The Daily Beast Podcast - The Vaccines Are More Effective Than You Think

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

Andy Slavitt was shocked when he joined the Biden administration.  “I was under the impression coming in—as many, many Americans were—that there were big stockpiles of vaccines waiting to go out the door that were produced over the course of the last year. It's been much, much less the case than I think we'd been led to believe,” the White House senior adviser for COVID response tells Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon on the latest episode of The New Abnormal.  It was one of a host of shortcomings the Biden team found, Slavitt says: “Not enough vaccines, not enough vaccinators, not enough places for people to get vaccines.” “So when we got here January 20th, one of the things we learned as an only 46% of the vaccines delivered to states had actually made its way into people's arms. Now you'd never expect that to be 100%. But 46%? It was low,” Slavitt adds. There’s now a plan in place to purchase as many as 600 million doses, hopefully enough for every American. States are now using 75% of their doses, a big step up from a few weeks ago. And there may be another vaccine around the corner, from Johnson and Johnson. “I would love to tell you, we weren't going to be starting with a huge stockpile of Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The truth is we're starting with a small number and we've got to build it as quickly as possible.” Meanwhile, the virus is evolving. More contagious, deadlier variants are spreading, fast. But even here, Slavitt sees some signs for hope. “All of the vaccines work very well against the English B117 variant. So that's good. The South African variant—and there's another one that looks like the South African, that's the Brazilian variant—that one it's interesting. There is a degradation of performance of the vaccines against the South African variant. However, that degradation is thankfully still above the scientific threshold for effectiveness,” Slavitt says. “It still generates antibodies. It doesn't generate as many. But it’s good.” The vaccines may even be a bit better than advertised, Slavitt says. “You know, we may have done a little bit of a disservice to ourselves when with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, we talked about the end point as including [serve] and mild [COVID-19 cases], because we really don't care as much about the mild. And so we get very fixated on the fact that they're 95% percent effective against both, right. And we probably should have stepped back and said, ‘you know what, let’s just measure it against more severe symptoms.’ In which case, the Johnson and Johnson does very close to comparable.” And all of the vaccines seem to stop severe cases—from all the variants.  There are even some indications that “viral load”—the amount of virus a person carries—“is decreased for people who are vaccinated,” indicating “that these vaccines not only reduce disease and save lives, but these vaccines also will reduce the ability of people to affect one another, which if it holds up, will be terrific news.” But only if the vaccine gets into the arms of the people who need it the most, Slavitt cautions.  “It's not just how many vaccines are being administered, but also how equitable equitably they're being distributed. Because look, we all know there are half the population or more would crawl over broken glass to get the vaccine, right. But the problem is they’re crawling over other people,” he adds. “You know, they're getting online and going into communities, maybe neighborhoods they've never visited or visited in a long time, but [where] we put vaccines that are really hard hit by the virus. People are coming in, refreshing their browser, and going in and getting these appointments. It's really important that we not just focus on how many people we vaccinated, but that we do it as equitably as possible. And that's a big, big push for us.” If you haven't heard, every single week The New... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how we get our out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure everything doesn't go too far off the rails while we have fun discussions about our world gone mad. And while I take that

duty seriously, ourselves, not so much. On today's episode, we have the legendary James Carvel, as well as a blockbuster interview with Andy Slavitt, who's currently the White House Senior Advisor for COVID response. Can we talk about last week and the impeachment? Okay. How do you think it went? Extremely well. Okay, explain. Okay. But first of all, the entire Democratic Party was united. Right.

It was 100%. They were split and continued to be split. I mean, there's nobody not from Joe Manchin to whatever extreme you want to take the Democratic Party to. We're all very enthusiastic about this. I thought the presenters, the house managers, I mean, how much young talent that we uncovered that we'd even know we had? Right. And they're just on a defensive. And, you know, now you got, you know, Nikki.

Haley saying this and you got McConnell saying that, if that was happening on the Democratic side, people would be freaking out, and I would too. Yeah. I think the thing was a massive success. And not hurt Biden at all. It certainly has not helped Trump.

So I would call it a massive success. It's almost like Trump has declared war on Mitch McConnell. Well, yeah. I mean, he's declared war on everything and everybody down that. It's not, you know, part of this cult. And they are a significant part of McConnell, the gang of seven, I guess it is, the 11 House members. I mean,

that's the most bipartisan impeachment vote in history. And these are actually not a lot of different people. And I think what you do is you just, you know, there's no saying in politics. It's not very creative. If it's your side's in trouble throw water, their side's in trouble throw carcene. Just, just, just throwing carcine over there. And they're burning right now. So what do you think Biden's best tactic is now? Ignore to do exactly what he's doing. Leave it to the Congress and leave it to the Justice Department. I would tell the new Attorney General when he's confirmed is I want the law followed

and administered without favor or any other way. And if you conclude that any person had broken the laws of the United States, for God's sakes, you know, do what you can about it. And at that point, I go about my business. Do you think that what is happening with this sort of internal war with Mitch and Trump is going to keep going? And where do you see? I mean, we have 2022. It's a bad map for Republicans. Could you see this playing out there? I guess to an extent I could. You know, McConnell is saying I'll never speak to him again. And I guess there's some hope. I was realistic. Maybe it'll just go away. I doubt that it will. And what they got to worry about is real Trumpy people running in the primaries in 2022. I mean, that's the great fear that they have.

I mean, they could gloss over this. And you're right. The map of them is, you know, they've got to compete, you know, in Florida and North Carolina, Pennsylvania, you know, Wisconsin, Iowa, a lot of places. And they can't take a divisive primary that some Trumpy person gets nominated. They cost them any number of Senate seats. And that's what they're mortified of right now. And who knows what he's going to do going forward. But he doesn't have the same forum.

He doesn't have the same platform. He doesn't have the same influence. But he does have influence over a good 75% of the Republicans, which causes him a huge heartburn. Yeah. Can we talk about Bill Cassidy? Sure. What do you think was going on there? Because I'm just curious.

It's so unexpected. I have the theory. I'm pretty sure it's right. I think his wife had a lot to do with this. I have no idea, but I noted Ms. is like a thing she teaches special needs kids. You know, she's very popular in, like, South Baton Rouge, which is the kind of, you know, more fluent part of Badruch.

I know a lot of people, I know them not great, but she just strikes me as the kind of person would not be impressed. By an armed insurrection. Yeah, I don't think Mrs. Cassidy would be very impressed. But I don't, again, I have no, and talked to a friend of theirs who, told me that. Yeah. A human nature, magnometer, or whatever you want to call it, is pretty good. And I think it's all pointing that she might have been the tipping point here in that vote. How do you survive politically after something like this? Like, these Republicans did the right thing and they were very brave.

But how do they survive this? Look, right now Biden is making the most massive bet in modern American politics. And that is that this $1.9 or whatever $2.1 trillion relief package he has, that that will work and it won't result in any inflation. And if they're right, and if the economy comes back, like a lot of people think it will, because there's pin up savings demand and they're pouring all this new money into the economy. And in their right, the Democrats are going to have a very good run here, a very good run. However, if they're wrong and it produces inflation or something else happens and there's mismanagement. There's a new variant that starts going wild in the country.

Then there's going to be real trouble in River City. So just understand, this is a, this is a huge bet. And they're going to pass this. And if it works, the Republicans are in deep trouble. I mean, there's a reason, Molly, that when people say the Republicans only care about deficits when Democrats in office. and the reason that they care about deficits are spending when Democrats, and they do it themselves, but don't want to let Democrats do it,

is because they know that this shit works. Right. It works every time. If you spend more, the government spends more, maybe if a few people a tax cut, it's going to boost the economy. Now, some people will tell you, I've got a good enough economist to say, well, is it a sugar high, or do you come back and pay for it later? I have no idea.

But Reagan was the great Keynesian president they ever was, would be cut taxes and boosted with defense spending anymore to spend it on people eating, but it's still a dollar that goes there. And that's what's behind us. And if this thing, if it pays off, Democrats have a good couple of cycles ahead of. If it doesn't, it'll be, it'll be not good. But that's where it's why it's why. That's so interesting.

I mean, I hadn't even thought of, like, quite the gamble that was going on. There is a theory that if you lose three different elections, you start to sort of rethink your position. So if we looked at Trumpism, like they lost, they lost the midterms, they lost this last election. So if they do get a shalacking in 2022, do you think that that could finally be the end of Trump? Well, yeah, because it would have happened

if they get a shalacken in 2022. The same thing probably happened to them in 2024. It happened to Democrats in 2020. It's the reason that Joe Biden, you know, walk to waltz to the nomination is Democrats just wanted to win. If somebody said they were for Medicare for all

and it didn't matter what they thought that was a losing in the general election asked Elizabeth Warren just fell off a clip because they were just looking, hey, how can we win? And when you got Winitis, who cares if he's how old he is or who cares if I don't agree with his position on,

you know, long depth, forgiveness, we've got to win this goddamn election. You kidding me? We don't have time with this. Well, if they get, beat in 2022, that's going to be an appealing message for somebody to say, do we want to go down this road again? Do you want 2018? Do you want 2020? Do you want 2022? Maybe we want to try something different, you know, but when it come up whatever slogan, you know, principal conservatism or

I guess Bush made compassionate, but whatever. But that will whet their appetite of victory, where they do well in 2022, the presidential candidates will say, you see, once people got to look at the alternative, they like what Trump did, they like what we did, period 2016, 18, you know, more pollution and more inequality, the country's craving for that. Right. And a half a million dead Americans. The country loves it. Yeah, but I mean, that's going to be, that's going to shape the direction and going. I would hesitate to say, I think Senator Cruz is Cancun. Yeah. Let's, can we, I was.

Just about to ask you about that, Texas, do you see a world in which this helps Democrats in Texas? You know, it's hard to see how it hurts. It's so like, you know, this has got some ways to go because there's a new front coming through and they're trying, is kind of rolling outages. And, you know, it depends. But it's impossible to see how this hurts. Right. I don't see that as a possibility.

So I can't give an event like this. Yeah, it'll have some effect. Ted must be really happy. He's not up for re-election in 2022. He's very happy. He's exceedingly happy. He's got to 24. He's got to get to 24, but he can deal with that.

But this was a true fiasco going to Cancun and then turning around and coming back. How do you think he came up with that idea? I think just mentally, they don't think about it. I mean, I don't know how you spin this. It can't. You know, as Leonard. Johnson, somebody here, Vietnam, boy, it was a disaster. And a guy who said, you know, well, if we say this, he said, son, you can't shine shit.

There's some kind of just can't. There's nothing, there's no spin on this. And, I mean, he got down there and waited this to himself and turned around and came back to Houston. You know, I just wondered if he even thought about it. That would be the question. Did you ever think about this? Might not be the best kind of optical that you can come up with or this is a problem. not a great idea. I would bett that's a question that I'd love to know. I don't know. I mean,

but it is kind of, it's kind of amazing. I watched that Biden Town Hall and he would, I thought he was really, he's so compassionate and you really see that and it feels very stark compared to Trump. Do you think, I don't think he's a gifted orator. Like, I'm not sure him unscripted is so great, but I do think his interaction with constituents is amazing. He's always been that way. The brilliant thing about Joe Biden and his advisors is they're not brilliant. And they're not brilliant. And they don't try to be brilliant, which would be a colossal mistake.

So if they put him in that, they know he's going to score high on empathy. He's going to connect with people. And look, is he going to ramble some? Yeah. But, you know, he's been that way. Yeah. The thing about him, he's never succumb to, well, if we do these three things, things. If we pivoted to this and we do that. No, I'm not pivoting the shit. I'm staying who I am.

I think that's what, because he can't play with one row. And that's Joe Biden. And that's okay because it's kind of a role people white now. And the one thing is, it was in the, to the name, Roy Melba, I guess, I said, look, Trump's at 41. Biden's at 61. And I said, look, Trump is a jerk. is not. That's worth 20 points in American politics. People are going to like a non-jerk significantly better than they're going to like a jerk. Right. And there's one thing that Biden comes across is he's not, he's not a jerk. Like these things that people, some people don't like, or wish something was different, but not that. And I think that he will do more days because I think he will conclude as well to people around him that, hey, this worked out pretty good.

A lot of people say that Obama was sort of too smart and that he didn't, he sort of overthunk himself, if that makes any sense. Do you think that the Biden administration is countering that in a way? Well, I mean, you could say the paralysis of analysis. I think that Biden has figured out, look, we can't look back. We got to, you know, there's a lot of bad history about the Obama package was too insufficiently big and they should have gone big. Well, they didn't have them bigger. One vote, they passed it by one vote. How could they go on anything? But I think that, yes, Biden, you know, and it took Obama a little while to get a sea leg or more than a middle of a horrific financial crisis then. So I think Biden out of the chute is, you can say, is more definitive than President Obama was. And, you know, Obama had a more up a lust for debate and, you know, but on the other hand, and I think Biden is like, hey, this is the plan.

switch and go. You know, I hope, and look, again, as I pointed out, we got, he's got an awfully big bad idea. He's inherited, like, the worst, I mean, have you ever heard of a president inheriting a pandemic of financial crisis and, you know, enormous reckoning with policing and race? And Blair, on top of that, you know, bitter political divisions within the country. So, you know, he's in, you know, if you go on and on and you think, oh, about the climate crisis, the rise of China, the fall of American influence over four years. He don't have a lot of time to second guess himself.

I mean, he's got to go. And to his credit, what we can see so far, he's gone. I mean, that made some pretty good decisions so far. I'll give him a lot of credit for that. The climate stuff seems really scary. It's so scary. And me living in a region, I mean, it's just literally ground zero. You know, we have five hurricanes last year.

I mean, you can't imagine. imagine what all of this is like and, you know, all of this again in the middle of a pandemic. And it's not going to get any better. I promise you that everybody knows that. So I think they got some good people. They've appointed in some of these positions. I think the vaccines are starting to go a little better. They've got to crank that crap out as fast as they can. See, I keep thinking that even though things are boring in a way, you know, the conversation is shifted from like the president is about to do something. insane. I don't mean boring. I mean boring with quotes, but, you know, shifted from, is he going to blow us all up to what's he going to do about COVID relief? I don't think

American democracy is safer, though. Like, it still feels like there's really scary elements of play. Yeah. I mean, look, you know, what we've learned is we just kind of grew up a bit, much older than you, but just everything would kind of, as I told my students, it's, in Vietnam, we had problems with, you know, all crisis. And we had nine, 11 and we had Katrina and we had, you know, I'd never like crossed my mind that the United States as I knew it would not be there in the future. Well, boy, that crossed a lot of minds here in the last four years. And, you know, there's this kind of sense, well, shoot, you know, some people for a close call, we're not over this. It's not, you know, this call has not been made that our

survival of the kind of, within the framework that we're accustomed to is going to continue. I, I could see Biden's economic plan, but sometimes things don't go well. And a new variant comes in and there's an economic collapse. And that's game set and match for the United States we knew. I mean, we came very close to throwing a whole goddamn thing over the fence. Yeah. And we just kind of had a last minute dive and catch and we caught it. But we're not out to any.

Yeah. I mean, we dodged a big bullet, but democracy is we knew it. Look, the Supreme Court is sitting on Trump's tax returns. There's no earthly reason in the world that they don't issue that order that the New York authorities in time to it. They just keep sitting on the order. I don't trust the Supreme Court to protect our institutions at all, at all. And we're going to see right now.

Oh, that sounds bad. Hey, folks, if you haven't heard, every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey. Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadobrian. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news.

You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast fearless journalism as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal. That's New Abnormal.com. That's new abnormal. That the dailybeast.com. Now we're going to speak to White House senior advisor for COVID response, Andy Slavitt.

Andy's story is so interesting in that he went from being the head of Medicare, Medicaid for the Obama administration to podcasting his way through the best ideas of how to solve this pandemic during the Trump administration. And the Biden White House was then smart enough to take him on and bring him back in to be this lead on COVID response. And so today we're going to get some answers on what's going to. on with the vaccination process. Hi, Andy. Welcome back.

Good to be back. We're excited to have you. I've been watching your briefings. You have. Yes. So what is it like to inherit the COVID response after having seen it from the outside to go right in and baptism by fire get going with it? The first two days were a little bit scary because we didn't really realize how much had been done and what we thought had been done hadn't been done and we didn't really have a plan. I know. say that's up a little, the people that were working on it. There were really good people working on it, but there wasn't support from the top.

Really? Yeah. So Jared's plan, I thought Jared had it handled. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'll put it to you this way, without taking your bait. If they had a plan, it was a plan to create vaccines. It was not to vaccinate people. Right.

So it was like other things that they had done where it was like, We do are part at the federal level, but it's all on the states. And if it doesn't go well, we're not going to take accountability. And that's an uncharitable description. And I'm not really saying this to be political per se or point fingers, because the truth is, I don't want people as they're thinking about whether to take a vaccine or not to say, I'm a Democrat, I should, I'm a Republican, I shouldn't. The truth is that doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. But, you know, personally, like coming from off to the sidelines where I was, you know, a critic to actually doing it was good. I mean, it was, it's, you feel like can we all feel much better when we can

actually affect the income instead of sit on the sidelines? And so it was nice to join a team of people that had been comparably chopping at the bit to try to solve these problems. Yeah. It feels like Fauci has been given permission to do his job. I think we hear that across the government from scientists and critical civil servants, people in FEMA who just say, I feel unleashed. Yeah. What you do well is logistics management. Go do it. What you do well is scientific discovery. Go do it. And as you said, you watch these briefings we do. You know, we set them up so that people could hear straight talk, scientists and public health people consistently, repetitively. Like it, by the way, Germany did from the beginning. And then, you know, then they get to hear our strategy on top of it and we enter questions. So there's plenty enough smart people to solve this problem. We just need to let them do their jobs, organize them, and create a sense of urgency.

around this, and that's what we're, that's what we're trying to do. It seems like you guys got a lot more vaccines. Can we talk about that? Yeah. So, you know, when we got here, there were three things that hadn't been put to bed. Not enough vaccines, not enough vaccinators, not enough places for people to get vaccines. So the president directed us to purchase enough vaccines sufficient to vaccinate all Americans. We purchased 600 million vaccines.

and they will be produced and ready to be out the door by the end of July. And those are from Pfizer and Moderna. That's from Pfizer and Moderna only. So if other vaccines are improved, approved, as we hope, that'll be on top of that. So we should hear in the next week or so from Johnson and Johnson on that vaccine. That would obviously be great news. That's been a bit disappointing. I feel like they've tempering expectations on the timetable.

Oh, on production, you mean? Yeah. So let's start with this. The important thing is the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. And FDA is going to pine on that. And I think that's going to be knock on wood. All the data we've seen sounds like this is going to be very positive. But, you know, they'll come out with their recommendations.

Yes, I think like with all the vaccine manufacturers, I was under the impression coming in as I think many Americans were that there were big stockpiles of vaccines waiting to go out the door. they were produced over the course of the last year. And that has been much, much less the case than I think we'd been led to believe, maybe what it is. But I would love to tell you we were going to be starting with a huge stockpile of Johnson Johnson vaccine. The truth is we're starting with a small lumber and we've got to build it as quickly as possible

and put in plans to build it as quickly as possible. But the J&J is exciting because it's a one shot, right? It's one shot. They're actually testing it now to see how it works with two. shots as well. But the numbers from one shot are pretty good. And also, it doesn't have the same super cold, it's not as fragile. Right, right, exactly. It doesn't need this, what they call this cold chain set of freezers and so forth. So that's a, that's a positive. And it also means it's a good vaccine for the world. Right. Because you got to get it to remote places.

Can you explain to me what's happening with AstraZeneca? Because that seems like very much a cluster fuck. Sorry, is that the scientific term. I don't know if you're. heard it. Well, so Asherzeneca is approved by the WHO and in the EU. And it's a very low cost, simple vaccine, it's a very low cost vaccine. You know, I think the challenging news you point to is that in South Africa, it didn't appear to do very well against the South African variant. Now, the CEO of Asherzeneca tells me they will be able to adjust the vaccine to make it work for South Africa. So we'll see. Hopefully that's the case. That would be very good news because we got to vaccinate billions and billions of people to the things to stop swinging around. So we're very hopeful. In terms of the U.S., they don't have complete U.S. data yet.

They haven't submitted, right? They haven't submitted yet. So we're not taking, you know, into any of our plans in account for other vaccine candidates that haven't been approved by the FTA. So the FDA will, if they do make a submission, the FDA will do its work. The data will be publicly visible and we'll all get a chance to see in the and they'll make a decision based upon that. But right now, that's not one we're dealing with. Can we talk about variants? I'm sorry, I get so excited about this. I know it's, you know, as a trial participant, you know, I just want to talk about COVID all the time. All day long.

These variants. So the UK variant and the South Africa variant are different strains. There's a lot of information out there. It's not clear. Some of it is very scary. what is your take? And it sounds like, from what Fauci was saying yesterday, it sounds like it's definitely coming here,

and it's definitely here. What do you think this means for us? Let's talk about short term and let's talk about long term. Short term, the B117 variant, which is the one found in the UK, that's the one that's most in abundance here. It does spread faster. That is the bad news.

And it might be more lethal, although unclear. And if it is, it is not dramatically more lethal. but it is more contagious, which means that it will be fewer particles. If it's more contagious, it'll end up hitting more people, which will make it more. So the good news is that all of the vaccines work very well against the English, the UK, the B117 variant. So that's good. The South African variant, and there's another one that looks like the South African variant,

that's the Brazilian variant, that one, it's interesting, there is a degradation of performance. of the vaccines against that, against the South African variant. However, that degradation is thankfully still above the scientific threshold for effectiveness. So it's like it was beating it by a lot. Right. It still generates antibodies. It doesn't generate as many, but that's good. So for the near term, that's the picture.

I've talked to all of the vaccine manufacturers since I've been here about what their plans are to keep updating their vaccines because there will be more mutations. And we need to make sure that science wins the race against the variance. And so the FDA is coming out with guidance not just for the vaccines, but also for the monoclonal antibody therapies and the diagnostic tests to make sure that they can as rapidly as possible and as safely as possible continue to keep up with and stay ahead of the variance. So it is both a short-term question as well as the ability for us to have science continue to move fast. I want to go back to the vaccine effectiveness against the variance for a minute because this is a question.

I think I know the answer to this, but I want to know if I'm right. These vaccines still prevent severe disease from the variance even if they don't prevent infection. Is that correct? Well, yes. And again, the variants are all a little bit different, but they, They prevent both mild and severe against the UK variant, and they do it not as good a job, but still a good job against the South African and more so certainly severe disease. It's a very smart question, Molly, because most of us could live with a running nose and a slightly

elevated temperature. We don't want us to be hospitalized, need to go on oxygen, and die. So they call these in clinical trials, they call these the end points. you know, we may have done a little bit of a disservice to ourselves when with the, with the, with the, uh, Moderna and Pfizer vaccine, we talked about the end point as including modern and mild. Yeah. Because we really don't care as much about the mild. And so we get very fixated in the fact that they're 95% effective against both. Right. And we probably should have stepped back and said, you know what? That's just measured against more severe symptoms, in which case the Johnson and

Johnson does very close to comparable, uh, in the way that we've seen. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't realize that. I should say, Eddie, most of these questions I have I source from people who can't find answers. I figured you're the perfect guy to ask. So my best friend just got the vaccine. And she's concerned, though, that seems to be a lot of information floating around that, you know, these vaccines only may be effective for three to six to nine months. Is there, as a frontline worker, a way to get tested and find out how effective your vaccine is and if you need a booster after you get your second shot a few months later? So we don't know durability yet of the vaccines.

It's obviously too early to know. I think the scientists are, look, I mean, everybody is rightfully conservative about releasing information they don't know the facts of. I think people feel pretty good that the duration of these vaccines is good. And what that means, how frequently will you need a booster? Will it be like the flu and every year? Will it be two years? Will it be more than that? No one really knows the answer to that.

just yet, but I'd say that people should be confident that whatever that answer turns out to be, the scientific agencies and the pharmaceutical companies are very focused on making sure that that's that's done. By the way, Molly, what was your experience and the outcome of the vaccines you took when you did that, when you did that, when you participated in the trial? So I was given the placebo and then Pfizer vaccinated me. Okay. And it was great. It was like the best thing ever. And I was so thrilled. And I didn't have any.

I wasn't particularly sick or anything from the vaccine. Got it. Because I'm such a loudmouthed, I became like friends with all my doctors at the study side and all the other. You know, I just had a blast. And now I, you know, I'm friends with the Pfizer. You know, I just talk to everyone because that's, you know, America's grandmother. So each state is handling this rollout differently, some to greater success than others. and this could be obviously pretty disheartening if you're one of the people who lives in one of those states.

Is the federal government doing anything to, like, give some of the best practices that are working these states to the states that are not doing it as well? Jesse, you're sourcing some great questions. I appreciate that. So when we got here on January 20th, one of the things we learned, as it only 46% of the vaccines delivered to states had actually made its way into people's arms. Now, you never would expect that to be 100%, but 46% was pretty loud. was low. The good news is states are doing a lot better today. All of them are doing better. And that number is now around 75%. And I can go into the reasons why that is. But a lot of it is, as you say, Jesse, some of the best practices, giving just clear visibility into how many vaccines

they are, how many people are going to get. Because when there's shortages, people hoard. Right. So people are just storing them away. Yeah, for the second shot, too. Second shot, case they didn't get more. And we basically said, we are going to give everybody three weeks of visibility and how many vaccines are coming. That's great. And that really helped. And then we kept increasing the amount of doses and so people started to feel more reliable.

The second thing is we started standing up around states with their knowledge, of course, other programs. So we've been standing up these things we call community vaccination centers with FEMA. We've been standing up a program to deliver directly to retail pharmacies. We have delivered now directly into mobile clinics. and community health centers. So we're supplementing the vaccines we send to states. And that extent, that does even out some of the variability that you see in states

because we're just putting more in directly with a little bit more control. And that I think helps the cause. The other thing I say, Jesse, is important to understand here is it's, question is not just how many vaccines are being administered, but also how equitably they're being attributed. Because, look, we all know there are half the population or more would crawl over broken glass to get the vaccine. Right.

But the problem is they're crawling over. people. They're getting online and going into communities, maybe neighborhoods they've never visited or visited a long time, but we put vaccines into communities that are really hard hit by the virus. And people are coming in, refreshing their browser, going in and getting these appointments. Jesus. It's really important that we not just focus on how many people we vaccinate, but that we do it as equitable as possible. And that's a big, big push for us. Is there a way to prevent that to make sure that the vaccine goes to the people who are, who live in the area, or is it just too complicated?

Oh, no, it's really important. We're trying to measure it. But unfortunately, most people don't enter race and ethnicity. Even that we know that it's disproportionately going to white people and to privileged people. And unless you do, I mean, the way structural racism works, I don't mean to get on the soapbox, but health care at least is unless you actively do something, then that's what you expect to happen. So we ask people to reserve appointments for people from the community. We're asking people to do outbound calling, arranging rides. A lot of it is access.

Some of it is some vaccine hesitancy as well. And we've addressed those issues too. But a lot of it is just pure access points. Can we talk for a minute about West Virginia? We can talk with any state you want. West Virginia was held up as kind of a model in a strange way. Is that still true? And have you been able to take lessons from it?

They are one of the states that's in the sort of the top five in terms of vaccine. efficiency. I have talked personally to the person who runs the program in West Virginia. I like what they're doing. There are lessons. We do calls every week with governors and on a pretty regular basis with all of the health directors and vaccine coordinators. And

there are lessons. Not every lesson applies to every place. Some are local. But look, there's 58 states and territories. There ain't 58 best ways of doing this. It's true. Are you able to get into the indigenous people and vaccines?

Yeah, it's too early to call it a success, but there's a special allocation for indigenous people. I read a story this morning in the popular press saying that the native communities are embracing vaccines, which is great. Fantastic. So like if you look at where some of the top performing states are, one of them is Alaska, largely because of the direct allocation into the native communities is a really good question. It's the first time I've been asked that question. I'm so glad you asked it. And I know this isn't going to be a big issue because it's not necessarily contagious enough to become another COVID. But Ebola is there's now an Ebola outbreak, right?

Or it's cooking. Yeah. So look, the good news now is hopefully the people realize that if something happens anywhere in the world, it affects us and we're connected. And I think the last time there was an Ebola outbreak, you know, I think there's a certain amount of that creeps in where people, well, it's far away is over there. I remember when COVID was in China, and it was like, oh, well, this thing is so far away and won't be going to China for a while, right? That was sort of the kind of reflexive mindset. Today, I think understanding why having the best global resources out of the CDC and the WHO to identify these things as quickly as possible. And hopefully the world will be smarter, not just the world organizations, but all of us as individuals will understand that, you know, infectious diseases are a fact of life. They're only haven't thought about very much in a long time, unless, you were someone who was very affected by the AIDS and HIV epidemic here. Those people who have been affected and people who live in San Francisco in New York, and we've been here for a long time,

we'll tell you they will never forget what that was like. Right. And Fauci worked on that. Fouchi worked on that. But, you know, so many Americans, and I was not that old, but I was a teenager in 1980, but I think for a lot of us, Like it, it, because if you know, a lot of times, if it's not happening to you, you feel safe, you ignore it. And I look back on this period now with some amount of horror and shame that as a country, we in all of these people were dying under our eyes and we didn't do better. And it didn't really enter everyone's consciousness because many people were able to run away from it.

And I hope that never happens again. So, Andy, I have two different friends who are long haulers. And, you know, I'm getting really scared because one, every doctor they go to kind of just throws their hands in the air and says no one knows. They can't find resources. One's abusing painkillers now, which leads to another crisis. Is there anything being done to create a resource about what treatments are working for long haulers and anything for support for them? First of all, Jesse, congratulations on having all these friends. Well, someone has to.

That's great. I know your special thing. And look, I'm really sorry to hear about those situations. Those are so challenging for people. And I have been numerous times on the Facebook support groups of the long haulers. And it's quite a community. And I do think there are answers around the corner. But what needs to happen is exactly as you described.

And it is happening as you. you know, and at least in some cities now, there are COVID centers for people with chronic illness from COVID so that people can be treated. People can develop a body of expertise that can be studied. You know, the NIH is focused on that. It doesn't get enough attention, but it is critical. You know, I have heard something, well, I don't want to deal in rumor, but I've heard, I read somewhere on one of the chat boards that people who are long haulers that have gotten vaccinated, that that's been helpful to them. And so I'm telling you this in a completely non- scientific, non-government official way. And I'm sure that the people on the websites will

know more and give more depth and balance to that. But I've seen some discussion around that. And I have a family member who has had lingering symptoms, unfortunately, with COVID. And I think they're improving and they're not debilitating. But the mystery is almost as much of a problem as the fact itself, right? Because it creates a lot of concern. among all of us and some anxiety. And that's very real. Because, you know, if you were, I think if we were just feeling these symptoms and there wasn't the mystery surrounding them, we would all breathe a little bit easier.

But the unknown is scary. Appreciate that. I heard Fauci talk about viral loads. And, you know, he did work on HIV. I'm curious to know what the thinking is there with that. Because he was saying that it may be that these variants have an increased viral load. and that the viral load may be may have some you know can you talk about what the science is saying right now on that yeah so i'll i will do my poor version of anthony fouchy without a Brooklyn accent

and you know if you haven't met him um he's like 10 times as delightful as he seems no i so what what he's said is you know we we are now we now we now first of all, the first of the fact that was this, we believe there's a correlation between viral load and infectiousness. So makes sense. And we are now have some empirical studies, although they're not, you know, the huge body of data, which says that the viral load is decreased for people who are vaccinated.

So that would tell you that the question that I think all of us have been waiting for an answer for, but I've been hopeful on is that it appears to be pointing in a positive direction that these vaccines not only reduce disease and save lives, but these vaccines also will reduce the ability of people to affect one another, which if it holds up will be terrific news. So, you know, I think that's what he's sharing with folks. You know, you mentioned the briefings that we do, he and I and Kayal Volenski and others from the administration. You know, sharing honest answers when we don't know everything is part of the briefings that we do. part of science, and it does sometimes make people uncomfortable, but it is our commitment.

And he does, I think he does such a great job at doing that and explaining things, but I think that's what he was saying. It's so interesting. I mean, it just feels like the science is evolving so quickly. Yes, it is encouraging. I mean, it is, I will tell you, just from the inside look, talking to our scientists, the government, talking to the researchers that are doing this work within pharmaceutical and biotech companies, it is encouraging. And you do get a sense that they're very smart people, getting their hands around things. I say this without giving a false sense of everything is solved.

And it's also true in almost all walks of this. I feel like we skipped a year that we could have spent energizing the country and asking people to contribute. And like, you know, I mean, we have companies and private sector, public sector that are just coming up, making commitments that are in doing. really forward-looking things to help end this crisis that I feel like they've been very eager to do. And it's very encouraging because this will not get solved by one administration or the government as a whole. It'll get solved by everybody working together. And I think we just missed

an opportunity over the last year to call people out and say, hey, can you help? It's a lot harder to do nothing than to do something. You know, to sit around and feel victimized is the worst feeling. but this country, I think, is starting to get mobilized, at least that's my perception. I know people are exhausted, but they're going to be exhausted from dealing, they're not going to be dealing with misinformation.

They're going to be dealing with facts, and I think that will help sustain people until we get through this. It's so interesting. I so appreciate you coming on. I just, it was really great and so helpful for us. Thank you. Yeah, it was great to talk to you both again,

and Jesse, congratulations on all your friendships. I appreciate it. He's very popular. It's quite, annoying. Hi, Jesse. Hi, Molly. So excited to be here for the segment. You get to participate in our segment. Love to be here for the discourse. That's right. We're all about the discourse here. Especially because we're going to discuss such great people, some of my least favorite people in the entire world. You know what's interesting? It's sometimes when we record this, there's not an obvious

fuck that guy. There's just a whole mess today. It's like the mess outside our our homes in Brooklyn today of shitty snow. I like my dirty snow because it's being covered by fresh, clean snow, and it's also covering all the garbage. But I want to talk to you about the great state of Texas. I don't mess with Texas, but not in the way they say with it. Like, I don't mess with it. Texas is having one of the great humanitarian disasters of the year and maybe the decade. People are literally freezing to death. There is not power. There is not heat. They're boiling water. I mean, it's just like... It's really sad. I got very upset watching some TikToks of it last night.

Yeah. I mean, people are really, really suffering. And you know what people want their elected officials to do when they're really suffering? What's that? When you're suffering without power or heat, you want your elected to go on television, hopefully on a far-right cable news network like Fox News, and talk about how this is all the fault of AOC's green news. And talk about how this is all the fault of AOC's Green New Deal. Yes, which doesn't exist, and they tried to manipulate tons of statistics to say that it was all this clean energy that is actually the problem when that's the exact opposite. There is about clean energy makes up about 12% of Texas's energy. And 88% is oil and gas.

And this oil and gas was not winterized, but instead of going on television and saying stuff that was actually true, a lot of these people, including the Texas governor, Abbott went on television and said that in fact this was the fault of wind power and not the fact that they never winterized the grid and so it failed because it froze. And they have no regulations and as we learn like, you know, when China has these low-grade earthquakes and it destroys whole villages and yet when we have them, people don't even notice regulations get a lot of bad, bad wraps, but they do really good things for making sure your infrastructure doesn't fail. Yeah. I mean, I am actually, you know, pro-regulation. But anyway, so when people are freezing to death and boiling their water and have no power heat for days

and days on end, they like elected officials to go to Cancun, to have a vacation. Yes, this brings me to my fuck that guy, but you know, I'm not going to take the easy bait and go straight for Raphael Ted Cruz. Lion Ted? Lion 10, some do call him. Canada's worst export. That is definitely the case. I still think we got to go for one of my least favorite, just vile human beings, Dinesh D'Souza, who made a particularly bad tweet.

Would you like to read it? I mean, how can I not read this Dynette D'Souza tweet? And you know what's so interesting about this tweet I would like to point out is that do you think that Ted Cruz would die on a hill of defending Dinesh D'Souza? Because I do not. Right? I was reading it and I was thinking, Ted would not do this for you. I think, you know, it really speaks a lot to the Trump-parted system of that.

He gave Dinesh that one simply because Dinesh was loyal. That really showed the thing because no one likes Dinesh, except for Trump who likes everybody who likes him. Well, he has a wife, so I guess his wife loves him. What could at Ted Cruz do if he were here in Texas? I'm hard pressed to say. If he's in Cancun, that means I'm doing a dramatic reading in case for those keeping track at home. If he is in Cancun, that means he's not using up valuable resources of energy, food, and water that can be used by someone else. This is probably the best thing he could do for the state right now.

You know, the worst ones, though, to me were like the Eric, Eric Cidds, who like, like, we're like, who cares about elected officials? He's not going to do anything. And it's like, you know, these people complain about out of touch elites all day. That's their whole thing of dividing culture war. And then when their elites are out of touch, it's time to go to bat defending them.

Got to trot out all the best defenses because we can never, ever be owned by the libs, God forbid. You know what's interesting to me? It's like I think about it. We always are given such a difficult time because people say Democrats turn on their own. And that's sort of true, but it's also true that like if an elected Democrat did something like this, we'd be all over them too. I mean, just because you're a Democrat doesn't mean you do the right thing all the time.

In fact, my, why don't we just give a bonus fuck that guy to the people with that and say, fuck you to are you and I's governor, Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat? Andrew Cuomo has recently been caught threatening a congressman from Queens. And when asked our terrible Democratic mayor, Mayor de Blah, blah, blah. I prefer Bill DeBuggler. That's the one right-wing nickname I like to use. He was like, yeah, that's what Cuomo does. And, you know, usually I can never defend de Blasio, but he has definitely been the person most polling by Cuomo. So calling that witness to the stand, I think, isn't fair game.

But Andrew Cuomo really did disgusting things here with these nursing homes and COVID patients and then covering up things and then selling himself as the savior of COVID when he's been just really, really reprehensible and has behaved. Like the thugs that Republicans characterize Democrats as, he is the character of that. And we need to do better when we elect Democrats. And so for that, I think he gets a fuck that guy too. I'm right there with you. I think fuck that guy. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science.

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