Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney, alongside my co host Matt Miller. Every business day, we bring you interviews from CEOs, market pros, and Bloomberg experts, along with essential market moving news. Find the Bloomberg Markets Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. Right now, I want to go to uh Charlestown, Massachusetts and talk to Adam Sacks. He's the CEO and co founder of Vicarious, which is a robotic surgery startup backed by Bill Gates and looking at us spack um, Adam, I gotta say, as a lifelong motorcyclist, I'm a big fan of surgery. Is this the kind of thing that I would need after, you know, running into a pickup truck? Hey, guys, thanks so much for having me out. Um so, uh well, let's hope that never happened. But we're you know, we're targeting pretty broad applications across abdominal surgery. Uh so you know, yeah, absolutely, I think there are multiple procedures that are emergent procedures. I'm imagining a robot like from short circuit standing over an operating table, and I'm sure that's not what it's like, what do you what do you do? And you also make it possible for doctors to use kind of a virtual reality look at the inner abdominal space. Yeah, exactly. So you know what we essentially do it vicarious surgical is we're creating a tiny little robot that goes inside of your abdominal cavity and allows the surgeon to connect to the robot using hand controllers in a VR headset that they wear. It essentially becomes, you know, their avatar inside the body. They're they're they're beamed inside of their patients. Uh, and it allows for a you know, a much much better, much more immersive approach for the surgeon, gives them a lot better spatial awareness, a lot better ability to operate once they're inside. This is as compared to you know, the two main alternatives that exist today, which you're either either open surgery sort of the classic way of performing surgery, where a surgeon will make one large incision and open the patient up that that incision is associated with complication rates that by the way, it's still the dominant way of operating today, or robotic well and Adam, that's the way patients are used to getting surgery right, having a doctor physically be there in the room performing the surgery themselves. What do you think do you think there's a barrier in people being willing to have a robot do this kind of thing instead. Well, I say this is you know, one of the handful of areas where sometimes it actually is best to be the second entrant to the market. Uh. There, you know that there's an incumbent here in robotic surgery that has developed a system. They perform about three percent of the applicable procedures, which gives us a tremendous amount of white space while still being about a million procedures per year. I mean, surgery is an incredibly large market. They're performed all over, all over the country and all over the world. So there's already been you know, uh comfort over the last twenty years grown in in robotic surgery, while at the same time, the incumbents have not addressed h the real needs of surgains and patients. So you're going to combine with the spack the transaction combines the company, the transaction values of the company. I should say at a one point one billion dollars. It's um going to provide you with about four or twenty five million in cash. What are you gonna do with the with the money? Is this all going to R and D and then deployment? Yeah, So the point where we're at now is uh, you know, much more development than research, kind of finishing up the final development all we've we've been at this full time for seven years, and we've reinvented the way surgical robotics work actually from you know, from truly the ground up, the actuator level of so uh, less than half of the money total that the proceeds in this transaction will be used for development, really refining the features and then getting through the regulatory halfway so that we can get our systems to hospitals, the surgeons into patients. UM. Half of the money, more than half of the money actually will be used to drive the commercial effort and the growth and revenue that you've seen our in our projection. Do you work do you work with Bill Gates on this? What's it like working with Bill Gates? I? Uh, you know, we we've had the pleasure of meeting him a handful of times and actually pitching this to him in person. But you know, I wouldn't say we worked you know, cater tate with him at all. We we give him updates on what we're doing. Adam quickly, I just quickly want to ask, we only have about a minute left, but why a speck Did you look at taking another route to the public markets? Did you look at doing an I p O. Yeah, the answer is of course. But you know, I think facts give unique advantage in that they have, you know, the cash and trust combined with the SPAC sponsor who brings you know, UH, their own set of expertise and experiences, especially in our case having you know that the former CEO of the Shaw Asia being the stack promote and all the public market experience that comes with that, and their ability to do deep diligence, send surgeons out to try our system to do cadaver lab and then to stand behind all of their diligence with both their capital and their experience. So it's it's uh. I think that there's a real place for spacts UH in the world, and we're incredibly excited to be partnering with d A. And there's a big pipe component we should point out. Usually a vote of confidence there from the pros. Adam, thanks so much for joining us. Adam Sacks, CEO and co founder of Vicarious Taker will be r B O T. Don't want to bring in strip classis. He is the principal director of research at the John Burns real estate consulting firm out in Irvine, California. And um, Rick, I am desperately seeking a home in Westchester, New York. Uh as soon as I can convince my wife we're moving back state side. And um, I've noticed that the prices are a lot higher than they were when I left five years ago. Are we in a housing bubble? Yeah? So good luck with that search, good luck to really anybody across the country. UM. You know, we put out a paper on this a couple of weeks ago called Investormania two point oh. And you know, I think it's important take a step back and just really just hit on the head. I mean, housing fundamentals are the strongest in decades, and we expect to boom over the next few years. But our view is that we are in the early stages of a bubble, no imminent risk of a collapse, and honestly, the next two years are probably gonna be the best years for housing in in a decade. So the word bubble is a loosely defined term. How do you define bubble and what factors are you considering in leading you to this conclusion that we could be building towards one? Yeah, I I think the one the one element that we don't have that is usually check off the box where the bubble is crazy wacky mortgage lending. So we don't have a knock on both thank goodness. We don't have the ninja loans, no income, no job, no assets, um. And that's that's the reason why in the paper Investor Media two point oh one point oh was really the retail buyer investor getting five plus mortgages, no equity, no documentation. That is not happening as far as we're we're seeing. It's much more. And this is the two point oh much more of an institutionally backed umbrella of investor groups. And so in the paper we identified two hundred plus and it's pretty eye opening because most of these groups, actually the lion's share, did not exist in the last upturn. So I can walk you through the categories. It's flippers, it's I buyers. I think like the open door off the paths of the world, single family rental landlords which are now institutionally backed um backed by capital really across the world, pension insurance company's sovereign wealth funds, vacation second home buyers, foreign investors. And then the last one I think is when you when you ask that question, bubble um. This last category, so the theme of democratization of rental investing and all of these alternative fractional ownership crowdfunding groups that are advertising themselves kind of like the Robin hoods of real estate. That's the thing that worries me, I would say the most, Well, dude, for me, this is the worst of both worlds, because you're telling me the bank is gonna be the bank is going to really scrutinize my financials without giving me a mortgage. But prices are going up like bubble style, so you know, the million dollar house I want is going to cost too sick and I'm never going to get a mortgage. Um. I mean, do I get with one of these? Uh? Do I have to end up renting from one of these groups? There are big institutions that are going out and buying loads of houses and then renting them out to people. So I have not yet seen a group renting out two million dollar plus homes at scale. So you tell me if you find that, I would love to hear that. Um. But but I mean, honestly, I mean we you know, we saw the monster housing housing numbers this morning, and a big percentage of those homes and I'm talking single family, they're going to go right into the rental pool. And I mean this is just if you, if you follow with the big public builders are saying publicly, I mean they're selling right into those groups. The big public single family rental operators are buying ten to of their homes straight from home builders. Um. So yeah, I do think that the rental market is going to capture a lot of this. Well, Rick, I'm glad you brought that up. Obviously, the data you're referring to is housing starts jumped to night teen point four percent, to the highest since two thousand six. That's what the data revealed this morning. I'm wondering how long you think that strong construction activity can really continue, though, especially as we look at pricing pressures and material costs, supply chain issues, all these inflationary conversations are having Yeah, yeah, no. Homebuilders are trying their darndest to add some supply to the market, and it just it takes a long time. I mean, you don't buy land and slow homes on it the next day. But I can tell you we're extremely bullish the next couple of years. And we've got housing starts and now I'm stack in single family bulle family here. We've got housing starts going up to roughly two million four so we we do expect that we're going to get back to the oh five six type of construction levels. And I think it also comes back to my earlier comments on how yes, investors are accelerating this recovery, but the backdrop from just the fundamental standpoint is really the strongest we've seen in many, many, many years. So there's there's a lot of runway here, Rick, where you seeing, um the biggest price inflation. So if you're asking on markets across the country in terms of home prices, I would say so nationally, our index and this is March data is up about fire and this is the resale market. I mean, if you look at a market like Boise, which is all the buzz right now, home presses are up three percent year of rear. And that's so if you've lived and breathed in in Boise your whole life, you look around, you're like, this does not make any sense. But if you're coming out of California or maybe Matt you and New York, Boise it's pretty affordable compared to Westchester. Maybe my boss will let me relocate to Boise. That would actually rule. I would love. I mean, I've never been to Boise, but I assume it's amazing having watched a lot of Westerns. I think it features heavily in Legends of the Fall, the Brad Pitt Anthony Hopkins film. UM. John thanks so much for joining us. Rick Pelacios there, director of research at John Burns Real Estate. Uh uh Rick Pelasio's John Burns Real Estate UM Consulting. Really fascinating story. If depressing for someone in the housing market, it's great for those of you looking to sell a house. We just get over now to Lauren Sour she's an associate professor of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. To talk about UM, the vaccine drive and what's working what's not, Lauren, I want to start off with a question my producer samaraw Lnga has often asked, but we don't really know. UM, I don't really know the answer, and we haven't really gotten a solid one. After you get vaccinated? Can you still transmit the disease? Can vaccinated people still pass it on? It's a great question. I mean, I think the reason you haven't gotten satisfying answer is because the work is still being done to understand that. I know both Fightser and Maderna have studies ongoing where they're looking at transmission, and so we do know that it protects you against severe disease, protects you against hospitalization. And the question you have to, you know, dig into a little deeper, using specimens from the UM studies and ongoing following of participants and their familial cohorts, is to look at this. And that's the work that's happening right now. We think the preliminary data shows that it is transmission blocking, at least from I believe it's the Fiser and Maderna vaccines that we have preliminary data from UM. But it's sort of a wait and see situation where we hope to continue to see good data that shows us that it is, well, wait for how long, Lauren? I was looking at the CDC guidelines about you know what fully vaccinated people can and cannot do, and it says until more is known to keep socially distancing, etcetera, etcetera. Until more is known. Really is the operative line there? How long until more is known? Yeah? I think so. We already have the preliminary study. I believe it was out of Israel that shows that the Fiser vaccine might block transmission UM, which is promising for the rest of the release for both of the m R and A vaccines UM. So I think the until more is known is actually right around the corner. We continue to learn more and more every day about these vaccines UM, and the transmission piece is really important, but it's it's also important to remember that transmission blocking only happens when you get the vaccine, so UM that all of that work is also happening to encourage people to get vaccine UM as we continue to learn about this piece is really really important. So UM making sure that people are reporting if they have breakthrough cases, going to their doctor, getting tested regularly, all that gives us more and more information about whether or not we're seeing transmission happening. So, Lauren, I want to talk about one vaccine in particular, obviously in the news this week is Johnson and Johnson's. Are you surprised that there hasn't been a conclusion out of the CDC and the advisory panel yet and that one might not come until late next week at the earliest. I think we were hoping to see UM out of that meeting that just happened UM the day before yesterday. I believe it was UM a decision. We understand that, you know, this is sort of science happening in real time, and so where many more people are exposed to the process, but it can happen that they want more information. I would love to see an outcome out of that next meeting for a determination. I think the sooner we can get back to giving J and J vaccine, even if it is to a slightly different population. The Better Visor's CEO says, we'll probably need boosters, maybe even a third dose. I just talked this morning to the Cure Vac CEO out of Tubing in Germany. He said, it's it's likely as well. Are we going to be in a situation where we continue to get boosters from these vaccines. Yeah, I think that there's a good chance that we will need boosters for these vaccines. That that it perhaps it will look something along the lines of how we get our vaccine where the the vaccine strains are are evaluated during the course of the year and then updated and boosters are given. I mean, I think in an ideal world, you could even if we see that this booster schedule is similar to something like flu, where you could put those vaccines together and have one, you know, vaccine that covers both flu and covid or um flu covid in RSC, you know, all the all the all of the the sort of seasonal diseases that we might potentially be exposed to that we do have vaccine for. It'll take some work. Um and you know MODERNA and Fiser are already updating their vaccine that I think MODERNA already has an update based on UM the B one I believe it's the B one one seven variant UM. So the work is happening to update the vaccines now, right, and then boosters will be given. So, Laura, that's the booster. But when it comes to just the initial inoculation as many as one in three vaccines in the US are going unused in some states, some in the South in particular. That's basically as signed demand is slowing down. What do you chalk that up to? Is that just hesitancy? I think it's a mix of hesitancy and access. So the key with fixing hesitancy is once you convince someone that the vaccine is safe and effective and that they should get it, and they make that decision, you have to make it available for them, UM and they have to be able to get it. So making sure that you have vaccine site set up in places that populations that are a little harder to reach can access, or people who maybe don't have transportation or can't take off work for half a day to wait in line at a mass vaccination site, making it easy to get the way we do with the flu vaccine UM. And so the hesitation piece is really going to have to focus on messaging why this vaccine is safe, right, reading why it's effective and important, but also finding out what what is the barrier for them, what would do they have concerns about, and trying to answer those concerns. All right, Lauren, thanks very much. Laurence hour there from John Johns Hopkins Universe. It as we have learned, uh, certainly during this pandemic. Anyone can get famous on social media, whether it's TikTok, YouTube or Instagram, but it's a lot easier to make a living there if you're white. Bloomberg's were needed Young In collaboration with Bloomberg, Quicktake explores how marketers are under paying black influencers while pushing Black lives matter in this program. In this Bloomberg Radio special report, when I first started on TikTok, it was already a big talk about how much the biggest influencer on the app was making at the time. Comparing that to what I was getting offered, I could tell. Twenty two year old Sydney McCrae is an influencer and choreographer. She's known widely for creating a viral dance to Magan the Stallion six positive club banger Captain Hook. McCray noticed a pay gap in the industry yes soon as she first started making beauty tutorials on YouTube about a year ago, and after the viral post where she explained her dance step by step, the popular videos attracted more than four hundred thousand likes within weeks of posting. Many of TikTok's top stars performed their versions of McRae's choreography, also helping the song soar in popularity. Then in April, Megan V. Stallion herself joined in and McCray started gaining followers by the thousands. Now she has one point one million TikTok followers and she's verified. But she and other black digital content creator said none of that talent or impact mattered in the multibillion dollar global market for brand endorsement on social media. As a content creator, seeing all of the things that we can do for an artist or a company, in receiving such little pay for our artistic creations, it was a slap in the face. Really, boy, that's why your hairline going tobaccio net. Then there's influencer in sketch comic Kinney Knox, who started posting videos on the now defunct six second video app Vine. The twenty two year old followers swelled to one point six million, and he became one of the top creators on the app. Yet he did not get any offers for brand deals. But he noticed his non black peers who didn't have as many followers or activity as him did get work with the big brands. It was weird because it was like I'm going viral with every video, but no company is even looking my way. When it comes to twenty five year old Landon Moss, this influencer and actor once had a huge brand deal with a couple of other influencers on the same contracts. I come to find out that they had made like devil of what I was making, and one of them had way less followers. In me, it was just weird to me that he had made more money than me with less followers. And then to think about like what I was originally offered, Like what did they offer him? He some up the influencer pay gap Like this. Racism isn't exclusive to a certain field, and so even when you have new fields like the influencer industry, it's gonna make its way in there too, mccraine mos said Knox tell Bloomberg Quick Take. White influencers have reposted their work or stolen their ideas which then went viral on those accounts, but they the original creators, got no credit. People take advantage of like black creatives like this trend and it's all fun, and then so on profits off something that a black career started, and then they get praise and fame, and you know, and when that's just the piece of us and it doesn't stop there. These influencers say they have to be extra careful about what they say, where, how they look, what causes they support, so they won't offend any of the brands. Meanwhile, they say they're white peers get away with more explicit posts with merely a slap on the wrist from big brands. One of the reasons why it's been such a difficult experience for many black creators is because traditionally, in Hollywood, racial biases have tended to flow from the top. Executives hire white directors and producers, who in turn work with white casting agents who cast white actors. Whenever black talent is considered, it's often for roles or projects that specifically require it. Social media companies have often promoted diversity initiatives, but in practice they're not much different. Inter Summer, when the police killing of George Floyd forced America into a racial reckoning and sparked an international Black Lives Matter movement, brands gained a strong desire to work with black influencers, and black talent managers started getting more calls for their black creators. Knox interpreted those moves this way. Appreciate the brands working with the black creators and starting to go in that direction, but it wasn't a trend that they wanted to work when more black creators because they felt guilty. Knox Masson McRae are hoping for a more equitable influencer industry going forward. What I hope to see change in the industry is the black creatives get the credit that we deserve, genuine appreciation for Black creators, not just when it's convenient, and even playing field when it comes to creators of all colors, specifically black creators, giving them that same energy that they're giving the white creators, and they're hoping hashtag higher Black Creatives is not just a trend or relegated to the diversity section, but baked into the culture of brands in New York. I'm rent a Young. Bloomberg Radio are many thanks to Ronda Young along with Bloomberg Quick Take for that special report and Matt and I are so lucky Rnita is joining us now in studio or joining me now in studio, I should say here in New York, Rnita, it was a great report. You're here in spirit, Matt. Where is the sense for the reporting you did of where the impetus needs to come from for this to really change in a sticky way? You know, I think that the sense is it needs to not only come from a real place, but that that's really what people mean when they say intentionality. It needs to be an intentional elevation of these black talent and other talent of color to the same level that their white counterparts see, experience feel. So what about the the income they generate for um, for the platforms. Have you seen that black influeners influencers generate the same amount of income for a YouTube, for example, than their white counterparts. Well, in the article that Sarah Fryer wrote for Bloomberg Business Week, it was in our diversity issue, UM, you can see that one of the influencers said he made get this one tenth what his white counterparts made, and he had more followers and more engagement, more content as well. Is there pressure from users on the platform for this to change? We've seen that, you know, with investments, investors are making companies pushed towards e s G. Do TikTok users have that same power? You know, that's pretty interesting question there. I would imagine that there is a conversation going on about that, but I do not know. Uh, definitely, but you'd expect something like that to happen, especially as the work that you and Sarah Fryer have done gets more play. Thanks very much for that report, Rndy Young. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller three. Put on false Sweeney I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio.

Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney, alongside my co host Matt Miller. Every business day, we bring you interviews from CEOs, market pros, and Bloomberg experts, along with essential market moving news. Find the Bloomberg Markets Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. Right now, I want to go to uh Charlestown, Massachusetts and talk to Adam Sacks. He's the CEO and co founder of Vicarious, which is a robotic surgery startup backed by Bill Gates and looking at us spack um, Adam, I gotta say, as a lifelong motorcyclist, I'm a big fan of surgery. Is this the kind of thing that I would need after, you know, running into a pickup truck? Hey, guys, thanks so much for having me out. Um so, uh well, let's hope that never happened. But we're you know, we're targeting pretty broad applications across abdominal surgery. Uh so you know, yeah, absolutely, I think there are multiple procedures that are emergent procedures. I'm imagining a robot like from short circuit standing over an operating table, and I'm sure that's not what it's like, what do you what do you do? And you also make it possible for doctors to use kind of a virtual reality look at the inner abdominal space. Yeah, exactly. So you know what we essentially do it vicarious surgical is we're creating a tiny little robot that goes inside of your abdominal cavity and allows the surgeon to connect to the robot using hand controllers in a VR headset that they wear. It essentially becomes, you know, their avatar inside the body. They're they're they're beamed inside of their patients. Uh, and it allows for a you know, a much much better, much more immersive approach for the surgeon, gives them a lot better spatial awareness, a lot better ability to operate once they're inside. This is as compared to you know, the two main alternatives that exist today, which you're either either open surgery sort of the classic way of performing surgery, where a surgeon will make one large incision and open the patient up that that incision is associated with complication rates that by the way, it's still the dominant way of operating today, or robotic well and Adam, that's the way patients are used to getting surgery right, having a doctor physically be there in the room performing the surgery themselves. What do you think do you think there's a barrier in people being willing to have a robot do this kind of thing instead. Well, I say this is you know, one of the handful of areas where sometimes it actually is best to be the second entrant to the market. Uh. There, you know that there's an incumbent here in robotic surgery that has developed a system. They perform about three percent of the applicable procedures, which gives us a tremendous amount of white space while still being about a million procedures per year. I mean, surgery is an incredibly large market. They're performed all over, all over the country and all over the world. So there's already been you know, uh comfort over the last twenty years grown in in robotic surgery, while at the same time, the incumbents have not addressed h the real needs of surgains and patients. So you're going to combine with the spack the transaction combines the company, the transaction values of the company. I should say at a one point one billion dollars. It's um going to provide you with about four or twenty five million in cash. What are you gonna do with the with the money? Is this all going to R and D and then deployment? Yeah, So the point where we're at now is uh, you know, much more development than research, kind of finishing up the final development all we've we've been at this full time for seven years, and we've reinvented the way surgical robotics work actually from you know, from truly the ground up, the actuator level of so uh, less than half of the money total that the proceeds in this transaction will be used for development, really refining the features and then getting through the regulatory halfway so that we can get our systems to hospitals, the surgeons into patients. UM. Half of the money, more than half of the money actually will be used to drive the commercial effort and the growth and revenue that you've seen our in our projection. Do you work do you work with Bill Gates on this? What's it like working with Bill Gates? I? Uh, you know, we we've had the pleasure of meeting him a handful of times and actually pitching this to him in person. But you know, I wouldn't say we worked you know, cater tate with him at all. We we give him updates on what we're doing. Adam quickly, I just quickly want to ask, we only have about a minute left, but why a speck Did you look at taking another route to the public markets? Did you look at doing an I p O. Yeah, the answer is of course. But you know, I think facts give unique advantage in that they have, you know, the cash and trust combined with the SPAC sponsor who brings you know, UH, their own set of expertise and experiences, especially in our case having you know that the former CEO of the Shaw Asia being the stack promote and all the public market experience that comes with that, and their ability to do deep diligence, send surgeons out to try our system to do cadaver lab and then to stand behind all of their diligence with both their capital and their experience. So it's it's uh. I think that there's a real place for spacts UH in the world, and we're incredibly excited to be partnering with d A. And there's a big pipe component we should point out. Usually a vote of confidence there from the pros. Adam, thanks so much for joining us. Adam Sacks, CEO and co founder of Vicarious Taker will be r B O T. Don't want to bring in strip classis. He is the principal director of research at the John Burns real estate consulting firm out in Irvine, California. And um, Rick, I am desperately seeking a home in Westchester, New York. Uh as soon as I can convince my wife we're moving back state side. And um, I've noticed that the prices are a lot higher than they were when I left five years ago. Are we in a housing bubble? Yeah? So good luck with that search, good luck to really anybody across the country. UM. You know, we put out a paper on this a couple of weeks ago called Investormania two point oh. And you know, I think it's important take a step back and just really just hit on the head. I mean, housing fundamentals are the strongest in decades, and we expect to boom over the next few years. But our view is that we are in the early stages of a bubble, no imminent risk of a collapse, and honestly, the next two years are probably gonna be the best years for housing in in a decade. So the word bubble is a loosely defined term. How do you define bubble and what factors are you considering in leading you to this conclusion that we could be building towards one? Yeah, I I think the one the one element that we don't have that is usually check off the box where the bubble is crazy wacky mortgage lending. So we don't have a knock on both thank goodness. We don't have the ninja loans, no income, no job, no assets, um. And that's that's the reason why in the paper Investor Media two point oh one point oh was really the retail buyer investor getting five plus mortgages, no equity, no documentation. That is not happening as far as we're we're seeing. It's much more. And this is the two point oh much more of an institutionally backed umbrella of investor groups. And so in the paper we identified two hundred plus and it's pretty eye opening because most of these groups, actually the lion's share, did not exist in the last upturn. So I can walk you through the categories. It's flippers, it's I buyers. I think like the open door off the paths of the world, single family rental landlords which are now institutionally backed um backed by capital really across the world, pension insurance company's sovereign wealth funds, vacation second home buyers, foreign investors. And then the last one I think is when you when you ask that question, bubble um. This last category, so the theme of democratization of rental investing and all of these alternative fractional ownership crowdfunding groups that are advertising themselves kind of like the Robin hoods of real estate. That's the thing that worries me, I would say the most, Well, dude, for me, this is the worst of both worlds, because you're telling me the bank is gonna be the bank is going to really scrutinize my financials without giving me a mortgage. But prices are going up like bubble style, so you know, the million dollar house I want is going to cost too sick and I'm never going to get a mortgage. Um. I mean, do I get with one of these? Uh? Do I have to end up renting from one of these groups? There are big institutions that are going out and buying loads of houses and then renting them out to people. So I have not yet seen a group renting out two million dollar plus homes at scale. So you tell me if you find that, I would love to hear that. Um. But but I mean, honestly, I mean we you know, we saw the monster housing housing numbers this morning, and a big percentage of those homes and I'm talking single family, they're going to go right into the rental pool. And I mean this is just if you, if you follow with the big public builders are saying publicly, I mean they're selling right into those groups. The big public single family rental operators are buying ten to of their homes straight from home builders. Um. So yeah, I do think that the rental market is going to capture a lot of this. Well, Rick, I'm glad you brought that up. Obviously, the data you're referring to is housing starts jumped to night teen point four percent, to the highest since two thousand six. That's what the data revealed this morning. I'm wondering how long you think that strong construction activity can really continue, though, especially as we look at pricing pressures and material costs, supply chain issues, all these inflationary conversations are having Yeah, yeah, no. Homebuilders are trying their darndest to add some supply to the market, and it just it takes a long time. I mean, you don't buy land and slow homes on it the next day. But I can tell you we're extremely bullish the next couple of years. And we've got housing starts and now I'm stack in single family bulle family here. We've got housing starts going up to roughly two million four so we we do expect that we're going to get back to the oh five six type of construction levels. And I think it also comes back to my earlier comments on how yes, investors are accelerating this recovery, but the backdrop from just the fundamental standpoint is really the strongest we've seen in many, many, many years. So there's there's a lot of runway here, Rick, where you seeing, um the biggest price inflation. So if you're asking on markets across the country in terms of home prices, I would say so nationally, our index and this is March data is up about fire and this is the resale market. I mean, if you look at a market like Boise, which is all the buzz right now, home presses are up three percent year of rear. And that's so if you've lived and breathed in in Boise your whole life, you look around, you're like, this does not make any sense. But if you're coming out of California or maybe Matt you and New York, Boise it's pretty affordable compared to Westchester. Maybe my boss will let me relocate to Boise. That would actually rule. I would love. I mean, I've never been to Boise, but I assume it's amazing having watched a lot of Westerns. I think it features heavily in Legends of the Fall, the Brad Pitt Anthony Hopkins film. UM. John thanks so much for joining us. Rick Pelacios there, director of research at John Burns Real Estate. Uh uh Rick Pelasio's John Burns Real Estate UM Consulting. Really fascinating story. If depressing for someone in the housing market, it's great for those of you looking to sell a house. We just get over now to Lauren Sour she's an associate professor of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. To talk about UM, the vaccine drive and what's working what's not, Lauren, I want to start off with a question my producer samaraw Lnga has often asked, but we don't really know. UM, I don't really know the answer, and we haven't really gotten a solid one. After you get vaccinated? Can you still transmit the disease? Can vaccinated people still pass it on? It's a great question. I mean, I think the reason you haven't gotten satisfying answer is because the work is still being done to understand that. I know both Fightser and Maderna have studies ongoing where they're looking at transmission, and so we do know that it protects you against severe disease, protects you against hospitalization. And the question you have to, you know, dig into a little deeper, using specimens from the UM studies and ongoing following of participants and their familial cohorts, is to look at this. And that's the work that's happening right now. We think the preliminary data shows that it is transmission blocking, at least from I believe it's the Fiser and Maderna vaccines that we have preliminary data from UM. But it's sort of a wait and see situation where we hope to continue to see good data that shows us that it is, well, wait for how long, Lauren? I was looking at the CDC guidelines about you know what fully vaccinated people can and cannot do, and it says until more is known to keep socially distancing, etcetera, etcetera. Until more is known. Really is the operative line there? How long until more is known? Yeah? I think so. We already have the preliminary study. I believe it was out of Israel that shows that the Fiser vaccine might block transmission UM, which is promising for the rest of the release for both of the m R and A vaccines UM. So I think the until more is known is actually right around the corner. We continue to learn more and more every day about these vaccines UM, and the transmission piece is really important, but it's it's also important to remember that transmission blocking only happens when you get the vaccine, so UM that all of that work is also happening to encourage people to get vaccine UM as we continue to learn about this piece is really really important. So UM making sure that people are reporting if they have breakthrough cases, going to their doctor, getting tested regularly, all that gives us more and more information about whether or not we're seeing transmission happening. So, Lauren, I want to talk about one vaccine in particular, obviously in the news this week is Johnson and Johnson's. Are you surprised that there hasn't been a conclusion out of the CDC and the advisory panel yet and that one might not come until late next week at the earliest. I think we were hoping to see UM out of that meeting that just happened UM the day before yesterday. I believe it was UM a decision. We understand that, you know, this is sort of science happening in real time, and so where many more people are exposed to the process, but it can happen that they want more information. I would love to see an outcome out of that next meeting for a determination. I think the sooner we can get back to giving J and J vaccine, even if it is to a slightly different population. The Better Visor's CEO says, we'll probably need boosters, maybe even a third dose. I just talked this morning to the Cure Vac CEO out of Tubing in Germany. He said, it's it's likely as well. Are we going to be in a situation where we continue to get boosters from these vaccines. Yeah, I think that there's a good chance that we will need boosters for these vaccines. That that it perhaps it will look something along the lines of how we get our vaccine where the the vaccine strains are are evaluated during the course of the year and then updated and boosters are given. I mean, I think in an ideal world, you could even if we see that this booster schedule is similar to something like flu, where you could put those vaccines together and have one, you know, vaccine that covers both flu and covid or um flu covid in RSC, you know, all the all the all of the the sort of seasonal diseases that we might potentially be exposed to that we do have vaccine for. It'll take some work. Um and you know MODERNA and Fiser are already updating their vaccine that I think MODERNA already has an update based on UM the B one I believe it's the B one one seven variant UM. So the work is happening to update the vaccines now, right, and then boosters will be given. So, Laura, that's the booster. But when it comes to just the initial inoculation as many as one in three vaccines in the US are going unused in some states, some in the South in particular. That's basically as signed demand is slowing down. What do you chalk that up to? Is that just hesitancy? I think it's a mix of hesitancy and access. So the key with fixing hesitancy is once you convince someone that the vaccine is safe and effective and that they should get it, and they make that decision, you have to make it available for them, UM and they have to be able to get it. So making sure that you have vaccine site set up in places that populations that are a little harder to reach can access, or people who maybe don't have transportation or can't take off work for half a day to wait in line at a mass vaccination site, making it easy to get the way we do with the flu vaccine UM. And so the hesitation piece is really going to have to focus on messaging why this vaccine is safe, right, reading why it's effective and important, but also finding out what what is the barrier for them, what would do they have concerns about, and trying to answer those concerns. All right, Lauren, thanks very much. Laurence hour there from John Johns Hopkins Universe. It as we have learned, uh, certainly during this pandemic. Anyone can get famous on social media, whether it's TikTok, YouTube or Instagram, but it's a lot easier to make a living there if you're white. Bloomberg's were needed Young In collaboration with Bloomberg, Quicktake explores how marketers are under paying black influencers while pushing Black lives matter in this program. In this Bloomberg Radio special report, when I first started on TikTok, it was already a big talk about how much the biggest influencer on the app was making at the time. Comparing that to what I was getting offered, I could tell. Twenty two year old Sydney McCrae is an influencer and choreographer. She's known widely for creating a viral dance to Magan the Stallion six positive club banger Captain Hook. McCray noticed a pay gap in the industry yes soon as she first started making beauty tutorials on YouTube about a year ago, and after the viral post where she explained her dance step by step, the popular videos attracted more than four hundred thousand likes within weeks of posting. Many of TikTok's top stars performed their versions of McRae's choreography, also helping the song soar in popularity. Then in April, Megan V. Stallion herself joined in and McCray started gaining followers by the thousands. Now she has one point one million TikTok followers and she's verified. But she and other black digital content creator said none of that talent or impact mattered in the multibillion dollar global market for brand endorsement on social media. As a content creator, seeing all of the things that we can do for an artist or a company, in receiving such little pay for our artistic creations, it was a slap in the face. Really, boy, that's why your hairline going tobaccio net. Then there's influencer in sketch comic Kinney Knox, who started posting videos on the now defunct six second video app Vine. The twenty two year old followers swelled to one point six million, and he became one of the top creators on the app. Yet he did not get any offers for brand deals. But he noticed his non black peers who didn't have as many followers or activity as him did get work with the big brands. It was weird because it was like I'm going viral with every video, but no company is even looking my way. When it comes to twenty five year old Landon Moss, this influencer and actor once had a huge brand deal with a couple of other influencers on the same contracts. I come to find out that they had made like devil of what I was making, and one of them had way less followers. In me, it was just weird to me that he had made more money than me with less followers. And then to think about like what I was originally offered, Like what did they offer him? He some up the influencer pay gap Like this. Racism isn't exclusive to a certain field, and so even when you have new fields like the influencer industry, it's gonna make its way in there too, mccraine mos said Knox tell Bloomberg Quick Take. White influencers have reposted their work or stolen their ideas which then went viral on those accounts, but they the original creators, got no credit. People take advantage of like black creatives like this trend and it's all fun, and then so on profits off something that a black career started, and then they get praise and fame, and you know, and when that's just the piece of us and it doesn't stop there. These influencers say they have to be extra careful about what they say, where, how they look, what causes they support, so they won't offend any of the brands. Meanwhile, they say they're white peers get away with more explicit posts with merely a slap on the wrist from big brands. One of the reasons why it's been such a difficult experience for many black creators is because traditionally, in Hollywood, racial biases have tended to flow from the top. Executives hire white directors and producers, who in turn work with white casting agents who cast white actors. Whenever black talent is considered, it's often for roles or projects that specifically require it. Social media companies have often promoted diversity initiatives, but in practice they're not much different. Inter Summer, when the police killing of George Floyd forced America into a racial reckoning and sparked an international Black Lives Matter movement, brands gained a strong desire to work with black influencers, and black talent managers started getting more calls for their black creators. Knox interpreted those moves this way. Appreciate the brands working with the black creators and starting to go in that direction, but it wasn't a trend that they wanted to work when more black creators because they felt guilty. Knox Masson McRae are hoping for a more equitable influencer industry going forward. What I hope to see change in the industry is the black creatives get the credit that we deserve, genuine appreciation for Black creators, not just when it's convenient, and even playing field when it comes to creators of all colors, specifically black creators, giving them that same energy that they're giving the white creators, and they're hoping hashtag higher Black Creatives is not just a trend or relegated to the diversity section, but baked into the culture of brands in New York. I'm rent a Young. Bloomberg Radio are many thanks to Ronda Young along with Bloomberg Quick Take for that special report and Matt and I are so lucky Rnita is joining us now in studio or joining me now in studio, I should say here in New York, Rnita, it was a great report. You're here in spirit, Matt. Where is the sense for the reporting you did of where the impetus needs to come from for this to really change in a sticky way? You know, I think that the sense is it needs to not only come from a real place, but that that's really what people mean when they say intentionality. It needs to be an intentional elevation of these black talent and other talent of color to the same level that their white counterparts see, experience feel. So what about the the income they generate for um, for the platforms. Have you seen that black influeners influencers generate the same amount of income for a YouTube, for example, than their white counterparts. Well, in the article that Sarah Fryer wrote for Bloomberg Business Week, it was in our diversity issue, UM, you can see that one of the influencers said he made get this one tenth what his white counterparts made, and he had more followers and more engagement, more content as well. Is there pressure from users on the platform for this to change? We've seen that, you know, with investments, investors are making companies pushed towards e s G. Do TikTok users have that same power? You know, that's pretty interesting question there. I would imagine that there is a conversation going on about that, but I do not know. Uh, definitely, but you'd expect something like that to happen, especially as the work that you and Sarah Fryer have done gets more play. Thanks very much for that report, Rndy Young. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller three. Put on false Sweeney I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio.