#Episode27 Daily Update with Sridhar – Covid vaccine breakthrough by Pfizer

Sree Iyer: Hello and welcome to Pgurus Channel, this is episode 27 of the daily update with Sridhar. Sridhar ChityalaJi Namaskar and welcome to Pgurus Channel.

Sridhar Chityala: Namaskar and good morning

Sree Iyer: So Sensational news in the morning today, Pfizer announces a breakthrough in their vaccine for Covid with some very high degrees of success. To know more about it. Let’s go straight to SridharJi.  SridharJi what does Pfizer announcement mean and would that mean finally we have got a breakthrough on Covid.

Sridhar Chityala: It looks we got breakthrough finally on Covid, its great news to wake up a Monday morning. We saw the kind of chaos and confusion that the Pfizer and it’s German company Biontech have announced that they have now got a vaccine, which has found to be very effective in the clinical trials in more than 90 per cent of the cases. The trials are substantive in terms of the sample sizes. They’re asked for an expedited FDA approval for testing in the market or for launching in the market. Usually for FDA to approve, they need to have minimum 60 days data and sufficient sample size and for it to be formally approved. It looks like they have all those elements in place there are also prepared to test it or use it in each group 16 to 85, so which addresses not only youth part but most importantly elderly who are have been in the early stages at least and are one of the big victims of Covid pandemic. Now, Market gives a big thumbs-up while it was tepid overnight, it has opened in a big way, the Dow is up 5% to 29762, S&P is up around 3.5 per cent and then it Dow Futures is also up around 3% mark. So the story is the market is giving thumbs up, recognizing that is what was needed. There were two things that were needed one was the stimulus and the second was the treatment for Covid so that people can start getting back at managing their lives normally.

Sree Iyer: Yes indeed, that’s great news. What is the percentage of recovery from this vaccine sir?

Sridhar Chityala: 90%

Sree Iyer: 90% is very good, 9 in 10 people are going to find overcome the effects of covid rather quickly or rather since this is a vaccine that means that it is sort of like building your own immunity against Covid, isn’t it?

Sridhar Chityala: It is And all that requires is now, also AstraZeneca is doing its work as Johnson & Johnson won’t be surprised then we have the co-vaccine from India, which is also in production. So, all this implies is that the market is that there is, at last, some kind of visible hope in terms of getting this vaccine. Medication into the market and for people to carry out the normal life, so I think that is one of the biggest impediments in terms of holding back much more accelerated recovery, I mean recovery itself in terms of the stimulus and its impact has been one of the most remarkable recoveries in the history of any types of either Market crashes or pandemics. So, this is only going to, you know, I don’t want to sound like a republican, but the story is there’s only going to say I told you so is what Mr Trump is going to state, which is to say that there would be a vaccine in November and that will help cure people, treat people and when we are back to normal, we do not shut down. So, therefore that they can kind of spin the story and one of the other criticism that has been levelled against Trump are you know, he’s not for science, he is not for science, the fact that these trials are nothing but science rather than anything which anti-science. It is also going mellow the theory that somehow he was anti-science that was the thing that was being projected. Just to wrap up on the stimulus, If you want to give a couple of minutes to extend this stream up,  we can wrap up and you to have a transition point. Now, that Mitch McConnell is now back at the helm. So, Mitch has basically stated there is no need for a larger stimulus, a smaller stimulus could do, this on the back of significantly improved numbers, unemployment numbers which we saw last Friday 651,000 so, job recovery has been also accelerated, we have come down from over a million to progressively last week was 751,000and today is 651,000. So, even on the job recovery stage, he said that you are doing well, so we should do what we call a targeted smaller stimulus rather than adding another 2 trillion dollars of the debt, which is unwarranted at this stage to be physically proven.

Sree Iyer: That’s sensible on his part perhaps both parties knew, this was coming down the wire which is why it may be the second stimulus talks slowed down, I don’t know, these are all again theories that don’t have much of credence on the ground. So let’s move on, so markets 5% up, I am curious to see, Pfizer’s own stocks are going to do today. Perhaps it will be have 7-8 % run-up?

Sridhar Chityala: Markets are up 5.6%.

Sree Iyer: What about Pfizer’s future sir? Can you update us on Pfizer’s future?

Sridhar Chityala: Pfizer is up, showing very small uptick is $ 36.40 P Market was 36.99 is only showing a small increase.

Sree Iyer: Interesting

Sridhar Chityala: It went up to 37, now it kind of dipped a little bit, so, therefore, I think that a day swing has been from 3609 to 3672, it is still not observed the great news,  I’m sure we will begin to see as more data is announced you may see an uptick in the movement. All biotech stocks will see upticks Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson then, Asterzenica, you may see all of these guys showing an uptick, you know based on this great news, by the way, let’s not forget that we also have in India, that they have this co-vaccine which has been produced by Reddy lab in Hyderabad, I think that is also being tested and commercialised.

Sree Iyer: So, overall good news. The world was waiting for this and I think that will help everybody say, ok, finally we can end this year on a positive note rather than gloom and doom that seemed to have descended upon the Earth sometime in March of this year. So let’s move on to politics. I’m just curious about six or seven states that are in battleground States. How many of those have been certified by the respective secretaries of state? Do you have any information on that?

Sridhar Chityala: I don’t believe any has been certified as yet and so we can wait for the certificate. It takes a little bit of time for that to happen. Only last week the counting started and finished. So I would assume that you will begin to see some certification process commencing this week. And both sides have to agree and eventually, secretary certifies and endorses the result and then it is sent to House and Senate. I think we covered that yesterday. But the new news that is making ground is that Trump and his campaign team have announced commencing this week campaign-style rallies in support of the various cases that are being fired in the battleground states say, for example, in Pennsylvania for example in Arizona, for example, in Nevada, probably it will even go to Michigan and Wisconsin to reaffirm that there has been voter fraud. They want to specifically highlight as well in the rallies the notion of the dead people coming back voting for Mr Biden or for Mr Trump in the elections. It is going to be very melodramatic as well as politically relevant in terms of making a statement because the media has been consistently stating, there’s no proof, there’s no proof. There cannot be a proof until the time they get data from the respective putting stations and police centres. So while that has happened, Mr Biden and Miss Harris did a grand show in Delaware where they announced, thanked the voters and they said it’s time to heal and they also acknowledge that there are 70 million people who voted for Mr Trump and we should not treat them as enemies and they are Americans. So we all should heal and unite towards a common purpose and their agenda was to treat Covid as well as to get economy back on track. So these were two kinds of healing – Covid and economy and let’s celebrate that we brought about a change. So this was the theme of Mr Biden and Miss Harris. Mr Biden, consistent with his theme, his first priority being pandemic he has set up a task force headed by Dr Vivek Murthy who would look into what kind of remedial measures that needs to occur from this point onwards to treat the pandemic and one of the first things that they have stated is masks. They’re going to make wearing masks when leaving home mandatory.

Sree Iyer: Well, that’s a good start whatever be the merits and demerits of it at least in my area Santa Clara County wearing of masks in outdoor spaces has proved very effective. We were one of the first counties to contact Covid because of one cruise ship that landed in San Francisco and almost everybody who got off of that cruise ship happened to be Covid positive and when they reached home then they become super spreaders. So this is something that happened, I think late February early March time frame and once the mask-wearing became more voluntary than mandatory but it became standard procedure. Now Santa Clara County has Covid well under control. Yesterday, I was outside of the streets, very very high traffic going around, as for a Sunday evening with a lot of traffic, a lot of crowd in stores and so on and so forth, but everyone was wearing masks. So that was one feature that we saw common. So let’s hope that the worst of Covid is over, that is behind us and let’s look forward to more prosperous 2021.

But I want to draw your attention to what is happening in World politics. Can you please give us a quick update on what is happening in Belarus?

Sridhar Chityala: Well, I think in Belarus, the Shinko agitation continues and more arrests have happened. The opposition now feels with Biden taking over they reached out to Biden to see whether he can intervene and help if there is a solution of this process one is, you know, unfair elections very much kind of fascism type of a model, opposition, political suppression and oppression which is kind of dominated the Belarus politics in the recent past. So that is from the  Belarus side.

Sree Iyer: And finally the tech update. We saw some statements from people like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates and now you can start seeing that almost all of the tech camp was firm with the Democrats, isn’t it sir?

Sridhar Chityala: Well, I think we made this statement and I think there was some kind of criticism in feedbacks or comments section, where did we get the data? I think they can go back and look at the data. 98% of the universal tech eco-system is supportive of the Democrats and they had given the data which is featured in the CNBC article or the Yahoo finance article will explicitly list, even the staff in these companies contributed a significant amount of dollars to the cause of the democratic party.

Since you come from California you will be able to add more light to the campaign contributions to, for example, Rocana, who is supposed to be the darling of the Silicon Valley? Right? There seems to be a lot of support and in fact, in the media, the general right media, the theory is that this is a media-led campaign and media-led announcement of the result which is little premature when there is being contested.

So, to your point Amazon CEO, Bill Gates, the Google CEO, all of them have reached out and expressed their congratulations to Joe Biden and Harris team, let’s not forget Harris is from San Francisco, so she knows the ecosystem quite well.  It is also very cautious but at the same time warm support from Asia, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, stating that we have a long-term relationship the relationship should continue. We also have a tweet from Mr Modi, so there is cautious but very positive support and the word that is used in Asia is we will be back to the Diplomatic kind of process. So you have the tech people, you have the business people you have the political leaders with all kind of aligning, which they have to do, by the way, there is a number, the number says it is  Mr Biden and Miss Harris, and they went up, they acknowledged,  and they came victorious, notwithstanding the fact that Trump may be objecting to it but certainly they came to be victorious. So a very cautious and positive endorsement.

Sree Iyer: Yes indeed and in the next few days we have some more excitement and this thing starts playing out in various states. Thank you once again Sridharji. We will be back tomorrow same time same channel. Namaskar.