Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Wednesday, February. I'm Oscar Ramiraz in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily die. Drug companies Fizer and Maderna
led to boost the doses of vaccines delivered after solving
some manufacturing issues they had. While they're stepping up production,
many asked, why can't we make more doses fast. Much
(00:22):
of that answer lies in the very specialized process and
raw materials that go into making them. Isaac Arnsdorff, reporter
at Pro Publica, joins us for more next. Security officials
that were in charge during the assault on the Capitol
on January six were testifying before Congress and offered their
account of how things went south. There were concerns of
optics and a mess of conflicting orders that led to
(00:44):
hours long delays and mobilizing the National Guard. Anita Kumar,
White House correspondent and associate editor at Politico, joins us
for more on the Capitol Hill security failure. Finally, a
case in which an organ transplant patient has died after
receiving lungs infected with COVID. Initial tests on the donor
and lungs came back negative, but after the transplant, the
(01:07):
patient fell ill with fever and showed signs of lung infection.
Her condition deteriorated and then tests came back positive. She
died sixty one days after the transplant. Janelle Alicia, senior
correspondent at Kaiser Health News, joins us for this rare
and tragic story. It's sneeze without the noise let's diving.
(01:29):
Seven hundred and two thousand doses were impacted, specifically, primarily
Maderna doses. The Visor is a little bit delayed, Maderna's
We're gonna be behind a little bit more. Joining us
now was Isaac Arnsdorff, reporter at ProPublica. Thanks for joining us, Isaac,
thanks for having me. We're getting some morgan news on
the vaccine front. The rollout has been very slow to start.
(01:52):
We got some more ledges from Visor and Maderna to
boost up their supply of doses sent out. The United
States were also seeing some other vaccine and rival drug
makers team up to help production. So this is all
very good news that we're seeing. But there's a lot
of questions. You know, why can't we just make the
vaccines that much faster. Why can't we use the Defense
(02:14):
Production Act to force companies to help in all the production.
The short answer is it it just it's tough, and
it just takes time, and things don't happen in an instant.
So Isaac, tell us a little bit more about the
difficulties and producing mass quantities of these vaccines. I mean,
there are a couple of important things to remember that
we're helpful to me in learning when I was reporting
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on this. One is that we heard a lot last
year about this idea of quote unquote at risk manufacturing,
which you know, didn't mean anything about risk, just in
terms of financial risk, right, And that meant that the
companies were going to start making these vaccines even before
they finished the trials to note that they were safe
and effective, and that that was going to give them
a head start. But what I learned is that that
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didn't mean that they could kind of just flip a
switch and start cranking them out, because actually what that
gave them a headstart on was basically inventing the manufacturing process.
There had never been an m R and A vaccine before,
which is the type of vaccine that Maderna and Viser
have created. And so in addition to needing to invent
this vaccine, they needed to invent this whole supply chain
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to manufacture them by the millions, and that had just
never been done before. And so they were going from
ingredients that had basically been sold by the kilogram and
now they were trying to buy them up by the
metric tons. So that's a one thousandfold increase. And the
other thing that I found helpful to think about this
was is that dealing with vaccines their biologics, some of
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these ingredients are living things, so it's almost more like agriculture.
It's more like growing plants than it is like just
stamping out shoes or iPhones or whatever. And that makes
it certainly science, but there's also a little bit of
art to it and kind of learning the process of
how to get the best results. And sometimes if there's
(04:04):
a little bit of contamination, it can spoil a whole batch.
So that's why, even as they're expanding the production, it's
not totally smooth, and there's continues to be some uncertainty
about the amount of vaccine that's coming out from week
to week. Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about
that very specialized supply chain and what goes on in there.
(04:24):
You know, these vaccines right now. They in case the
r M r n A a little fat globules. That's
how it's delivered into your body and so it can
go into the cells. So everything from that process is
very specialized, and there's so many different aspects to all
of this that makes it very very complicated. So, like
you've mentioned, for them to ramp it up out of
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nothing and they had to create this process. So we
can tell me a little bit more about this supply chain.
The bottom line is there are just not that many
companies out there that can do this, and there are
not that many facilities, and there are not that many
pieces of equipment, and there are not that many companies
that make the equipment. So every link in that chain
is sort of a limiting factor and it all has
(05:07):
to move together or else you get bottlenecks. And if
you and if you free up one bottle neck, then
it just creates a bottleneck somewhere else. That's why it's
the whole chain that has to move in this you know,
very carefully calibrated, coordinated way. So the fat bubbles that
you mentioned, which are kind of the delivery vehicle for
the r n A, these come ultimately from petroleum or
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from plant oils, and then they have to get injected
with the mRNA strand and all of these ingredients. This
is another really important critical pieces. All of these ingredients
have to be the highest quality, the highest sterility, because
these are products that are going to be ultimately, you know,
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injected into human arms. And so while there might be
you know, other suppliers that are fine for animal products
or consumer products, for a medical product like this, they
have to be absolutely sure that they're getting the highest
quality for safety reasons aside from the supply chains. Then
you know, I mentioned the Defense Production Act. You know,
why can't we just pop up a brand new facility
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to help make all this stuff. So this was a
question that we posted to Dr Fauci, and he had
an interesting answer which was sort of like, well you could,
and there actually there are cases where the Army Corps
of Engineers is helping to supervise construction to expand capacity
at some of these facilities. But you know, with this
idea of basically building a new factory, by the time
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that you got it up and running and did all
the inspections and you know, made sure that it was
safe and everything was up to the specifications, it would
take about three to four months, and the reality is,
in three to four months at the current trajectory, there's
going to be enough doses for all eligible American adults.
So it doesn't gain you anything by doing that, and
that's not really what the Defense Production Act can help
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us with. What it can help us with is when
those bottlenecks pop up, you can kind of do a
little surge there and and alleviate that problem. And the
way it works basically is it just is the government
telling the suppliers that they have to fulfill the order
before they supply anyone else. So it's kind of like
a prioritization. And that's how the Defense Production Act is useful.
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But it's not a panacea. The way that Dr Faucci
put it is, you know, it facilitates what you're trying
to do, but it doesn't create something out of nothing.
Isaac Arnsdorff, reporter at Pro Public, Thank you very much
for joining us. Thank you. These resources were barely enough
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to encounter an event that had never happened in the
history of the United States, a mob of thousands of
American citizens launching a violent assault on the US capital.
Joining US now is Anita Kumar, White House correspondent, an
associate editor at Politico. Thanks for joining us, Anita, sure,
thanks for having me. Back. On Tuesday, we were hearing
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testimony to to Senate committees. We're hearing from former Capitol
police chief Steve Son and a few others about what
was happening at the capital on January six when the
capital was attacked by a mob. We're hearing just kind
of a bunch of conflicting stories, stories about unanswered calls,
hours long delays in getting the National Guard approved to
(08:30):
go out there. It really does seem like more of
a mess than it initially seemed, if that was even possible. So, Anita,
what are we hearing in testimony? Yeah, I would definitely
agree with that. I mean, even the people that were
there on Tuesday were disagreeing with each other, and that's
why you're seeing members of Congress say, Okay, we've got
to hear from some other people coming up. But you know,
(08:51):
there's sort of two things that I would say that
they heard about at this hearing. One is they were
saying that the Pentagon to the Department of Defense would
slow to send the National Guard to help them out.
So we're going to hear senators who now want to
hear from the Pentagon about what happened. So that's the
number one thing they sort of agree on. And the
second is that they were not aware of the intelligence
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that had been gathered to show that there would be
some kind of strike on the Capitol. So what they're
saying is that they knew there would be protesting, that
there could be problems in the city, but they're saying
that they didn't have the information to know that people
planned to come to the capital. Let's continue on there
for a little bit, because it's just hard to believe
that there wasn't such a heightened assessment of what was
(09:34):
going on there. I mean, we were seeing media reports
for a couple of weeks before that highlighting a lot
of these extremist groups that might be potentially there. We're
just hearing so much about it, and it's just hard
to believe that they were not going to be prepared
for something. I guess you mentioned it. Maybe they thought
it was going to happen other places and not the capital,
but just to not be ready for that is pretty striking.
(09:54):
And and I guess there was something made about an
FBI report that was sent the day before. It just
didn't make it all the way up to Stephen Sun.
So remember, of the four people that testified, three of
them were dealt with, and I say in the past
because they've all since left only with the capital. So
one was with the District of Columbia, but the other
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three just deal with the Capitol Building. And so what
they're saying is, well, look, we had heard, of course
that there were things going to going to happen in
the city, but not to the capitol itself. You mentioned
a report. There was an FBI report or report from
an FBI field office in Norfolk, Virginia, saying that there
was some kind of social media thread that was warning
(10:35):
that there was going to be some kind of problem
looming warm they called it at the Capitol Building. But
what we heard from them at the testimony is that
it never came up to the level that the Capitol
police chief and the Sergeant at arms of the House
and Senate knew that that was going to happen or
that that was a threat. So it did go to
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lower level places, but it did not reach the level
of the top people so that they would know that.
And then a little more on the delays and getting
the National Guard there. Stephen's son, as I mentioned, he's
the former capital police chief there. He said that he
made a call to one of the sergeant at arms
from either the House or the Senate. I forget who exactly,
I'm sorry, but he made a call to them saying, hey,
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you know, we need the National Guard out here. He
said he made the call at one oh nine pm.
They said they never got a formal request until after
two pm, you know, so there's a big discrepancy and
to when this plea to get the National Guard came in. Yeah,
that was really confusing. And you've heard com senators saying,
we'll look, can you checked your phone records? Obviously our
phones now tell us the exact time we made a
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call or receive a call. So that was confusing. But
I think there was somewhat of a consensus that officials
did call the Pentagon, the Department of Defense and asked
for the National Guard, for the National Guard to be deployed,
and that they had heard that for optics, for reasons
of optics, that they weren't sure if they should send
armed troops to the front of the capital. They were
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afraid of that how that was gonna Look, that's why
you saw senators say we need to get some people
from the Department Defense here to see if they really
said that or how much of the delay. Basically, what
we heard in the testimony Tuesday was that there was
a couple hours of delay, and so what these officials
were telling the Department of Defenses, Look, our police can't
handle it. They're already under attack. We can't fight these
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people off. We do need someone and we don't need
to worry about optics. So there's going to be a
disconnect there because I'm sure the Pentagon will come and
say there was no delay. This has been a source
of a conflict since the very beginning. You saw President
Trump Vice President Pence all talking about the National guardens,
who was responsible for sending them, and why there was delay.
So I think there's going to continue to be that problem.
(12:43):
And so what's next on all of this. I know
we're gonna hear more testimony. Senator Roy Blunt is questioning,
you know if the current structure of the way they
operate their works, either on a daily basis or in
emergency situations. Stephen's son just paints this picture of them
not being ready for this at all. He said, no
civilian force has ever trained or is prepared to handle
(13:05):
a big insurrectionist mob like this. So where do we
go from here? What kind of reforms are they going
to try to work for? Yeah, that's a great question
to me. It's been six weeks since this and it's
sort of remarkeled. Is this the first major hearing going
into this, so the Congress is just beginning to look
at this. You're going to see a variety of other
hearings coming forwards. I mentioned that they want to hear
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from Department of Defense officials, they want to follow up
on telephone conversations. You're also going to see later this
week that the House Appropriations Committee is going to hear
testimony from the acting Capital Police Chief. So obviously the
Capitol Police Chief, who is the chief at the time
has left, this is going to be the person that
has temporarily replaced him to talk about sort of going forward.
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I think we're going to see some other hearings as well,
were we'll probably hear about the damage to the building
and how much that cost taxpayers and what they need
to do to fix all that up and I think
basically this is the beginning of a series of hearings
on this issue. Yeah, I mean, they even want to
look into the roles that Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell
played in all of this. There's gonna be a lot
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of finger pointing still yet to come to as well
through all right, So we'll have to wait and see
how these hearings turn out. Anita Kumar, White House correspondent
and associate editor at Politico, Thank you very much for
joining us. Sure, thanks for having all the testing that
(14:33):
was readily available and recommended was done. That was a
nasal fair jeal swab on the donor prior to the
recovery of the organs. Those tests were negative. The B
A L specimen is literally taken from the lower depths
of the law, so a tube was inserted into the
airway and down into the law. Joining us now is
Joanelle Alicia, senior correspondent at Kaiser Health News. Thanks for
(14:57):
joining us, Janelle, Oh, thanks for having me. What didn't
talk about? A very interesting story, not necessarily something for
people to be concerned about if you're in the market
for an organ transplant. This case that we're going to
talk about is extremely rare. Though. We're hearing about a
woman in Michigan who contracted COVID nineteen and then unfortunately
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died two months after the transplant, after receiving a double
lung transplant from someone who ended up having COVID nineteen.
The initial test came negative, but once they dug a
little deeper than they found that the lungs did have
the virus in them. So Janelle tell us a little
bit about what we're hearing in this specific case. It is,
as you say, a very rare case. You know, there
(15:39):
were forty thousand organ transplants in the US last year,
and I've been following this and this is the only
confirmed case of COVID transmitted through a transplant for the
entire time of the pandemic, so that's important to remember. Yeah,
this was a case where a woman was in a
car accident, woman from the Upper Midwest, and she suffered
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a serious brain injury and wound up being a double
long donor. And they did all the tests that you
would normally do. They tested the you know, swabs from
her nose and throat and they came back negative. The
lung transplant recipient tested negative. They went ahead and did
the transplant, and then three days later the recipient developed
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symptoms of COVID. And then a day after that, one
of the surgeons who handled the donated lungs came down
with COVID as well. And you know, as it happened,
you know the unfortunate part. She got a fever, her
blood pressure fell, she was having difficulty breathing, she developed
septic shock. Everything started to fall apart after that. So
doctors decided to test for COVID nineteen again, and then
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the new samples came back positive. The big question was
where did she get it from? So how did they
go about retesting and figuring it out. It turns out,
when you procure lungs from somebody who is a donor,
they typically take kind of a wash of the very
lower part of the respiratory tract and they keep some
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of the liquid from that wash, and so they went
back and tested that fluid, and that fluid was what
tested positive for stars Kobe too. Yeah, and as you mentioned,
the surgeon that handled the transplant also got infected. They
think that he got infected from this whole process as well,
just handling the lungs there. But nobody else on the
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transplant team tested negative for the virus. Thankfully, there were
ten other people who were tested and they were all negative.
This surgeon handled the lungs when they got them, and
he participated in the transplant, and he got sick, but
then he recovered. So before this incident, you know, it
wasn't really clear if COVID could be transmitted through an
organ transplant such as this, and in this specific case,
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the only thing that was transplanted were the lungs. So
the big question now is are other organs at risk?
Are people at risk if they're getting just a kidney transplant,
a heart transplant, anything else. Right, all of the organ
procurement organizations in the US have been testing donor organs
for COVID throughout the pandemic. They're not required to, but
(18:10):
they have been doing that testing. I'm told we haven't
seen any other cases. The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention analyzed eight suspected cases of transmission through organ transplant
and found that patients who with transplants who got COVID
that it didn't come from the transplanted organs. So we
haven't really seen it. I mean, that's not to say
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we won't, but so far it looks like it's extremely rare,
and so what's next? I mean, I'm sure they're going
to put more testing in place. You mentioned that these
organizations weren't required to test for it. I'm sure that
will probably be a standard going forward. So what is next?
Are they making any other type of recommendations as well? Well?
The change, mostly in the coming days, will probably be
(18:55):
for lungs. They're already were recommendations that this fluid from
deep in the lungs be tested, but it wasn't required.
But now knowing that COVID could be transmitted through this transplant,
I'm told that people who are procuring lungs are going
to do that test for sure. Well. An unfortunate situation,
although we did say it's very rare, so you know,
(19:17):
we'll see. Hopefully we can make the proper adjustments and
avoid something like this again. Janelle Alicia, senior correspondent at
Kaiser Health News, Thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks so much. That's it for today. Join us on
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(19:40):
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This episode of The Daily Divers, produced by Victor Right
and engineered by Tony Sargantina. Hi'm Oscar Ramires and this
was your Daily Dive US