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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to The Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. The defense has rested, the prosecution has rested,
and closing arguments will begin on Monday. In the trial
of Derek Chauvin, who's accused of killing George Floyd. The
defense will continue to claim that underlying health conditions and
drug use caused Floyd's death. Shelvin, the former Minneapolis police officer,
(00:48):
has been charged with second and third degree murder and
also accused of second degree manslaughter. The jury will be
sequestered while they make their decisions. For more to recap
this week of defense, witnesses will speak to Janelle Griffith,
national reporter at NBC News. He declined to testify, which
I don't think that anyone who has been closely following
the case was surprised by I know that I was
(01:11):
not surprised by that, because had he taken the witness stand,
he would have opened himself up to a very tough
cross examination. We already saw this week alone when the
defense presented their witnesses, the prosecutors were not playing around.
They were very, very, very diligent, and they would have
(01:31):
asked him to explain minute by minute, just like they
have their own witnesses and the defensive expert witnesses why
he was on George Floyd for as long as he was.
So he's declined to testify um in his trial. And now,
like you said, Monday, they will present closing arguments and
then once that happens, it will go into the jury's hands.
(01:55):
And also UM. This week the defense presented their witness is.
They had seven compared to the nearly forty that the
prosecution brought right when it was their turn, and one
of their major witnesses was Dr David Fowler. He's a
retired forensic pathologist and former Maryland Chief Medical Examiner, so
(02:15):
he was the main guy that was brought forth to
counteract the witness from the prosecution, and he basically said that,
you know what the defense has been trying to lay
out the whole time, that George Floyd died because of
his underlying heart conditions, the drug use. And then he
threw in some other thing too, saying that carbon monoxide
could have also played a role. This is coming from
the police car when he was being held down, right,
(02:38):
he did, and that kind of threw everyone off. I
think he presented. He presented that and testified about that. Meanwhile,
under cross examination, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell got him to admit
and acknowledge that there isn't even a clear understanding of
whether the vehicle was even on. Most people believe that
(02:58):
it wasn't even on, and even if it were on,
wouldn't that they'll make Derek Chauvin and the other officers
liable to some extent because it was their car and
who else would have been responsible to have it off.
So he introduced that, and the defense the prosecution rather,
I'm sorry, they were quick to refute it under cross examination,
and also Jerry Blackwell got him to acknowledge that he
(03:21):
hadn't even considered any um test results of whether there
was carbon monoxide in his blood, like George Floyd hadn't
hadn't even been tested for that, so it kind of
really came out of left field, and he acknowledged that
he had no data backing that that was kind of
just his speculation based on his belief that the car
(03:42):
was on and the proximity, the closeness with which George
Floyd was to the exhaust pipe. There was also an
issue raised of a paraganglioma, which is a tumor that
they said they found in George Floyd's abdominal area. I
think maybe on the hip they might have said, So
that was also brought forth and they said that, you know,
all of that stuff together is what caused George death.
(04:03):
But still, let's say all those things were in place,
would he have died under normal circumstances. The main exacerbation
point was Derek Chelvin on his neck. So the defense
had a really tough time laying all that out, and
you know, we'll see how successful that could have been.
But it didn't really seem to strike the chords that
they thought it was going to. It didn't seem so
(04:24):
and from the experts I've spoken to this far, I
was looking to legal experts and just from my own
impartial observations, not only did it not appear to stick,
it also ran counter to what we heard so many
experts say that the prosecution called and also to the
medical examiner. The medical examiner said that the cause of death. Uh,
(04:45):
he did say, you know that the restraint was at
the end of the day, the main cause. He said, yes,
George Floyd was not the healthiest person. But the way
that he articulated it when he took the witness stand
last week and also in the autopsy were port was
that the aggravating factor was the pressure applied by police. So,
like you said, if you removed that factor, he wouldn't
(05:08):
have died, probably, So that's what It's unclear that the
defense made that argument strongly and all those reports they
determined that it was a homicide. In the defense witness
he said he would have ruled it undetermined. So just
kind of parsing the words there, it seems like. And
they also had a former officer testify also on the
defense side, saying that the use of force was justified
(05:31):
in that case. How did that fair? He did, And
he also went as far as to say that he
wouldn't even have qualified or classified the I don't know
how else to describe it other than force, but he
said he wouldn't even call it a use of force
or excessive force. He said it was justified. And he
basically at length made the argument that police are given,
(05:55):
you know, free reign to act more aggressively than the
average person, which they are, but that does not mean
they don't have to still justify use of force. You
can't just be aggressive to anyone. They have to pose
a threat to you, to the public. And he made
that point and the prosecutor who was questioning him at
the time said, you know, he was even baffled, visibly
(06:16):
baffled by that, and that expert Barry Broad he also
said that, um, George Floyd was resting comfortably, and it
took the prosecutor completely by he was completely shocked by it,
as I think many people were, like, I don't think
anybody would describe the way that George Floyd was resting comfortably. Yeah.
(06:39):
I think Verry Broad even had to take some of
those things back under cross examination. So just little things
falling apart on the defense side. As we mentioned, the
closing arguments are going to happen on Monday, and you know,
we'll see how quickly the jury comes back with a verdict.
Janelle Griffith, National reporter at NBC News, thank you very
much for joining us. Thank you so much for having
(06:59):
me this week. We also saw the FDA and the
CDC pause the use of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine
while it reviews data after finding six women who came
down with blood clots after receiving the vaccine. One of
those women died. Still, this is a very extremely rare occurrence.
(07:20):
There are only six cases so far after almost seven
million shots that have been administered. For more on what
we know about this pause, will speak to Peter loftus
healthcare reporter at the Wall Street Journal. These were extremely rare,
but the events themselves were serious. One of the women died,
and the issue seems to be a very rare type
(07:42):
of plot that affects the brain and it's called a
cerebral venus sionist from bossis and this is something that
just also happens very rarely apart from the vaccine. But
what I think caught the attention of health officials was
that this was happening in a small number of people
who got the vaccine and they were having low blood
(08:04):
platelet counts, and so these two things together were unusual
enough that health officials, I think there could be a
cause and effect here, and that it's not just a
case of someone getting the vaccine and experiencing an adverse
health effect that they might have experienced anyway. And so
that's where I think the caution comes in, and that
(08:25):
explains I think why despite the small numbers, health officials
wanted to take this pause. So in this time they're
going to study the data. They're gonna look to see
the health of these people that got in and see
if maybe it's something that would have happened regardless of
the vaccine or not. They're going to be looking into
all of that. Now. The other question that arises out
of this is how will it impact the vaccine rollout.
(08:48):
Officials have said it won't really impact it that much.
There's enough doses of the Fiser and Maderna vaccine, which
we haven't heard any really serious side effects about. There's
enough of those doses to go around. Yeah, I know
people that were scheduled for J and J vaccines, you know,
they were rescheduling them for one of the other so
the impact should be minimal at least, they say. The
(09:08):
J J vaccine was the third one to be authorized,
and so it's made up a smaller share of the
overall vaccine supply since it was authorized in late February. Now,
it's true that a lot of people were looking forward
to the arrival of the J and J vaccine, both
to boost the overall supply of vaccines and you know,
(09:30):
for some people make it a simpler and more convenient
option because it's a single dose as opposed to the
two doses for the other vaccines. So people were counting
on it to really augment and play a big role
in the overall vaccination effort. But that said, with this pause,
and we don't know how long it will last, it
could be a few days. But even with that, there
are still many millions of doses of these other two
(09:54):
vaccines from Fiser and Maderna that are out there and
that really mitigate the overall effect of losing vaccinations with
the change a vaccine for at least for a few days. Now.
You know the other thing, and we've talked about this before, Peter,
vaccine hesitancy. It's a tough call when you know you
have such a few cases, the rare instances of this
(10:14):
happening to pause something like this as it is, there
are people that are hesitants to take the vaccine already.
This could further that we were hearing about astra zenica
and blood clot issues, we're hearing about this one now.
The astrosenic on Johnson and Johnson vaccines are both viral
vector's shots, so they're made similarly, you know, not exactly
the same. But the vaccine hesitancy now comes back into
(10:36):
the question. Yeah, and I think, you know, there have
been signs that vaccine hesitancy was declining, surveys showing that,
you know, a smaller proportion of people were saying that
they just don't plan to get vaccinated compared with earlier
on in the in the Mess vaccine rollout. But certainly
that's a concern that health authorities have to sort of
(10:57):
deal with. I mean, you know, they talked about it
to day officials from the FDA and the CDC that
they wanted to get this information out there, but they
did so knowing that it could be sort of fodder
for the people who are very skeptical of vaccines. And
so it's certainly something to watch to see what effect
now this risk and the and the communications about the
(11:20):
risk um to see what effect that has on vaccine
hesitancy going forward. Yeah, I mean you still have to
look at the numbers. Though, only six of these cases
and seven million shots administered, that's a pretty good track record. So,
you know, we'll see how long the pause is. We'll
see what the officials say after they look into it,
and you know, it will probably be be resumed, you know,
(11:41):
after after some time, unless they find something you didn't
note in the article. In clinical trials, there were a
couple of other blood clot issues that came up, but
they were very minimal as well. So there have been
signs of clouds generally speaking, although I don't believe that
this particular type of clouds was spotted in the clinical trials.
(12:02):
You know, I think we'll just have to wait and
see how long the pause lasts, and just even to
be sure whether health authorities allow vaccinations to resume. There's
going to be a meeting tomorrow of a committee of
outside experts that advise the CDC of vaccines, and so
they're going to examine all the available evidence and discuss
(12:24):
it on a public forum, and then I believe they'll
take a vote on what they think should happen next.
And if I could just add that, one thing that
does I think factor into whether or not, or at
least how soon they'd want to lift the pause on
vaccinations with j J, is that we do have these
first two vaccines approve that have very high efficacy and
(12:47):
with not really not with this type of safety risk
associated with them. And so in light of that, in
a way, the health authorities can afford to air on
the side of caution and knowing that it's not gonna
really throw wrench into the mass vaccination campaign. Peter loftis
healthcare reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you very
(13:08):
much for joining us my pleasure. If you have money
invested in cryptocurrency, you most likely had a good week.
Coin Base, the largest exchange for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies,
became the first major crypto company to go public, and
it's surged in its first day on the stock market.
(13:29):
With coin based going public, it also pushes cryptocurrency into
the mainstream as something to seriously invest in. For more
on this, will speak to Paul vigna reporter at the
Wall Street journal. It came out really big. It's It's
in the afternoon, it came off the highs. But coin
based one of the best known names in the sector,
in the crypto sector, and they're a big exchange based
here in the United States. And from the start, they've
(13:53):
kind of been a firm that was very much focused
on working with banks, working with regulators, trying to make
bitcoin accessible to mainstream users. In the early days of crypto.
That was really kind of a big difference between them
and most of the other exchanges, and they grew and
grew with that goal in mind, right, We're gonna make
(14:14):
bitcoin accessible to the mainstream. So for a lot of
people who get interested in bitcoin, they say, well, how
do I get bitcoin? People say, go to coin base,
and they do, and it's it's an easy platform to use.
You know, you go there, you sign up, you have
to give them some identifying information, you like your bank
account to it so that you can fund your your
balance and you can buy and sell bitcoin. So as
bitcoin has grown, as the price over the last six
(14:37):
eight months is has gone up just exponentially, coin Base
has gotten a lot of attention and a lot of
new users. And that's translated into a lot of revenue
and really large profits for them, and it seemed natural
that eventually they were going to tap the public markets,
and that is what happened today. Point based, as you
mentioned some of your articles, they're mostly tied to Bitcoin
(14:59):
and the sent downs that they go through, but they
do exchanges in in a lot of other cryptocurrencies as well.
They make a market in about fifty cryptocurrencies. Obviously Bitcoin
is the biggest one of those, but like you said,
there are other ones. And what's interesting is that while
their revenue is so closely tied to trading or most
of it's from transaction fees, they do kind of see
(15:22):
that they need to expand from that, and they're trying
to build out sort of broad suite you would say,
of financial services. They want to come up with all
kinds of products. They want to people to come in
and start with trading, but then they want to come
up with other financial products to sell. Themmoly. Any kind
of brokerage house would really, or any kind of large
bank would. They're not a bank, I should point that out,
(15:42):
but I mean that's what they're kind of going. They're
kind of trying to become this this sort of all
one stop shop for anything you'd want to do related
to cryptocurrencies. How has cryptocurrency and bitcoin been doing throughout
the pandemic. We've been seeing a ton of stories about
you know, record highs. Bitcoin hit a high today or
on Wednesday when coin based went public, So they've been
(16:03):
doing pretty well. They look a bitcoin has been doing great.
There are two things really that happened. Is is won
during the pandemic, Like a lot of things, people were
stuck at home and they were looking for things to
do online. They were board and a lot of people
just started training bitcoin. Robin Hood, PayPal some other of
the online trading apps opened up their platforms to trading crypto,
(16:25):
so a lot of people got involved. The other thing
was that you've had a lot of institutional money come
in and that sort of signaled that this is an
okay arena for people to play in. Not that it
isn't speculative and not that you can't lose money in it,
but just that it's not exactly this anarchistic, killed the
banker's kind of world, that it is something more responsible
(16:47):
still have to point out very speculative, very you know,
high chance that you can lose money. If you get
to you know, you're probably wrong. But so you had
this sort of institutional nest signal that it's okay. So
institution more money coming in, your retail money coming in.
So you had a lot of money coming in at
a time where people were looking for things to do,
and that kind of drove this big surgeon. What is
(17:09):
and has been a small market when you compare to
the rest of the capital markets. It's gotten bigger blast year, obviously,
but it's still a relatively small market. So small market,
a lot of people come in and it just drove
the price up, and that just becomes this sort of
self sustaining cycle. The higher the price goes, the more
people get interested, the more people come in, the more
that drives the price, and it's you know, it's just
builds on itself. It totally does you know, this month,
(17:31):
the total value of the cryptocurrency market past two trillion dollars.
But in the meantime, you know, for the founders of
coin base, you you mentioned one of your articles, Brian Armstrong.
He's a co founder. I mean, he's a billionaire now
just because of this. He's probably worth about twenty billion
dollars for his steak in bitcoin and put some right
right there in one of the wealthiest people. In an
(17:51):
instant he's gonna be worth somewhere north of fifteen billion,
could be as much twenty billion, defending that easily puts
him in the top one or so people on the
on the planet. Thirty eight years old. Started the company
just because he had an idea about making bitcoin accessible
to people, and now he's you know, it is paid
(18:14):
off for him. So final thing, you know, as I mentioned,
you know, bitcoin, everything really kind of got a bunk today.
So other than coin based, coin public and you know,
a lot more people maybe having some access to it.
You know what changes right now for the cryptocurrency market.
When you think about crypto, you have to realize that
so much of it is driven by momentum and sentiment.
So the coin based listing, now, the coin based is
(18:37):
part of the public market and just a hype alone
around that and the signal that it sends to people
that this is part of the mainstream. This is part
of the real world quote unquote musing air quotes. Can't
see about yeah that you know, this is not just
some weird anarchist project. This is an actual asset class.
This is something you can invest. You know that the
(18:59):
message that this insting sends just bolsters that momentum and
that sentiment. Doesn't mean that this is never going to turn.
And bitcoin has a very well defined history of going
up by quite a lot and then coming down by
quite a lot, so it can happen again. But this
listing in this moment just sort of it really feeds
into that momentum and that sentiment driven trading. Paul Vignat,
(19:20):
reporter at the Wall Street Journal, thank you very much
for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Don't forget
to join us on social media at Daily Dive Pod
on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave us
a comment, give us a rating, and tell us the
stories that you're interested in. Follow us on I Heard Radio,
or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Him Oscar Ramirez
(19:43):
and this is the Daily Dive Weekend edition
Welcome to The Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. The defense has rested, the prosecution has rested,
and closing arguments will begin on Monday. In the trial
of Derek Chauvin, who's accused of killing George Floyd. The
defense will continue to claim that underlying health conditions and
drug use caused Floyd's death. Shelvin, the former Minneapolis police officer,
(00:48):
has been charged with second and third degree murder and
also accused of second degree manslaughter. The jury will be
sequestered while they make their decisions. For more to recap
this week of defense, witnesses will speak to Janelle Griffith,
national reporter at NBC News. He declined to testify, which
I don't think that anyone who has been closely following
the case was surprised by I know that I was
(01:11):
not surprised by that, because had he taken the witness stand,
he would have opened himself up to a very tough
cross examination. We already saw this week alone when the
defense presented their witnesses, the prosecutors were not playing around.
They were very, very, very diligent, and they would have
(01:31):
asked him to explain minute by minute, just like they
have their own witnesses and the defensive expert witnesses why
he was on George Floyd for as long as he was.
So he's declined to testify um in his trial. And now,
like you said, Monday, they will present closing arguments and
then once that happens, it will go into the jury's hands.
(01:55):
And also UM. This week the defense presented their witness is.
They had seven compared to the nearly forty that the
prosecution brought right when it was their turn, and one
of their major witnesses was Dr David Fowler. He's a
retired forensic pathologist and former Maryland Chief Medical Examiner, so
(02:15):
he was the main guy that was brought forth to
counteract the witness from the prosecution, and he basically said that,
you know what the defense has been trying to lay
out the whole time, that George Floyd died because of
his underlying heart conditions, the drug use. And then he
threw in some other thing too, saying that carbon monoxide
could have also played a role. This is coming from
the police car when he was being held down, right,
(02:38):
he did, and that kind of threw everyone off. I
think he presented. He presented that and testified about that. Meanwhile,
under cross examination, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell got him to admit
and acknowledge that there isn't even a clear understanding of
whether the vehicle was even on. Most people believe that
(02:58):
it wasn't even on, and even if it were on,
wouldn't that they'll make Derek Chauvin and the other officers
liable to some extent because it was their car and
who else would have been responsible to have it off.
So he introduced that, and the defense the prosecution rather,
I'm sorry, they were quick to refute it under cross examination,
and also Jerry Blackwell got him to acknowledge that he
(03:21):
hadn't even considered any um test results of whether there
was carbon monoxide in his blood, like George Floyd hadn't
hadn't even been tested for that, so it kind of
really came out of left field, and he acknowledged that
he had no data backing that that was kind of
just his speculation based on his belief that the car
(03:42):
was on and the proximity, the closeness with which George
Floyd was to the exhaust pipe. There was also an
issue raised of a paraganglioma, which is a tumor that
they said they found in George Floyd's abdominal area. I
think maybe on the hip they might have said, So
that was also brought forth and they said that, you know,
all of that stuff together is what caused George death.
(04:03):
But still, let's say all those things were in place,
would he have died under normal circumstances. The main exacerbation
point was Derek Chelvin on his neck. So the defense
had a really tough time laying all that out, and
you know, we'll see how successful that could have been.
But it didn't really seem to strike the chords that
they thought it was going to. It didn't seem so
(04:24):
and from the experts I've spoken to this far, I
was looking to legal experts and just from my own
impartial observations, not only did it not appear to stick,
it also ran counter to what we heard so many
experts say that the prosecution called and also to the
medical examiner. The medical examiner said that the cause of death. Uh,
(04:45):
he did say, you know that the restraint was at
the end of the day, the main cause. He said, yes,
George Floyd was not the healthiest person. But the way
that he articulated it when he took the witness stand
last week and also in the autopsy were port was
that the aggravating factor was the pressure applied by police. So,
like you said, if you removed that factor, he wouldn't
(05:08):
have died, probably, So that's what It's unclear that the
defense made that argument strongly and all those reports they
determined that it was a homicide. In the defense witness
he said he would have ruled it undetermined. So just
kind of parsing the words there, it seems like. And
they also had a former officer testify also on the
defense side, saying that the use of force was justified
(05:31):
in that case. How did that fair? He did, And
he also went as far as to say that he
wouldn't even have qualified or classified the I don't know
how else to describe it other than force, but he
said he wouldn't even call it a use of force
or excessive force. He said it was justified. And he
basically at length made the argument that police are given,
(05:55):
you know, free reign to act more aggressively than the
average person, which they are, but that does not mean
they don't have to still justify use of force. You
can't just be aggressive to anyone. They have to pose
a threat to you, to the public. And he made
that point and the prosecutor who was questioning him at
the time said, you know, he was even baffled, visibly
(06:16):
baffled by that, and that expert Barry Broad he also
said that, um, George Floyd was resting comfortably, and it
took the prosecutor completely by he was completely shocked by it,
as I think many people were, like, I don't think
anybody would describe the way that George Floyd was resting comfortably. Yeah.
(06:39):
I think Verry Broad even had to take some of
those things back under cross examination. So just little things
falling apart on the defense side. As we mentioned, the
closing arguments are going to happen on Monday, and you know,
we'll see how quickly the jury comes back with a verdict.
Janelle Griffith, National reporter at NBC News, thank you very
much for joining us. Thank you so much for having
(06:59):
me this week. We also saw the FDA and the
CDC pause the use of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine
while it reviews data after finding six women who came
down with blood clots after receiving the vaccine. One of
those women died. Still, this is a very extremely rare occurrence.
(07:20):
There are only six cases so far after almost seven
million shots that have been administered. For more on what
we know about this pause, will speak to Peter loftus
healthcare reporter at the Wall Street Journal. These were extremely rare,
but the events themselves were serious. One of the women died,
and the issue seems to be a very rare type
(07:42):
of plot that affects the brain and it's called a
cerebral venus sionist from bossis and this is something that
just also happens very rarely apart from the vaccine. But
what I think caught the attention of health officials was
that this was happening in a small number of people
who got the vaccine and they were having low blood
(08:04):
platelet counts, and so these two things together were unusual
enough that health officials, I think there could be a
cause and effect here, and that it's not just a
case of someone getting the vaccine and experiencing an adverse
health effect that they might have experienced anyway. And so
that's where I think the caution comes in, and that
(08:25):
explains I think why despite the small numbers, health officials
wanted to take this pause. So in this time they're
going to study the data. They're gonna look to see
the health of these people that got in and see
if maybe it's something that would have happened regardless of
the vaccine or not. They're going to be looking into
all of that. Now. The other question that arises out
of this is how will it impact the vaccine rollout.
(08:48):
Officials have said it won't really impact it that much.
There's enough doses of the Fiser and Maderna vaccine, which
we haven't heard any really serious side effects about. There's
enough of those doses to go around. Yeah, I know
people that were scheduled for J and J vaccines, you know,
they were rescheduling them for one of the other so
the impact should be minimal at least, they say. The
(09:08):
J J vaccine was the third one to be authorized,
and so it's made up a smaller share of the
overall vaccine supply since it was authorized in late February. Now,
it's true that a lot of people were looking forward
to the arrival of the J and J vaccine, both
to boost the overall supply of vaccines and you know,
(09:30):
for some people make it a simpler and more convenient
option because it's a single dose as opposed to the
two doses for the other vaccines. So people were counting
on it to really augment and play a big role
in the overall vaccination effort. But that said, with this pause,
and we don't know how long it will last, it
could be a few days. But even with that, there
are still many millions of doses of these other two
(09:54):
vaccines from Fiser and Maderna that are out there and
that really mitigate the overall effect of losing vaccinations with
the change a vaccine for at least for a few days. Now.
You know the other thing, and we've talked about this before, Peter,
vaccine hesitancy. It's a tough call when you know you
have such a few cases, the rare instances of this
(10:14):
happening to pause something like this as it is, there
are people that are hesitants to take the vaccine already.
This could further that we were hearing about astra zenica
and blood clot issues, we're hearing about this one now.
The astrosenic on Johnson and Johnson vaccines are both viral
vector's shots, so they're made similarly, you know, not exactly
the same. But the vaccine hesitancy now comes back into
(10:36):
the question. Yeah, and I think, you know, there have
been signs that vaccine hesitancy was declining, surveys showing that,
you know, a smaller proportion of people were saying that
they just don't plan to get vaccinated compared with earlier
on in the in the Mess vaccine rollout. But certainly
that's a concern that health authorities have to sort of
(10:57):
deal with. I mean, you know, they talked about it
to day officials from the FDA and the CDC that
they wanted to get this information out there, but they
did so knowing that it could be sort of fodder
for the people who are very skeptical of vaccines. And
so it's certainly something to watch to see what effect
now this risk and the and the communications about the
(11:20):
risk um to see what effect that has on vaccine
hesitancy going forward. Yeah, I mean you still have to
look at the numbers. Though, only six of these cases
and seven million shots administered, that's a pretty good track record. So,
you know, we'll see how long the pause is. We'll
see what the officials say after they look into it,
and you know, it will probably be be resumed, you know,
(11:41):
after after some time, unless they find something you didn't
note in the article. In clinical trials, there were a
couple of other blood clot issues that came up, but
they were very minimal as well. So there have been
signs of clouds generally speaking, although I don't believe that
this particular type of clouds was spotted in the clinical trials.
(12:02):
You know, I think we'll just have to wait and
see how long the pause lasts, and just even to
be sure whether health authorities allow vaccinations to resume. There's
going to be a meeting tomorrow of a committee of
outside experts that advise the CDC of vaccines, and so
they're going to examine all the available evidence and discuss
(12:24):
it on a public forum, and then I believe they'll
take a vote on what they think should happen next.
And if I could just add that, one thing that
does I think factor into whether or not, or at
least how soon they'd want to lift the pause on
vaccinations with j J, is that we do have these
first two vaccines approve that have very high efficacy and
(12:47):
with not really not with this type of safety risk
associated with them. And so in light of that, in
a way, the health authorities can afford to air on
the side of caution and knowing that it's not gonna
really throw wrench into the mass vaccination campaign. Peter loftis
healthcare reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you very
(13:08):
much for joining us my pleasure. If you have money
invested in cryptocurrency, you most likely had a good week.
Coin Base, the largest exchange for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies,
became the first major crypto company to go public, and
it's surged in its first day on the stock market.
(13:29):
With coin based going public, it also pushes cryptocurrency into
the mainstream as something to seriously invest in. For more
on this, will speak to Paul vigna reporter at the
Wall Street journal. It came out really big. It's It's
in the afternoon, it came off the highs. But coin
based one of the best known names in the sector,
in the crypto sector, and they're a big exchange based
here in the United States. And from the start, they've
(13:53):
kind of been a firm that was very much focused
on working with banks, working with regulators, trying to make
bitcoin accessible to mainstream users. In the early days of crypto.
That was really kind of a big difference between them
and most of the other exchanges, and they grew and
grew with that goal in mind, right, We're gonna make
(14:14):
bitcoin accessible to the mainstream. So for a lot of
people who get interested in bitcoin, they say, well, how
do I get bitcoin? People say, go to coin base,
and they do, and it's it's an easy platform to use.
You know, you go there, you sign up, you have
to give them some identifying information, you like your bank
account to it so that you can fund your your
balance and you can buy and sell bitcoin. So as
bitcoin has grown, as the price over the last six
(14:37):
eight months is has gone up just exponentially, coin Base
has gotten a lot of attention and a lot of
new users. And that's translated into a lot of revenue
and really large profits for them, and it seemed natural
that eventually they were going to tap the public markets,
and that is what happened today. Point based, as you
mentioned some of your articles, they're mostly tied to Bitcoin
(14:59):
and the sent downs that they go through, but they
do exchanges in in a lot of other cryptocurrencies as well.
They make a market in about fifty cryptocurrencies. Obviously Bitcoin
is the biggest one of those, but like you said,
there are other ones. And what's interesting is that while
their revenue is so closely tied to trading or most
of it's from transaction fees, they do kind of see
(15:22):
that they need to expand from that, and they're trying
to build out sort of broad suite you would say,
of financial services. They want to come up with all
kinds of products. They want to people to come in
and start with trading, but then they want to come
up with other financial products to sell. Themmoly. Any kind
of brokerage house would really, or any kind of large
bank would. They're not a bank, I should point that out,
(15:42):
but I mean that's what they're kind of going. They're
kind of trying to become this this sort of all
one stop shop for anything you'd want to do related
to cryptocurrencies. How has cryptocurrency and bitcoin been doing throughout
the pandemic. We've been seeing a ton of stories about
you know, record highs. Bitcoin hit a high today or
on Wednesday when coin based went public, So they've been
(16:03):
doing pretty well. They look a bitcoin has been doing great.
There are two things really that happened. Is is won
during the pandemic, Like a lot of things, people were
stuck at home and they were looking for things to
do online. They were board and a lot of people
just started training bitcoin. Robin Hood, PayPal some other of
the online trading apps opened up their platforms to trading crypto,
(16:25):
so a lot of people got involved. The other thing
was that you've had a lot of institutional money come
in and that sort of signaled that this is an
okay arena for people to play in. Not that it
isn't speculative and not that you can't lose money in it,
but just that it's not exactly this anarchistic, killed the
banker's kind of world, that it is something more responsible
(16:47):
still have to point out very speculative, very you know,
high chance that you can lose money. If you get
to you know, you're probably wrong. But so you had
this sort of institutional nest signal that it's okay. So
institution more money coming in, your retail money coming in.
So you had a lot of money coming in at
a time where people were looking for things to do,
and that kind of drove this big surgeon. What is
(17:09):
and has been a small market when you compare to
the rest of the capital markets. It's gotten bigger blast year, obviously,
but it's still a relatively small market. So small market,
a lot of people come in and it just drove
the price up, and that just becomes this sort of
self sustaining cycle. The higher the price goes, the more
people get interested, the more people come in, the more
that drives the price, and it's you know, it's just
builds on itself. It totally does you know, this month,
(17:31):
the total value of the cryptocurrency market past two trillion dollars.
But in the meantime, you know, for the founders of
coin base, you you mentioned one of your articles, Brian Armstrong.
He's a co founder. I mean, he's a billionaire now
just because of this. He's probably worth about twenty billion
dollars for his steak in bitcoin and put some right
right there in one of the wealthiest people. In an
(17:51):
instant he's gonna be worth somewhere north of fifteen billion,
could be as much twenty billion, defending that easily puts
him in the top one or so people on the
on the planet. Thirty eight years old. Started the company
just because he had an idea about making bitcoin accessible
to people, and now he's you know, it is paid
(18:14):
off for him. So final thing, you know, as I mentioned,
you know, bitcoin, everything really kind of got a bunk today.
So other than coin based, coin public and you know,
a lot more people maybe having some access to it.
You know what changes right now for the cryptocurrency market.
When you think about crypto, you have to realize that
so much of it is driven by momentum and sentiment.
So the coin based listing, now, the coin based is
(18:37):
part of the public market and just a hype alone
around that and the signal that it sends to people
that this is part of the mainstream. This is part
of the real world quote unquote musing air quotes. Can't
see about yeah that you know, this is not just
some weird anarchist project. This is an actual asset class.
This is something you can invest. You know that the
(18:59):
message that this insting sends just bolsters that momentum and
that sentiment. Doesn't mean that this is never going to turn.
And bitcoin has a very well defined history of going
up by quite a lot and then coming down by
quite a lot, so it can happen again. But this
listing in this moment just sort of it really feeds
into that momentum and that sentiment driven trading. Paul Vignat,
(19:20):
reporter at the Wall Street Journal, thank you very much
for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Don't forget
to join us on social media at Daily Dive Pod
on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave us
a comment, give us a rating, and tell us the
stories that you're interested in. Follow us on I Heard Radio,
or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Him Oscar Ramirez
(19:43):
and this is the Daily Dive Weekend edition
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