Joe Biden reached his 100 days in office this past week and we know where Republicans stand on his agenda, but what about the progressive wing of his own party? The news so far is good, they feel heard and are happy with some of his proposals, although the big worry is having a plan to push anything through a divided Congress. Ginger Gibson, deputy Washington digital editor at NBC News, joins us for this, what to expect from the Rudy Giuliani investigation, and more celebrities running for office.
Next, the coronavirus pandemic is still ongoing, but we have gotten parts of it under control. Vaccines are being administered and thanks to the work of various countries, we have treatments that can help spare people some of the most severe infections. One such example is the U.K., not so much a pandemic success story, but their Covid-19 trials is. Through their Recovery Trial project, they were able to mobilize a massive clinical trial that tested various treatments and ultimately found a cheap and widely used steroid that became key in treating the virus, saving an estimated 1 million lives worldwide. Dylan Scott, senior correspondent at Vox, joins us for more.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Monday, May three. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. Joe Biden reached his
one hundred days in office this past week, and we
know a Republicans stand on his agenda, But what about
the progressive wing of his own party. The news so
far is good. They feel heard and are happy with
(00:22):
some of his proposals, although the big worry is having
a plan to push anything through a divided Congress. Ginger Gibson,
Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, joins us for
this what to expect from the Rudy Giuliani investigation and
more celebrities running for office next. The coronavirus pandemic is
still ongoing, but we have gotten parts of it under control.
(00:45):
Vaccines are being administered, and thanks to the work of
various countries, we have treatments that can help people spare
some of the most severe infections. One such example is
the UK, not so much a pandemic success story, but
their COVID nineteen trials were. Through their Recovery Trial project,
they were able to mobilize a massive clinical trial that
tested various treatments and ultimately found a cheap and widely
(01:08):
used steroid that became key in treating the virus, and
it saved an estimated one million lives worldwide. Dylan Scott, Senior,
corresponding at Box, joins us for more. It's news without
the noise. Let's dive in. I stand here tonight, one
day shy from the hundred day in my administration, hundred
(01:33):
days since I took the oath of office and left
in my hand off our family Bible and inherited a
nation we all did that was in Christ. Joining us
now is Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News.
Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks for having me. We've
seen the first one days of Biden's presidency already. He
(01:53):
just unveiled another big spending plan. This is the American
Famili's plan. He's well on his way. We know how
Republicans feel about all of it. Um, but your colleagues
had a pretty interesting piece about how progressives in the
Democratic Party are feeling about Biden. You know, for a
long time there was a lot of worries about what
he do. You know, they consider him kind of an institutionalist,
(02:15):
the moderate would he, you know, do anything for their agenda.
Uh so what are they saying? What are they seeing
in President Biden? That's right. We had a great story
from two of our reporters, Outside Swald and Sahil Kapor,
taking a look at how progressive really were unhappy with
Biden as the nominee. They thought he was just not
going to do enough, And it turns out a hundred
(02:37):
days into his administrations, are really happy with what they've
gotten so far. The COVID stimulus package they felt was
very progressive. And then you look at some of the
other proposals he's making, things like immigration, things like his
infrastructure and job package, things like his family Plan that
he rolled out at his address to Congress. They feel
like it has a lot of liberal ideals and proposals
(02:59):
in it. And I think also really important, they feel
like Biden is listening to him if they call, if
they ask for something, they may not get it, but
they feel like there's a line of communication there and
then he's available to hear their point of view, let
them make their case as he's weighing all of these
different factions and elements in the party. Yeah, I think
one of the quotes from the lawmakers was that Biden
(03:20):
told him keep pushing, keep making us honest, and and
that that resonates with them. You know, they felt like, yeah,
they have that line of communication, let's see how far
we can go. So, I mean that's great, right. I
don't know how well that that kind of news will
play on the other side, right, because they'll pin him
more as a leftist. But the big worry a lot
of them still have is, you know, he made made
(03:40):
a lot of promises, but how do you make it
happen With the makeup of Congress and the way the
Senate is, It's still gonna be tough. Do they even
have a plan to get there? Your point is great.
You know there's gonna be some apprehension from the other
side about is he too liberal? But we did see
some pulling on his hundred days. A great story also
from styhill Um when of our reporters about how America
(04:02):
still used Biden is quite moderate. In fact, they view
him more as a moderate than they did at Obama
at this point in his administration. And so I think
that there's still that that give and take, and people
know Joe Biden he's not done anything that really surprises them,
and that is that has helped. This past week, we
also saw Rudy Giuliani his apartment in his office get
(04:22):
raided by the FBI. They they're trying to see if
there's any involvement he had with helping to oust the
former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Ivanovitch. We saw him
do the media arounds, We saw his son do the
media arounds, all in his defense. What are we expecting
to see about out of this investigation. Yeah, we saw
the FBI show up and request several pieces of electronics
(04:45):
from Rudy Giuliani's apartment in his office. They asked for
cell phones, they asked for laptops, And this was really
a sign that this investigation into Giuliani that started under
the Trump administration continues. And I think that we understand
from sources that they're investigating whether or not he broke
lobbying laws, which are generally the kind of things that
(05:06):
don't make big headlines. But the idea that he was
lobbying or requesting things from the government, maybe from President
Trump himself on the behalf of his clients without registering,
which is a federal crime. And I think this is
just not going to go away, and there's a lot
of sort of attention in there, I think in the
Biden administration. Biden told my colleague Craig Melvin interview on
(05:27):
Thursday that he was not made aware or briefed about
the Giuliani raid before it happened, and I think that
he's trying to stay as far away from it as
he possibly can, since this is something that could continue. Lastly,
for this week, I just wanted to talk about a
couple of pieces I've been seeing all floating around. You know,
some are calling it the Trump effect, but it's been
happening for a long time. Celebrities running for office. Obviously,
(05:50):
we saw Ronald Reagan, we saw Arnold Schwarzeneger. Right now
we see Caitlin Jenner for running for governor in California.
Matthew McConaughey, there's buzz about him. You know, they have
massive fan base, is not a lot of political experience
or experience in office. Um So those times can be difficult, right,
running huge states. Um So, what do we can expect
that of this? Yeah, we're seeing him in the round
(06:12):
of celebrity candidates, and like you said, this isn't new.
We've seen celebrities running for office before. Matthew McConaughey has
been in Texas for a while. He works at the
University of Texas as an adjunct professor, so he's been
trying to sort of build his credentials there. Caitlin Jenner
doesn't have quite the government experience, but has been outspoken,
although we saw just immediate criticism of her for having
(06:34):
supported Donald Trump. Would be very difficult to get elected,
I think in California because of that, but they're trying
to find ways, and I think that Trump and others
have sort of set a president that you can come
into politics without any government experience, and we're seeing I
do think that Trump, because he struggled so much to
get anything done in that time period he was president,
is maybe making it a little bit harder for these folks.
(06:55):
But I don't think these are the last of the
celebrities we're going to see running for office. J Gibson,
Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, Thank you very
much for joining us, Thanks for having me. It looks
like dex methi zone does work for severely ill patients.
(07:18):
They seem to be dying less frequently, and so they
wrote up what they knew, they released it, and I
mean it literally seems like a matter of hours in
the UK, and I think almost as quickly in the
rest of the world. Dex and methi zone became a
part of the standard of care for COVID nineteen for
severely ill patient. Joining us now is Dylan Scott, senior
correspondent at Vox. Thanks for joining us, Dylan, thanks for
(07:40):
having me. They're at Vox right now. You guys have
a series going on. It's called The Pandemic Playbook, and
you're exploring successes and setbacks of countries around the world
in combating COVID nineteen. And now that we kind of
have this moment to breathe a little bit, now that
more vaccines are getting out there and in some parts
cases are going down, you know, it's a great opportunity
(08:01):
to look back at kind of how we got here,
because I remember at the peak of the pandemic, we're
trying to figure out how to control this. Really, we're
throwing everything at we could as as far as treatments go,
We're throwing everything everything we could at COVID to see
what would work. And the UK as a particular success
story with this in the form of their recovery trials.
(08:24):
The way their national health system is set up, they
were able to get a lot of hospitals on board
with this and start testing out different treatments to see
what would work. And they had two big successes in
dexametha zone, which is the steroid that is widely available
and used, and then the other one, which I know
I'm gonna butcher. The name is tossa losing MAB. I
(08:44):
want to say I can better. So, so Dylan tell
us a little bit about how the UK really stepped
up with this program and help us find some of
these treatments. Yeah, so thank you for introducing the project.
And the idea that we had behind it was it
would be really hard to try to look around the
world and figure out who had the best overall COVID
(09:05):
nineteen response, because like, how how would you really measure that?
And so what we decided to do instead was look
at countries that had excelled in a particular way. And
the UK, I think is a good example of this
because like they have actually in a plenty of ways
they have struggled during the COVID nineteen pandemic. You know,
they have nearly as high per capita deaths and cases
as any country in the world, but they have really
(09:26):
stood out in medical research and specifically in researching potential
COVID nineteen treatments. So, like you say, you know, last spring,
nobody knew would work on COVID nineteen. This was a
totally new disease. There was no existing treatment plan. Hospitals
and nurses and doctors were kind of making it up
on the fly. So very early on in February, actually
(09:49):
there was a researcher at Oxford University, Martin Landre, who
kind of saw this coming. You know, there were still
only twenty cases in the UK at the time, but
you know, it was obvious that that number would soon
grow by a lot, and of course it did. And
so he was like, all right, we need to figure
out what treatments work, but we need to do it
in a kind of scientifically rigorous way. You know, he
(10:09):
was somebody his whole life his work had been like
figuring out how to do big trials, big clinical trials,
you know, using big data to try to answer really
simple questions. And so he thought that that was a
model that could work during COVID nineteen because like, at
the end of the day, you just want to figure
out is the patient living or in the patient dying,
(10:30):
Like that's the most important thing when you're in the
middle of an emergency. And so he started brainstorming this
a little bit and he reached out to somebody who
runs a big medical charity in the UK, and this
person advised him to get in touch with another researcher
named Peter Horby. And Peter has actually been for a
long time, all the way back to the first Stars
crisis at the beginning of the two thousands. He has
(10:52):
been thinking about a related but different problem, which is like,
how do we run clinical trials in the middle of
a crisis? You know, that's a very easy thing to do.
The whole process tends to move really slowly, you know.
You gave the example of in prior outbreaks of you know,
it would take like three weeks to draft a plan
for a clinical trial and then it would sit in
(11:13):
front of an ethics board for two more weeks and suddenly,
like you know, a couple of months have gone by
and you don't really know anything more than you did before.
And so those two got together and they thought all right,
how can we set up a really big trial that's
just tries to answer a really simple question, which treatments
help patients survive COVID nineteen, and how can we do
(11:34):
it in a way that would be as scientistically rigorous
as we can do under the circumstances. And so they
came up with a model of how to do that,
and then they kind of took their pitch to the NHS, which,
as I imagine people know, but in case they don't,
the UK has a single payer, government run healthcare system
where not only is everybody ensured by the government, but
(11:55):
the vast majority of hospitals are owned by the government,
run by the government. You know, doctors are employees of
the government. So is this unified health system And that
was really appealing to them because it's like, all right,
like we you know here in the US, if you
wanted to run a trial like that, you have to
like get a bunch of different hospital systems to coordinate
with each other and agree to share data, and all
(12:15):
this kind of bureaucratic all these bureaucratic obstacles would stand
in your way with the recovery trial, this program that
they had dreamed up, they basically took the pitch to
the heads because Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England have
their own kind of NHS systems, but even though they're
all connected, and so they took this pitch to them
and said like, hey, we think we've got an idea
(12:35):
about how to do this. Would you all be interested?
And you know this again was when the pandemic was
really starting to take off. NHS said yes, And this
was about of maybe maybe it's week period from when
they first met when they were like drafting the proposal
and pitching NHS on it, and NHS was like, that
sounds great. They sent out a letter to all of
(12:57):
the hospitals in the country saying like we think this
is really important, um, and we'd really like you to participate.
And by the end of it, each day, you know,
to date they have enrolled more than thirty five thousand
patients across a hundred and seventy five hospitals in these
clinical trials. And what that's allowed them to do is
like you know, there have been some trials attempted in
the US, but those trials were maybe enrolling like a
(13:19):
couple hundred people. But like for the dex of methizone trial.
You had thousands of patients, they had really big data
sets to work with, so as soon as June of
they were able to identify that, hey, it looks like
dex methison does work for severely ill patients. They seem
to be dying less frequently. And so they wrote up
what they knew, they released it, and I mean it
(13:41):
literally seems like a matter of hours in the UK,
and I think almost as quickly in the rest of
the world, dex of methizone became a part of the
standard of care for COVID nineteam for severely ill patients.
And there was actually an estimate that just came out
in March from the UK government that projected that about
one million lives had been saved because the use of
dexa methodzone around the world. So it's really a kind
(14:03):
of stunning achievement in medical research to set up a
trial this big, this quickly, to get results of that fast,
and for people to have the confidence in it that
it became the standard of care all over the world
in just a matter of months from the beginning of
this trial getting dreamed up. And I remember when they
said you know, hey, this widely available, very cheap steroid
(14:25):
dex metha zone could be a game changer at least
right now while we were still heads are spinning everywhere
trying to figure out how to treat this. And I
remember when that came out, and you're right in the
US United States, they did an emergency use authorization right away,
they cleared it and boom, right away we're starting to
put that into treatment. So in the end, I mean,
they tried out nine repurpose drugs. They did a convalescent
(14:47):
plasma one and then UH an antibody cocktail. But this
was the successes that they came out with Dexa metha
zone and the other one touch the list of zamab
excuse me for yeah, and and those often are used
together in treatment. The other big part of this, you know,
you spoke about the collaboration between all the hospitals and
everybody jumping on board, but the public also they're in
(15:08):
the UK very willing to be part of these trials
as well to help figure out what to do with it.
And that's one of those things where you know, you
wonder how much you know. The NHS is obviously just
kind of baked into the social fabric of the UK
and has been for a long time, and people there
love it for the most part, though there are certainly
issues that come up, and so you wonder, you know,
(15:29):
and then just having that level of trust between the
patients and the health system. You wonder how much that
kind of created this kind of buy in for patients,
And I certainly wonder, I hope, but I do wonder
how whether we'd get the same kind of cooperation in
the US with our fractured health system and the level
of distrust we tend to have an institutions here. But yeah,
to your point, I mean, it was funny. I talked
(15:51):
to a patient who participated in the toke that's just
what I'm gonna call it trial, and you know, he
was pretty sick. He was on he was on oxygen
at the hospital into him of it was like, it's
a no brainer, like you know, of you know, I'm
sitting here, I'm sick, I feel horrible. You guys think
you've got something that might make me feel better than
of course I'm going to do it. You know, it
sounded like you didn't think too much about it. Something
(16:12):
he was trying to be an altruist or anything like that.
It was just like, yeah, sure that makes sense to me.
And I did think it was interesting. You know. One
of the things you couldn't plan but that worked out
really nicely was how quickly that dex and methozone result
came in. Because I talked to one of the nurses
who's administering the trial at a at a hospital in
Cornwall and she said, you know, it was such a
relief to her and just became so much easier to
(16:34):
kind of pitch patients on the recovery trial because she
could point to dex and metho zone and say, like,
through this program, we have already found something that works
that's going to hopefully get you out of the hospital
quicker and certainly make sure that you survive COVID nineteen.
So we've already got that, We've already figured out one thing,
and now we're trying to test all this other stuff
to see if it would help. You know, would you
(16:54):
like to participate? And so I think having that kind
of proof point of like this can work, We can
find stuff if if people are willing to cooperate and
take part really probably proved valuable. Over the rest of
the year, because of course they have, as you said,
they've continued to try more treatments. They still have a
trial going now for the antibody cocktail that you mentioned,
and it doesn't seem like they've had any trouble at
(17:16):
all getting patients to enroll. The only issue, which is
the best possible problem to have, is that, you know,
the UK has done pretty well on vaccinations, and so
the number of hospitalizations has been going down, which means
there's less patients available to participate in the trial. But like,
if that's the problem that we're dealing with, then nothing
could be better, right, right. And And the last thing
(17:37):
just to kind of that I wanted to focus on
briefly is these recovery trials were big and very simple.
As you mentioned, are people dying? Yes or no? Those
are the simple questions. Some of the more precise things,
you know, is would it be good for these subgroups,
these people that have certain ailments. You don't really get
to explore that that much, but at least in the
quickness of it, in the emergency mode, we were able
(17:59):
to get some good news out of all of it.
I mean, there were undoubtedly some trade offs you lose
some of that kind of refinement in the results because yeah,
you're like you're just enrolling whoever happens to show up
at the hospital. You know, you do have kind of
a control group. You set one group aside as a
control group, you treat the other groups. You compare the
two of those. But like, that's about as far as
as it can go in terms of turning this into
(18:21):
a truly random, controlled experiment. And so yeah, you're a
little bit at the whim of whatever patients happened to
show up. It's hard to Yeah, the Peter Horby gave
the example of somebody at w h O asking about
giving toke to a seventy year old diabetic and he
was like, I can't answer that question. We did not
study that specific subpopulation. And so that is the sacrifice
(18:41):
you make. That's a tradeoff you make. I think some
of the people who've been if not totally critical, at
least maybe a little like all right, like let's slow
down and try to make sure that we're really confident
about these results. Some of those people have certainly said,
like we need to be careful about how we present
these results. We need to be transparent about what some
of the un certainty is. But even those folks will say,
(19:03):
like in the middle of an emergency, this is about
as good of a program as we could have hoped
to set up. You know, they use word like stellar
to describe it. So you know, I'm yet to really
come across anybody who thinks like this is not a
model for how we should handle treatment research during the
next pandemic. Dylan Scott, Senior correspondent at Vox, thank you
(19:24):
very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. That's
it for today. Join us on social media at Daily
Dive pod on both Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment,
give us a rating, and tell us the stories that
you're interested in. Follow us on I Heart Radio, or
(19:46):
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of The
Daily Dives produced by Victor Wright and engineered by Tony Sorrentina.
I'm Oscar Ramirez and this was your Daily Dive. M
It's Monday, May three. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. Joe Biden reached his
one hundred days in office this past week, and we
know a Republicans stand on his agenda, But what about
the progressive wing of his own party. The news so
far is good. They feel heard and are happy with
(00:22):
some of his proposals, although the big worry is having
a plan to push anything through a divided Congress. Ginger Gibson,
Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, joins us for
this what to expect from the Rudy Giuliani investigation and
more celebrities running for office next. The coronavirus pandemic is
still ongoing, but we have gotten parts of it under control.
(00:45):
Vaccines are being administered, and thanks to the work of
various countries, we have treatments that can help people spare
some of the most severe infections. One such example is
the UK, not so much a pandemic success story, but
their COVID nineteen trials were. Through their Recovery Trial project,
they were able to mobilize a massive clinical trial that
tested various treatments and ultimately found a cheap and widely
(01:08):
used steroid that became key in treating the virus, and
it saved an estimated one million lives worldwide. Dylan Scott, Senior,
corresponding at Box, joins us for more. It's news without
the noise. Let's dive in. I stand here tonight, one
day shy from the hundred day in my administration, hundred
(01:33):
days since I took the oath of office and left
in my hand off our family Bible and inherited a
nation we all did that was in Christ. Joining us
now is Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News.
Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks for having me. We've
seen the first one days of Biden's presidency already. He
(01:53):
just unveiled another big spending plan. This is the American
Famili's plan. He's well on his way. We know how
Republicans feel about all of it. Um, but your colleagues
had a pretty interesting piece about how progressives in the
Democratic Party are feeling about Biden. You know, for a
long time there was a lot of worries about what
he do. You know, they consider him kind of an institutionalist,
(02:15):
the moderate would he, you know, do anything for their agenda.
Uh so what are they saying? What are they seeing
in President Biden? That's right. We had a great story
from two of our reporters, Outside Swald and Sahil Kapor,
taking a look at how progressive really were unhappy with
Biden as the nominee. They thought he was just not
going to do enough, And it turns out a hundred
(02:37):
days into his administrations, are really happy with what they've
gotten so far. The COVID stimulus package they felt was
very progressive. And then you look at some of the
other proposals he's making, things like immigration, things like his
infrastructure and job package, things like his family Plan that
he rolled out at his address to Congress. They feel
like it has a lot of liberal ideals and proposals
(02:59):
in it. And I think also really important, they feel
like Biden is listening to him if they call, if
they ask for something, they may not get it, but
they feel like there's a line of communication there and
then he's available to hear their point of view, let
them make their case as he's weighing all of these
different factions and elements in the party. Yeah, I think
one of the quotes from the lawmakers was that Biden
(03:20):
told him keep pushing, keep making us honest, and and
that that resonates with them. You know, they felt like, yeah,
they have that line of communication, let's see how far
we can go. So, I mean that's great, right. I
don't know how well that that kind of news will
play on the other side, right, because they'll pin him
more as a leftist. But the big worry a lot
of them still have is, you know, he made made
(03:40):
a lot of promises, but how do you make it
happen With the makeup of Congress and the way the
Senate is, It's still gonna be tough. Do they even
have a plan to get there? Your point is great.
You know there's gonna be some apprehension from the other
side about is he too liberal? But we did see
some pulling on his hundred days. A great story also
from styhill Um when of our reporters about how America
(04:02):
still used Biden is quite moderate. In fact, they view
him more as a moderate than they did at Obama
at this point in his administration. And so I think
that there's still that that give and take, and people
know Joe Biden he's not done anything that really surprises them,
and that is that has helped. This past week, we
also saw Rudy Giuliani his apartment in his office get
(04:22):
raided by the FBI. They they're trying to see if
there's any involvement he had with helping to oust the
former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Ivanovitch. We saw him
do the media arounds, We saw his son do the
media arounds, all in his defense. What are we expecting
to see about out of this investigation. Yeah, we saw
the FBI show up and request several pieces of electronics
(04:45):
from Rudy Giuliani's apartment in his office. They asked for
cell phones, they asked for laptops, And this was really
a sign that this investigation into Giuliani that started under
the Trump administration continues. And I think that we understand
from sources that they're investigating whether or not he broke
lobbying laws, which are generally the kind of things that
(05:06):
don't make big headlines. But the idea that he was
lobbying or requesting things from the government, maybe from President
Trump himself on the behalf of his clients without registering,
which is a federal crime. And I think this is
just not going to go away, and there's a lot
of sort of attention in there, I think in the
Biden administration. Biden told my colleague Craig Melvin interview on
(05:27):
Thursday that he was not made aware or briefed about
the Giuliani raid before it happened, and I think that
he's trying to stay as far away from it as
he possibly can, since this is something that could continue. Lastly,
for this week, I just wanted to talk about a
couple of pieces I've been seeing all floating around. You know,
some are calling it the Trump effect, but it's been
happening for a long time. Celebrities running for office. Obviously,
(05:50):
we saw Ronald Reagan, we saw Arnold Schwarzeneger. Right now
we see Caitlin Jenner for running for governor in California.
Matthew McConaughey, there's buzz about him. You know, they have
massive fan base, is not a lot of political experience
or experience in office. Um So those times can be difficult, right,
running huge states. Um So, what do we can expect
that of this? Yeah, we're seeing him in the round
(06:12):
of celebrity candidates, and like you said, this isn't new.
We've seen celebrities running for office before. Matthew McConaughey has
been in Texas for a while. He works at the
University of Texas as an adjunct professor, so he's been
trying to sort of build his credentials there. Caitlin Jenner
doesn't have quite the government experience, but has been outspoken,
although we saw just immediate criticism of her for having
(06:34):
supported Donald Trump. Would be very difficult to get elected,
I think in California because of that, but they're trying
to find ways, and I think that Trump and others
have sort of set a president that you can come
into politics without any government experience, and we're seeing I
do think that Trump, because he struggled so much to
get anything done in that time period he was president,
is maybe making it a little bit harder for these folks.
(06:55):
But I don't think these are the last of the
celebrities we're going to see running for office. J Gibson,
Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, Thank you very
much for joining us, Thanks for having me. It looks
like dex methi zone does work for severely ill patients.
(07:18):
They seem to be dying less frequently, and so they
wrote up what they knew, they released it, and I
mean it literally seems like a matter of hours in
the UK, and I think almost as quickly in the
rest of the world. Dex and methi zone became a
part of the standard of care for COVID nineteen for
severely ill patient. Joining us now is Dylan Scott, senior
correspondent at Vox. Thanks for joining us, Dylan, thanks for
(07:40):
having me. They're at Vox right now. You guys have
a series going on. It's called The Pandemic Playbook, and
you're exploring successes and setbacks of countries around the world
in combating COVID nineteen. And now that we kind of
have this moment to breathe a little bit, now that
more vaccines are getting out there and in some parts
cases are going down, you know, it's a great opportunity
(08:01):
to look back at kind of how we got here,
because I remember at the peak of the pandemic, we're
trying to figure out how to control this. Really, we're
throwing everything at we could as as far as treatments go,
We're throwing everything everything we could at COVID to see
what would work. And the UK as a particular success
story with this in the form of their recovery trials.
(08:24):
The way their national health system is set up, they
were able to get a lot of hospitals on board
with this and start testing out different treatments to see
what would work. And they had two big successes in
dexametha zone, which is the steroid that is widely available
and used, and then the other one, which I know
I'm gonna butcher. The name is tossa losing MAB. I
(08:44):
want to say I can better. So, so Dylan tell
us a little bit about how the UK really stepped
up with this program and help us find some of
these treatments. Yeah, so thank you for introducing the project.
And the idea that we had behind it was it
would be really hard to try to look around the
world and figure out who had the best overall COVID
(09:05):
nineteen response, because like, how how would you really measure that?
And so what we decided to do instead was look
at countries that had excelled in a particular way. And
the UK, I think is a good example of this
because like they have actually in a plenty of ways
they have struggled during the COVID nineteen pandemic. You know,
they have nearly as high per capita deaths and cases
as any country in the world, but they have really
(09:26):
stood out in medical research and specifically in researching potential
COVID nineteen treatments. So, like you say, you know, last spring,
nobody knew would work on COVID nineteen. This was a
totally new disease. There was no existing treatment plan. Hospitals
and nurses and doctors were kind of making it up
on the fly. So very early on in February, actually
(09:49):
there was a researcher at Oxford University, Martin Landre, who
kind of saw this coming. You know, there were still
only twenty cases in the UK at the time, but
you know, it was obvious that that number would soon
grow by a lot, and of course it did. And
so he was like, all right, we need to figure
out what treatments work, but we need to do it
in a kind of scientifically rigorous way. You know, he
(10:09):
was somebody his whole life his work had been like
figuring out how to do big trials, big clinical trials,
you know, using big data to try to answer really
simple questions. And so he thought that that was a
model that could work during COVID nineteen because like, at
the end of the day, you just want to figure
out is the patient living or in the patient dying,
(10:30):
Like that's the most important thing when you're in the
middle of an emergency. And so he started brainstorming this
a little bit and he reached out to somebody who
runs a big medical charity in the UK, and this
person advised him to get in touch with another researcher
named Peter Horby. And Peter has actually been for a
long time, all the way back to the first Stars
crisis at the beginning of the two thousands. He has
(10:52):
been thinking about a related but different problem, which is like,
how do we run clinical trials in the middle of
a crisis? You know, that's a very easy thing to do.
The whole process tends to move really slowly, you know.
You gave the example of in prior outbreaks of you know,
it would take like three weeks to draft a plan
for a clinical trial and then it would sit in
(11:13):
front of an ethics board for two more weeks and suddenly,
like you know, a couple of months have gone by
and you don't really know anything more than you did before.
And so those two got together and they thought all right,
how can we set up a really big trial that's
just tries to answer a really simple question, which treatments
help patients survive COVID nineteen, and how can we do
(11:34):
it in a way that would be as scientistically rigorous
as we can do under the circumstances. And so they
came up with a model of how to do that,
and then they kind of took their pitch to the NHS, which,
as I imagine people know, but in case they don't,
the UK has a single payer, government run healthcare system
where not only is everybody ensured by the government, but
(11:55):
the vast majority of hospitals are owned by the government,
run by the government. You know, doctors are employees of
the government. So is this unified health system And that
was really appealing to them because it's like, all right,
like we you know here in the US, if you
wanted to run a trial like that, you have to
like get a bunch of different hospital systems to coordinate
with each other and agree to share data, and all
(12:15):
this kind of bureaucratic all these bureaucratic obstacles would stand
in your way with the recovery trial, this program that
they had dreamed up, they basically took the pitch to
the heads because Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England have
their own kind of NHS systems, but even though they're
all connected, and so they took this pitch to them
and said like, hey, we think we've got an idea
(12:35):
about how to do this. Would you all be interested?
And you know this again was when the pandemic was
really starting to take off. NHS said yes, And this
was about of maybe maybe it's week period from when
they first met when they were like drafting the proposal
and pitching NHS on it, and NHS was like, that
sounds great. They sent out a letter to all of
(12:57):
the hospitals in the country saying like we think this
is really important, um, and we'd really like you to participate.
And by the end of it, each day, you know,
to date they have enrolled more than thirty five thousand
patients across a hundred and seventy five hospitals in these
clinical trials. And what that's allowed them to do is
like you know, there have been some trials attempted in
the US, but those trials were maybe enrolling like a
(13:19):
couple hundred people. But like for the dex of methizone trial.
You had thousands of patients, they had really big data
sets to work with, so as soon as June of
they were able to identify that, hey, it looks like
dex methison does work for severely ill patients. They seem
to be dying less frequently. And so they wrote up
what they knew, they released it, and I mean it
(13:41):
literally seems like a matter of hours in the UK,
and I think almost as quickly in the rest of
the world, dex of methizone became a part of the
standard of care for COVID nineteam for severely ill patients.
And there was actually an estimate that just came out
in March from the UK government that projected that about
one million lives had been saved because the use of
dexa methodzone around the world. So it's really a kind
(14:03):
of stunning achievement in medical research to set up a
trial this big, this quickly, to get results of that fast,
and for people to have the confidence in it that
it became the standard of care all over the world
in just a matter of months from the beginning of
this trial getting dreamed up. And I remember when they
said you know, hey, this widely available, very cheap steroid
(14:25):
dex metha zone could be a game changer at least
right now while we were still heads are spinning everywhere
trying to figure out how to treat this. And I
remember when that came out, and you're right in the
US United States, they did an emergency use authorization right away,
they cleared it and boom, right away we're starting to
put that into treatment. So in the end, I mean,
they tried out nine repurpose drugs. They did a convalescent
(14:47):
plasma one and then UH an antibody cocktail. But this
was the successes that they came out with Dexa metha
zone and the other one touch the list of zamab
excuse me for yeah, and and those often are used
together in treatment. The other big part of this, you know,
you spoke about the collaboration between all the hospitals and
everybody jumping on board, but the public also they're in
(15:08):
the UK very willing to be part of these trials
as well to help figure out what to do with it.
And that's one of those things where you know, you
wonder how much you know. The NHS is obviously just
kind of baked into the social fabric of the UK
and has been for a long time, and people there
love it for the most part, though there are certainly
issues that come up, and so you wonder, you know,
(15:29):
and then just having that level of trust between the
patients and the health system. You wonder how much that
kind of created this kind of buy in for patients,
And I certainly wonder, I hope, but I do wonder
how whether we'd get the same kind of cooperation in
the US with our fractured health system and the level
of distrust we tend to have an institutions here. But yeah,
to your point, I mean, it was funny. I talked
(15:51):
to a patient who participated in the toke that's just
what I'm gonna call it trial, and you know, he
was pretty sick. He was on he was on oxygen
at the hospital into him of it was like, it's
a no brainer, like you know, of you know, I'm
sitting here, I'm sick, I feel horrible. You guys think
you've got something that might make me feel better than
of course I'm going to do it. You know, it
sounded like you didn't think too much about it. Something
(16:12):
he was trying to be an altruist or anything like that.
It was just like, yeah, sure that makes sense to me.
And I did think it was interesting. You know. One
of the things you couldn't plan but that worked out
really nicely was how quickly that dex and methozone result
came in. Because I talked to one of the nurses
who's administering the trial at a at a hospital in
Cornwall and she said, you know, it was such a
relief to her and just became so much easier to
(16:34):
kind of pitch patients on the recovery trial because she
could point to dex and metho zone and say, like,
through this program, we have already found something that works
that's going to hopefully get you out of the hospital
quicker and certainly make sure that you survive COVID nineteen.
So we've already got that, We've already figured out one thing,
and now we're trying to test all this other stuff
to see if it would help. You know, would you
(16:54):
like to participate? And so I think having that kind
of proof point of like this can work, We can
find stuff if if people are willing to cooperate and
take part really probably proved valuable. Over the rest of
the year, because of course they have, as you said,
they've continued to try more treatments. They still have a
trial going now for the antibody cocktail that you mentioned,
and it doesn't seem like they've had any trouble at
(17:16):
all getting patients to enroll. The only issue, which is
the best possible problem to have, is that, you know,
the UK has done pretty well on vaccinations, and so
the number of hospitalizations has been going down, which means
there's less patients available to participate in the trial. But like,
if that's the problem that we're dealing with, then nothing
could be better, right, right. And And the last thing
(17:37):
just to kind of that I wanted to focus on
briefly is these recovery trials were big and very simple.
As you mentioned, are people dying? Yes or no? Those
are the simple questions. Some of the more precise things,
you know, is would it be good for these subgroups,
these people that have certain ailments. You don't really get
to explore that that much, but at least in the
quickness of it, in the emergency mode, we were able
(17:59):
to get some good news out of all of it.
I mean, there were undoubtedly some trade offs you lose
some of that kind of refinement in the results because yeah,
you're like you're just enrolling whoever happens to show up
at the hospital. You know, you do have kind of
a control group. You set one group aside as a
control group, you treat the other groups. You compare the
two of those. But like, that's about as far as
as it can go in terms of turning this into
(18:21):
a truly random, controlled experiment. And so yeah, you're a
little bit at the whim of whatever patients happened to
show up. It's hard to Yeah, the Peter Horby gave
the example of somebody at w h O asking about
giving toke to a seventy year old diabetic and he
was like, I can't answer that question. We did not
study that specific subpopulation. And so that is the sacrifice
(18:41):
you make. That's a tradeoff you make. I think some
of the people who've been if not totally critical, at
least maybe a little like all right, like let's slow
down and try to make sure that we're really confident
about these results. Some of those people have certainly said,
like we need to be careful about how we present
these results. We need to be transparent about what some
of the un certainty is. But even those folks will say,
(19:03):
like in the middle of an emergency, this is about
as good of a program as we could have hoped
to set up. You know, they use word like stellar
to describe it. So you know, I'm yet to really
come across anybody who thinks like this is not a
model for how we should handle treatment research during the
next pandemic. Dylan Scott, Senior correspondent at Vox, thank you
(19:24):
very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. That's
it for today. Join us on social media at Daily
Dive pod on both Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment,
give us a rating, and tell us the stories that
you're interested in. Follow us on I Heart Radio, or
(19:46):
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of The
Daily Dives produced by Victor Wright and engineered by Tony Sorrentina.
I'm Oscar Ramirez and this was your Daily Dive. M
The Daily Dive News
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com