Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day two hundred and fifty four since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story. Amid a lame duck presidency and with the widespread availability of a COVID nineteen vaccine months away, US governors have become the first line of defense against the pandemics. Winter onslaught with the holidays around the corner, many local authorities have little choice but to act as the virus sets daily records across the country. But first, here's what happened in virus news today. A COVID nineteen vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and Astra Zeneca was shown to prevent a majority of people from getting the disease. Although positive news, the vaccine fell short of the bar set by those in development by five and moderna. On average, the Oxford and astra Zenica vaccine prevented seventy percent of cases in large trials in the UK and Brazil. Astra Zenica announced that it would prepare to file its data to global regulators, including an emergency use listing from the World Health Organization. Italy has become the second nation in the European region after the UK to reach fifty thousand deaths from the coronavirus. Italy reported six hundred and thirty daily deaths on Monday as cases surge in the country, prompting a region by region lockdown. Meanwhile, in Asia, the highly anticipated travel bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore was shelved. The bubble had once been heralded as the first in the world, allowing people to travel to and from the two areas without the knee to quarantine. Two sides had previously agreed to suspending the bubble if local infections exceeded five on a rolling seven day average. Hong Kong reported sixty three new local cases on Monday. A new launch date for the travel bubble has yet to be announced, and now for today's main story. With more than twelve million cases and over two hundred and fifty thousand deaths, the US response to COVID nineteen has stood out on the world stage as ineffectual and scatter shot. Amid surgeon case counts and a tense presidential transition, governors have had to face hard choices about how to stem the rising tide of coronavirus in their states. I spoke to reporter em A Court who discussed how with a lack of federal leadership, it has fallen to local authorities to impose mask mandates, curfews, and potentially even lockdowns before the winter and the holidays hit. You know, since the pandemic began, how would you describe the role of state authorities, let's say, governors in determining their state's response to COVID nineteen. When we're talking about restrictions, lockdowns, or even say mask requirements. Throughout this pandemic, governors have really been the front lines of the COVID response, and we've heard that very clearly from the federal government saying states need to take a leading role in this because only they can understand the local conditions, what's appropriate in their states. That kind of thing and the consequence of has been really a patchwork of different regulations and conditions in different states. And someone in New York City, for instance, might travel to another state and be shocked by what they see going on there, because you really do have such drastically different things. You know, Indoor dining in one state might be off limits in another state. There might not even be capacity restrictions on indoor dining. So it's a pretty big change depending on where you are. And I mean, how would you characterize the relationship, say, between state and federal responsibility in terms of these mandates or restrictions. And do you think we're seeing more state action or more governors act due to perhaps a lack of leadership from the federal level. Yeah, it's a really good question. What you'd hear from the federal government from the Trump administration is, look, this is what we want to happen. We want states to take the lead on this um. But I think what we've heard from consistently from public health experts throughout this entire pandemic has been you need the power of the federal government marshaling a unified national response, not just because otherwise you have fifty sets of states grappling with fifty sets of policies about how people should behave be behaving, but also because of the fact that resources that are involved here too. Right, We're talking about protective equipment, we're talking about testing, We're talking about all these different supplies that every state needs, and so um this has been a real point of tension throughout the pandemic. With the election, though, we are seeing things change quite a bit because suddenly you have a lame duck administration that won't acknowledge that it has been defeated in an election, and it's unclear that the federal government is going to do anything beyond what it's done so far. In some states, we're seeing governors who have been here too for reluctant to impose things like mask mandates starting to take those steps. Places like Iowa, Utah, North Dakota suddenly having mask mandates. We were suddenly seeing a period where there is sort of a power vacuum and states are kind of having to step up because really, in some cases they have they have no choice. Yeah, and I was hoping you might actually dig deeper on that of you know, either within this more recent time frame in terms of this dramatic rising cases we're seeing throughout the U S or or just we're generally throughout these nine months of the pandemic, what types of restrictions and requirements have we seen governors impose. Yeah, we're seeing honestly measures that look a lot like the start of the pandemic that are you know, heavier handed than we've seen for first periods of months. Right We're seeing MASK mandates being implemented in states that didn't have MASK mandates before. We are seeing new capacity restrictions being placed on businesses, were even seeing curfews in some places. We're seeing, you know, the return of stay at home orders, limited shutdown. So these are things that that really do kind of feel like deja vu, right um, And I think for a long time it was believed that we would never return to these kinds of aggressive measures, really replicating some of the periods of time when we didn't know anything about this virus, because we know so much more about the how the virus spreads now and we can have more targeted measures that can you know, for instance, shut down specific neighborhoods that are hot spots and closed essential business closed businesses that aren't essential. They're things like that. That's not what's happening now. We're seeing kind of the return to the days of of lockdowns. We're seeing the virus so out of control that leaders are are feeling like they have to really close things down in a way that's extremely extremely aggressive. For instance, this past weekend, we even saw Los Angeles county say they're closing outdoor dining and and the big overarching question is is it too little, too late? You know, are things so out of control in this country that these measures won't work or won't work fast enough. And that raises another point about how state populations are responding to these new, often very much increased restrictions. Are people willing to adhere to these new restrictions As to whether they'll work, We'll have to see with time, um, but we have seen people protesting these new restrictions in various states saying, you know, you don't have control over me. This is, you know, the government can't tell me what to do or whether I can gather with people inside of my home for instance. You know, it's unclear exactly how widespread that sentiment is. I think people in the US are generally seeing these measures for what they are, which is really a statement of how bad things are. Another big question, though, is you know, when you mandate things like this, you know, are you really gonna put enforcement behind that? For instance, I recently heard the Illinois Department of Public Health director talking about how they had a mask mandate in the state, but you know, compliance was really only about fifty or sixty percent, and they didn't have the resources to go around ticketing people for not wearing masks. So you know, things like mask mandates, you know, are only so effective as you know, if people actually follow them, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens. There's this real public private divide emerging between you know, you can shut down, for instance, non essential businesses, you can limit their capacity, you can limit their operating hours. But ultimately, you know, even if you announced restrictions on indoor gatherings, as we've seen some states do say, oh, you know, limit your indoor gatherings even in your own home to only ten or fifteen people. All that's something that's a little bit harder to enforce. And you bring up a very relevant point, particularly for this week in terms of gathering in in private homes. With Thanksgiving coming up on Thursday. This has been a concern for weeks over a potential further spread of COVID nineteen with with families and friends gathering together for the holiday. What if we heard from state or local authorities about trying to prevent that exact scenario from happening. Are we seeing more restrictions or more mandates to try and tamp down any spread related to the Thanksgiving holiday. This is a huge hot button issue right now in the United States, and it's really unclear what's going to happen after this holiday. I think we're seeing a lot of early evidence that people are in fact traveling for Thanksgivings. We heard the CDC last week say please don't travel for Thanksgiving and please don't celebrate with someone who's outside of your immediate household. But we have seen data from you know, airports and airport screenings showing that people are traveling. Um, we're seeing colleges sending students home for Thanksgiving as well. A lot of colleges that have done in person semesters are concluding them at Thanksgiving and sending students home. So there's gonna be a degree of travel happening no matter what. By and large, the guidance has been please don't celebrate a big Thanksgiving. Please be as careful as possible. If you're going to celebrate Thanksgiving, please do it outside and limit how many people. But we are seeing some governors saying I'm not I'm not going to tell you not to celebrate Thanksgiving. UM. For instance, the governor of South Dakota recently said, you know, I'm not going to tell you not to spend time together this Thanksgiving. She she actually said in South Dakota, we won't stop or discourage you from thinking God and spending time together this Thanksgiving. And so it does has become this very politically fraud topic, and it's very emotional. You know. I think it's gonna be really important for public health officials to acknowledge some of the emotional burden of this, you know, as we proceed forward, because it's it's holiday season, right, It's not just Thanksgiving, It's not just Christmas. We have a whole range of holidays ahead, and this is the time people traditionally come together. Suddenly that's very dangerous. That was Emma Cord. And that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one D 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 Topor Foreheads, Jordan gas Pure, Magnus Hendrickson, and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Emma Court. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day two hundred and fifty four since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story. Amid a lame duck presidency and with the widespread availability of a COVID nineteen vaccine months away, US governors have become the first line of defense against the pandemics. Winter onslaught with the holidays around the corner, many local authorities have little choice but to act as the virus sets daily records across the country. But first, here's what happened in virus news today. A COVID nineteen vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and Astra Zeneca was shown to prevent a majority of people from getting the disease. Although positive news, the vaccine fell short of the bar set by those in development by five and moderna. On average, the Oxford and astra Zenica vaccine prevented seventy percent of cases in large trials in the UK and Brazil. Astra Zenica announced that it would prepare to file its data to global regulators, including an emergency use listing from the World Health Organization. Italy has become the second nation in the European region after the UK to reach fifty thousand deaths from the coronavirus. Italy reported six hundred and thirty daily deaths on Monday as cases surge in the country, prompting a region by region lockdown. Meanwhile, in Asia, the highly anticipated travel bubble between Hong Kong and Singapore was shelved. The bubble had once been heralded as the first in the world, allowing people to travel to and from the two areas without the knee to quarantine. Two sides had previously agreed to suspending the bubble if local infections exceeded five on a rolling seven day average. Hong Kong reported sixty three new local cases on Monday. A new launch date for the travel bubble has yet to be announced, and now for today's main story. With more than twelve million cases and over two hundred and fifty thousand deaths, the US response to COVID nineteen has stood out on the world stage as ineffectual and scatter shot. Amid surgeon case counts and a tense presidential transition, governors have had to face hard choices about how to stem the rising tide of coronavirus in their states. I spoke to reporter em A Court who discussed how with a lack of federal leadership, it has fallen to local authorities to impose mask mandates, curfews, and potentially even lockdowns before the winter and the holidays hit. You know, since the pandemic began, how would you describe the role of state authorities, let's say, governors in determining their state's response to COVID nineteen. When we're talking about restrictions, lockdowns, or even say mask requirements. Throughout this pandemic, governors have really been the front lines of the COVID response, and we've heard that very clearly from the federal government saying states need to take a leading role in this because only they can understand the local conditions, what's appropriate in their states. That kind of thing and the consequence of has been really a patchwork of different regulations and conditions in different states. And someone in New York City, for instance, might travel to another state and be shocked by what they see going on there, because you really do have such drastically different things. You know, Indoor dining in one state might be off limits in another state. There might not even be capacity restrictions on indoor dining. So it's a pretty big change depending on where you are. And I mean, how would you characterize the relationship, say, between state and federal responsibility in terms of these mandates or restrictions. And do you think we're seeing more state action or more governors act due to perhaps a lack of leadership from the federal level. Yeah, it's a really good question. What you'd hear from the federal government from the Trump administration is, look, this is what we want to happen. We want states to take the lead on this um. But I think what we've heard from consistently from public health experts throughout this entire pandemic has been you need the power of the federal government marshaling a unified national response, not just because otherwise you have fifty sets of states grappling with fifty sets of policies about how people should behave be behaving, but also because of the fact that resources that are involved here too. Right, We're talking about protective equipment, we're talking about testing, We're talking about all these different supplies that every state needs, and so um this has been a real point of tension throughout the pandemic. With the election, though, we are seeing things change quite a bit because suddenly you have a lame duck administration that won't acknowledge that it has been defeated in an election, and it's unclear that the federal government is going to do anything beyond what it's done so far. In some states, we're seeing governors who have been here too for reluctant to impose things like mask mandates starting to take those steps. Places like Iowa, Utah, North Dakota suddenly having mask mandates. We were suddenly seeing a period where there is sort of a power vacuum and states are kind of having to step up because really, in some cases they have they have no choice. Yeah, and I was hoping you might actually dig deeper on that of you know, either within this more recent time frame in terms of this dramatic rising cases we're seeing throughout the U S or or just we're generally throughout these nine months of the pandemic, what types of restrictions and requirements have we seen governors impose. Yeah, we're seeing honestly measures that look a lot like the start of the pandemic that are you know, heavier handed than we've seen for first periods of months. Right We're seeing MASK mandates being implemented in states that didn't have MASK mandates before. We are seeing new capacity restrictions being placed on businesses, were even seeing curfews in some places. We're seeing, you know, the return of stay at home orders, limited shutdown. So these are things that that really do kind of feel like deja vu, right um, And I think for a long time it was believed that we would never return to these kinds of aggressive measures, really replicating some of the periods of time when we didn't know anything about this virus, because we know so much more about the how the virus spreads now and we can have more targeted measures that can you know, for instance, shut down specific neighborhoods that are hot spots and closed essential business closed businesses that aren't essential. They're things like that. That's not what's happening now. We're seeing kind of the return to the days of of lockdowns. We're seeing the virus so out of control that leaders are are feeling like they have to really close things down in a way that's extremely extremely aggressive. For instance, this past weekend, we even saw Los Angeles county say they're closing outdoor dining and and the big overarching question is is it too little, too late? You know, are things so out of control in this country that these measures won't work or won't work fast enough. And that raises another point about how state populations are responding to these new, often very much increased restrictions. Are people willing to adhere to these new restrictions As to whether they'll work, We'll have to see with time, um, but we have seen people protesting these new restrictions in various states saying, you know, you don't have control over me. This is, you know, the government can't tell me what to do or whether I can gather with people inside of my home for instance. You know, it's unclear exactly how widespread that sentiment is. I think people in the US are generally seeing these measures for what they are, which is really a statement of how bad things are. Another big question, though, is you know, when you mandate things like this, you know, are you really gonna put enforcement behind that? For instance, I recently heard the Illinois Department of Public Health director talking about how they had a mask mandate in the state, but you know, compliance was really only about fifty or sixty percent, and they didn't have the resources to go around ticketing people for not wearing masks. So you know, things like mask mandates, you know, are only so effective as you know, if people actually follow them, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens. There's this real public private divide emerging between you know, you can shut down, for instance, non essential businesses, you can limit their capacity, you can limit their operating hours. But ultimately, you know, even if you announced restrictions on indoor gatherings, as we've seen some states do say, oh, you know, limit your indoor gatherings even in your own home to only ten or fifteen people. All that's something that's a little bit harder to enforce. And you bring up a very relevant point, particularly for this week in terms of gathering in in private homes. With Thanksgiving coming up on Thursday. This has been a concern for weeks over a potential further spread of COVID nineteen with with families and friends gathering together for the holiday. What if we heard from state or local authorities about trying to prevent that exact scenario from happening. Are we seeing more restrictions or more mandates to try and tamp down any spread related to the Thanksgiving holiday. This is a huge hot button issue right now in the United States, and it's really unclear what's going to happen after this holiday. I think we're seeing a lot of early evidence that people are in fact traveling for Thanksgivings. We heard the CDC last week say please don't travel for Thanksgiving and please don't celebrate with someone who's outside of your immediate household. But we have seen data from you know, airports and airport screenings showing that people are traveling. Um, we're seeing colleges sending students home for Thanksgiving as well. A lot of colleges that have done in person semesters are concluding them at Thanksgiving and sending students home. So there's gonna be a degree of travel happening no matter what. By and large, the guidance has been please don't celebrate a big Thanksgiving. Please be as careful as possible. If you're going to celebrate Thanksgiving, please do it outside and limit how many people. But we are seeing some governors saying I'm not I'm not going to tell you not to celebrate Thanksgiving. UM. For instance, the governor of South Dakota recently said, you know, I'm not going to tell you not to spend time together this Thanksgiving. She she actually said in South Dakota, we won't stop or discourage you from thinking God and spending time together this Thanksgiving. And so it does has become this very politically fraud topic, and it's very emotional. You know. I think it's gonna be really important for public health officials to acknowledge some of the emotional burden of this, you know, as we proceed forward, because it's it's holiday season, right, It's not just Thanksgiving, It's not just Christmas. We have a whole range of holidays ahead, and this is the time people traditionally come together. Suddenly that's very dangerous. That was Emma Cord. And that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one D 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 Topor Foreheads, Jordan gas Pure, Magnus Hendrickson, and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Emma Court. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.