that's been the normal development time for a vaccine. Ten years. Okay? Now, close the accordion. Push it down tight. So you've got the fast-track vaccines that are underway right now for COVID-19 that take between 12 to 18 months is the estimate.

We've already been through six months. So we're into a year or less, some say as little as another six months, before there's a vaccine. Yet it's still covering all that same turf. It's just covering it in much shorter time periods. Everything, discovery, preclinical, is it safe, immune response, protection, are all scrunched down in that accordion to much, much shorter time periods because overall it's going to be anywhere from 12 to 18 months.

Half of which, almost half of which, we've been through already. So Pfizer, which has teamed up with BioNTech, intends vaccines to make a profit. This is the money side of vaccines. Moderna also wants its investors, including those who took part in a $1.3 billion capital raise in May, to be rewarded for the risks of producing the vaccine ahead of its approval. If they're successful, the payback would be substantial. At least 50 million people could be vaccinated in 2021 at $50 per dose. That's the estimate on the Moderna one.

50 million. $50 per dose. What's that? $2.5 billion? So it's kind of double your double your investment if it all works just on the first 50 million moderna's share price has quadrupled this year as a result of all this hype but there are some people who are justifiably skeptical of all the hype.

Nobody said, it's over, Moderna has the vaccine. Nobody's saying that, right? They're saying the trials so far have been really good, but they haven't gone that far. Now, there's another set of facts in this Financial Times piece about vaccines. And it kind of tracks, in the past, all the various vaccines that have been tried. And it talks about the high failure rate of vaccines in development. So you kind of look at the way they've broken this down is take 100 vaccines in the discovery research phase. 20 of them move on to the preclinical stage. So 80 drop out right away. Then in the clinical development,

there are only 10 left. That's in the is it safe area. Then does it activate an immune response? Five go into that. So that original 100, you're down to five. Then you go into the regulatory review and approval where one is successful. So that gives you some idea of what, at least in the past, has been the case.

Now, there are lots of vaccine candidates right now, and they're spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on trying to get each candidate, you know, right. Whether they're universities or research companies or big drug companies or big chemical companies, they're all trying to make sure things are right. Now, of the 10 or 12 companies that are farthest along in this process so far,

and there are a couple of these where there are Canadian universities hooked into them, doing part of the research. But I won't read them all through. But the University of Oxford, that AstraZeneca one, and we keep hearing about it every week or two, it's the furthest along. They are in somewhere between phase two and phase three. So they're moving along rapidly. The second one, wait for it, is Sinopharm.

And where are they? That's the Wuhan Institute. Wuhan, China. Supposedly where? I don't think it's supposedly anymore. Everybody knows it started in Wuhan, but they're not sure how it started in Wuhan, China. Can SinoBiologics?

They're in phase two, as is Wuhan. Moderna's in phase two. Institute of Medical Biology's in phase two. Sinovac Instituto Butantan is in phase two. And the Beijing Institute, Sinopharm, is in phase two. And the Beijing Institute, Sinopharm, is in phase two. So those are just the top ones. And as you can see, there's a lot of action going on there. And more than a few of them have Chinese connections and Canadian connections.

So there's your update on the vaccine. We don't have a vaccine yet. We have some promising therapeutics. Remdesivir is the best-known one. But therapeutics aren't cures. can help lessen the degree of sickness and enhance the chance for recovery. But they're not a cure. A vaccine would be as close to a cure as we're going to get. And the thinking still is, nothing before the end of this year even though trump keeps

saying it's just around the corner great american scientists we got all this covered it'll be here before the election why would he say that i wonder anyway maybe it's one of the things he's telling that's true. Who knows? We'll find out. But there's lots going on on the vaccine front. And let's keep hoping and praying and wishing the best of luck to all those medical researchers, scientific researchers, who are trying to come up with the right answer on the vaccine. Our world will be very different if they're successful.

All right. There's your Bridge Daily for today. Don't forget, if you've got to vote on that, should we close the indoor bars and indoor restaurants? Should they be closed down because we're at a critical moment? Or is it too early to say that? Yes or no? I want to hear from you.

The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge Daily. It's been great to talk to you again. And we'll see you one more time, at least in 24 hours. Thank you.