scott gottlieb, who sits on the boards of pfizer and illumina. good morning, doctor. >> doctor: good morning. >> brennan: we have heard from the administration there are a couple of dozen omicron cases here in the united states. dr. fauci said this morning too early, still it doesook there is a great degree of severity to it. is it too early to say that? >> doctor: it is too early to say that. right now the infection -- the best data is coming out of south africa because they simply have more cases. all of the evidence who allow the people presenting with infection are people who were previously infected with delta, probably more than 90% of people in south africa were infected with delta, so we don't know whether or not this new strain is inherently less virulent, sor whether it or whes presenting that way because it is presenting in people who have some immunity, so they're getting infected but they're getting as sick. there was one study out of a tashwani hospital, a hard-hit part of south africa, they looked at about 166 patients who have bee

scott gottlieb, who sits on the boards of pfizer and illumina. good morning, doctor. >> doctor: good morning. >> brennan: we have heard from the administration there are a couple of dozen omicron cases here in the united states. dr. fauci said this morning too early, still it does not look there is a great degree of severity to it. is it too early to say that? >> doctor: it is too early to say that. right now the infection -- the best data is coming out of south africa because they simply have more cases. all of the evidence who allow the people presenting with infection are people who were previously infected with delta, probably more than 90% of people in south africa were infected with delta, so we don't know whether or not this new strain is inherently less virulent, sor whether it or whes presenting that way because it is presenting in people who have some immunity, so they're getting infected but they're getting as sick. there was one study out of a tashwani hospital, a hard-hit part of south africa, they looked at about 166 patients who ha

of illumina, a company that identifies and tracts covid variants through genetic sequencing. good morning to you. >> hello. >> brennan: the $2 billion that taxpayers helped towards sequencing in this country, is america better now than at the start of this pandemic at forgiving out where the virus and the variants are? >> we're making progress, and we're in a lot different position than we were at the beginning of the pandemic. certainly a year ago we were sequencing very little, in terms of the positives we were seeing in this country. but over the last year, we started to see sequencing infrastructure being rolled out. if you look at the course of all of 2021, we probably sequenceed in the course of 2020 about 3% of the positives we have seen this year. the best practice is to do between 5% and 10%. but in the last three months, we're in the 5% to 10%. the challenge is it is very variable across the states. you have some states that are close to 30% of positives, and you have some states that are closer to 1%. so over all, i think we have the capacity that we need, but we c

cnbc contributor, board member of pfizer and illumina what's your take on the study from south africa? >> there's two studies out tonight. what these studies are is they look at the plasma from individuals who have been vaccinated or recovered from infection and then been vaccinated and see whether or not their plasma can neutralize the virus. so it looks at the immune protection from infection. we don't know how they will perform against symptomatic infection and also severe disease so they're very imperfect, imprecise measure what they show, which is actually quite reassuring, is people who got infected and then vaccinated had pretty robust protection in these studies. there was pretty good neutralization of the plasma of individuals who were infected and then subsequently vaccinated why that's encouraging is we believe that three doses of the vaccine, so a properly boosted vaccine, effectively simulates the response you get from infection and then subsequent vaccination with two doses so the third dose of the vaccine functions like getting infected. so this is an indication that a

day, got to this bridge, crossed the river, hopped out of my car and the moon was over the tree line illuminaing this area and i knew of an account from a union soldier who relayed a slave approached his regimen and informed his owner was responsible for the murder of some of those stragglers. they said let's find your owner. they found the owner hiding out. took him to the river and strung him up. hanged him. right along the banks here. all i could think about is this is one more -- if we think about southern history in the 20th century, we all know those horrible crimes that our out in some desolate county, a river. this is one more incident to add to that. as they were tieing himup to the tree, he also knew his home was being burned, destroyed. now we get back to the operations here. this map, again, it's going to serve our purposes because we want to do the campaign. i should note that warren's sizable command was put together. you all know the three of them have had a difficult history. warren did not get along well with many people. it started immediately. we all know the army of the potom

scott gottlieb, former commissioner and cdc contributor and serves on the boards of illumina and pfizer the i saw comments from the w.h.o. i don't know we've mention them yet. actually i see where you are sending them to. at this point it looks like some of the omicron cases at least ann anecdotally the early indications are it might not be any more virulent or that it could actually be somewhat mild. have you seen evidence pointing that way >> look, i saw the statement from the w.h.o. official and the reporting out of various countries, you know, we have totial, we've only diagnosed 250 cases of this new variant at this point there is a presumption the growth in cases in south africa is surprised of this omicron variant. the reality is they were having a mini delta surge we done know how brisk before this emerged and had an uptick in c12 it's been bouncing around affect for quite some time. in repeat weeks it seems to have increase in prevalence we don't know the cases they're seeing is this new variant we also have to keep in mind that testing is way up in africa and so people made a

scott gottlieb, who serves on the boards of pfizer and illumina. dr. gottlieb, we were talking about this, this morning amongst ourselves, greater tests is a great idea this won't come until january. that seems a bit late. 500 million may sound like a lot of tests if we want to test everybody every week which is what europe has been doing a while, we need 3.2 billion tests a month. maybe it seems too little too late >> it's late for some parts of the company, some will be get out by mid-january others will be heating up. we should have been doing this all along and get more at-home tests available and giving them away to consumers, allowing them to come into a drug store, by four tests for $5, limiting the number of sales and making sure they got into the hands of consumers. that's what others are doing, subsidizing them directly. the other thing we need to focus on is getting the monoclonal drugs and also a second generation drug that lily has out to the marketplace doctors have become accustomed to prescribing these as mid-sin now the ones they have

scott gottlieb he's a cnbc contributor who also serving on the boards of pfizer and illumina. >> this is the virus they created in the lab, not the actual virus, it's not peer reviewed, but really early stuff. it's less than two weeks since we reported about the omicron variant being out there. how much faith and how much confidence do you have in this data at this point >> well, look, with all the usual caveats that these are not a perfect court lators, and if anything they're correlated from the protective value against infection, not against symptomatic disease and outcomes, where there could be more residual protections, we now have three data points that have come out in the last 24 hours, in addition to the pfizer data, two other neutralization, which both showed a significant reduction after two doses, but they both also showed people that were infected and subsequently vaccinated had a pretty robust response against omicron. that so-called hybrid immunity, situations where people are infectioned, subsequently get vaccinated, we know that's a good correlate for the behavior of

scott gottlieb, the former contributor who also serves on the boards of pfizer and illumina we have all been trying to get our arms around this new disease, how well the vaccines will stands up to them and i have to say, the markets here, that's why we see all these swings you have been a calming voice on this to this point you kind of pulled down, let's see what happened. what can you learned that you can fill us in on this >> if you look at the data from the last week, it's hard to look at the data before november 23rd they changed the way they were reporting positive results, some uncertainty. if you look at the data, there is a good news/bad news story here what is happening, some of the estimates on its transmissibility the initial assumptions have come down. they're priced substantially if you look at the modeling we have done initially. the bad news is it's also being firld up as you get more data points, the estimates are being firmed up. they represent a new variant that has greater transmissibility and the prevailing mix of coronavirus is in south africa are. that's probably w

scott gottlieb and cnbc contributor who serves on the boards of both pfizer and illumina thanks for being here. we all have questions of what's happening right now. the cdc guidance, the concerns they are pointing out and the numbers are top of mind with me. just watching this, they're now talking 1.3 million cases they're anticipating between now and christmas and the death count rising to 15,000 a day or a week i should say by january 8. that's pretty extreme. i don't know how the break this down tell me how concerned i should be about this. tell me the cases that are out there being found right now. how many are thought to be maybe mild cases, maybe we're picking up more and how do you translate that to the death count picking up, too? >> look, i think we should be very concerned at this point especially in parts of the countries having a delta wave. it does not seem like in the uk, omicron is going over delta. you see delta infections in the uk that's probably a consequence of people changing their behavior and becoming more cautious we haven't seen a drop since omicron skyrocketed. i