We need a vaccine that's medically effective & trusted: Doctor

Dr. Alison Haddock, Emergency Medicine Physician & Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, joins Yahoo Finance's Zack Guzman to discuss the latest coronavirus developments, as Bill Gates says the FDA has lost some credibility during the pandemic.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Interesting update in terms of the data that we've been getting after a noted improvement as we saw daily cases continue to fall compared to their same day seven days ago when we compare week over week. Today notched an unexpected uptick, which is something that we have not seen nationally. Cases came in at 31,780 on Monday. That was up by about 5,000 versus what we saw last week.

And also a big name in the vaccine front here, as we've been highlighting. Bill Gates is one of those names throwing a lot of money into vaccine research, and he has now come out as a new critic here in both the FDA and the CDC, saying they both lost a little bit of credibility in the way that they've been handling this pandemic. Of course, remember that we've seen, you know, the FDA get a lot of pressure here and maybe caving to political pressure to move a little bit quicker than some medical experts wanted, especially when we think about treatments out there in this pandemic.

So joining us now to discuss all that with us is Dr. Alison Haddock, emergency medicine physician and assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Haddock, thanks for coming back on the show. I guess we'll start there. I mean, Bill Gates is a very important man in all this. He's been throwing millions of dollars at the problem in vaccine research. What do you make of his point there that some of these health agencies that have been, you know, the most respected in the world now may be caving to political pressure here?

ALISON HADDOCK: You know, I think it's a valid point. And if Bill Gates has concerns, then we know that there are other members of the general public that have concerns as well. And to make sure that we're recovering from this pandemic, we really need there to be a lot of public trust in the treatments and in the vaccinations. Because if we come up with an effective vaccination but no one trusts the regulatory agencies and the companies that are making it and won't get the vaccination, it's not going to do as much as it could to help us, you know, move through this pandemic.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, I mean, we've heard from President Trump tie the expectations, the timeline here, to election day. He told Fox News today that he's not doing it for political reasons. He just wants the vaccine fast. But when we think about that, that wouldn't be a major problem here, if we see more Americans say that it's moving too fast, and that's what polls seem to be showing.

In the last few months, we've got a couple of different ones out showing that a majority of Americans worry that it's being rushed, and 1/3 actually say they wouldn't want to get that vaccine-- coronavirus vaccine-- if it came out and was authorized by the FDA. So how important is it to make sure that you don't lose faith when it comes to Americans saying that they would get this vaccine?

ALISON HADDOCK: I think there's a lot more to having an effective vaccine that really helps us turn things around with the coronavirus than just the science of having an effective vaccine. If we have an effective vaccine but it's too expensive and no one can afford it, then that's not helpful. If we have an effective vaccine but we don't have a way to distribute it, then that's not going to be helpful. And if we have an effective vaccine but the public doesn't trust it and no one wants to get it, then that's not going to be helpful.

We need a vaccine that's both medically effective and, you know, trusted and disseminated to the public in a way that people can access it and use it. And anything that the government is doing to support that is important. So you know, some of it was just let's prepare to disseminate the vaccine. That's great because it is going to be a big logistical effort. We wish everyone got the flu shot, but they don't because of, you know, structural health care problems, to a large extent. So getting ready is great, but pushing things too quickly so that we lose public trust is not going to help us.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, and politics, I mean, whether it's the vaccine front or just lockdowns, regulations, things that we've seen increasingly getting intertwined here. I know it's an election year, but even so. I mean, we saw the case in Pennsylvania where a federal judge ruled it was unconstitutional to set occupancy limits, which is what the governor there had done. President Trump had been retweeting that all of yesterday when we got that ruling.

But I want to get your take on what that means about rolling back some of the restrictions maybe in other states or nationwide here. Because as we were just discussing, the new IHME model predicts, if things do roll back, if we do see easing restrictions, we're going to see roughly about four times the amount of daily deaths in the US when we get to the winter months.

I mean, that's a big step up. So how would you equate that? Because baseline, if things stay the way we are right now, they only predict about 3,000 daily deaths, which would only be slightly above the peak we saw in March, April. So how does this all shake out in your mind?

ALISON HADDOCK: I think part of what we need is better science. I think the IHME is doing what they can with the science that we have but that we still don't have as much science as we should at this point, months into the pandemic, about, you know, what the impact of these occupancy restrictions is and what the exact impact of restaurants being open and bars being open is. So more science is better, and it's also better because it lets people make their own decisions. So just because bars are open doesn't mean we have to go to the bars.

So I'm hoping that a lot of members of the public, as more and more people's lives are touched by coronavirus-- they're seeing friends become sick. They're seeing family members die. But even if the politics are getting in the way of public health regulations that we'll see individuals, as much as possible, making the best choices that they can for their families and that that will help us.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, to that point, I mean, I don't want to stress this. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a medical expert. But it would seem that since we did see upticks before on three-day weekends, whether it be Memorial Day, 4th of July, I mean, it seems like these next two weeks, in terms of, you know, the uptick that we saw today-- a bit of an anomaly, but it's only one data point-- I mean, how important do these next two weeks come-- or become in, I guess, trying to build out that data so we can make appropriate policy decisions as we approach these potentially dangerous months?

ALISON HADDOCK: I think that uptick that we're seeing today could still be a result of Labor Day Weekend. You know, the virus takes a while to incubate. And part of what we're seeing could be that people were gathering on Labor Day Weekend, and that's the impact we're seeing. I think it's going to get harder as we get into the winter. I think the holiday season is going to be tough. There's a lot of family traditions around, you know, Thanksgiving in America, and that's an indoor holiday for most people.

You know, I live in Texas, where we're actually starting to enter more of our outdoor season as things cool off so we're more comfortable outside. So I'm sort of more hopeful for the southern states right now. But I'm worried that as winter hits the northern states and, you know, we hit indoor season, schools start to reconvene, fall holidays that happen indoors start happening that that could have a negative impact on our case numbers. So the IHME model could be more correct than we'd like to see.