The Power of Pandemic Rhetoric; The Winklevoss Bitcoin Bulls

**Katie Kramer** (0:02)
This is Squawk Pod, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on our podcast, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and large gatherings have likely left more coronavirus cases in their wake. Dr. Scott Gottlieb.

**Scott Gottlieb** (0:14)
We're gonna see a bump in new infections. There's no question about that. We've seen that after every holiday.

**Katie Kramer** (0:19)
And new cases or no, political strategist Frank Luntz says the key to curbing COVID might be in the power of rhetoric.

**Frank Luntz** (0:26)
There are certain words to use that will connect and encourage people to actually behave the way that they're supposed to.

**Katie Kramer** (0:34)
Bitcoin's wild ride to $19,000, the Winklevoss twins, two of the earliest crypto bulls are betting that adventures on that new frontier have only just begun.

**Cameron Winklevoss** (0:43)
We've just been hodling. $18,000 Bitcoin, it's a hold, or at least if you don't have any, it's a buy opportunity because we think there's a 25X from here.

**Katie Kramer** (0:52)
Plus DoorDash is lining up for its IPO, but it isn't that particular weight that has our Joe Kernen concerned.

**Joe Kernen** (0:59)
I should start getting these fries. I should start getting them from DoorDash, but I don't know, I like them or they make them, and then I get home within five minutes and they're still hot.

**Katie Kramer** (1:07)
It's Monday, November 30th, 2020 Squawk Pod begins right now.

**Andrew Ross Sorkin** (1:12)
Good morning and welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin along with Joe Kernen, who is back from a much deserved vacation and Melissa Lee, a happy Thanksgiving to everybody. Becky is off today.

**Joe Kernen** (1:26)
We are just weeks away from seeing millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine start making its way to patients across the globe, just crossing the wires.
Vaccine maker Novavax saying it has pushed back the start of a US-based late stage trial for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine. It is now expected to begin in the coming weeks instead of November, but we'll focus on some of the others that are much closer. Join us now, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, he's former FDA commissioner, CNBC contributor. He also sits on the boards of Illumina and Pfizer. His latest Wall Street Journal, Op-Ed, discusses the complexities of the COVID vaccine after we start rolling it out and FDA approval. We gotta make sure, doctor, about the second dose, gotta monitor that, make sure people complete the regimen. And I would imagine we need to know, as you point out in your Op-Ed, whether people are contagious or not, whether we can count on the vaccine to have a beneficial effect on the spread in addition to protecting from the worst symptoms, does it make someone less contagious, do you know?

**Scott Gottlieb** (2:37)
Right, and we've talked about this on the show, you've asked me about this before. We don't know the answer to that question. We don't know whether or not the vaccine just prevents signs and symptoms of COVID, which is what the trial demonstrated. People didn't get symptomatic COVID disease.
Or is it also preventing some infections and making people less likely to spread the infection? Now, we assume that it's also probably preventing some infections.
And we also assume from some of the primate studies that we did with vaccines, from these mRNA vaccines and vaccines more broadly, that it gives you what we call a non-sterilizing mucosal immunity, which basically means you have immunity at the site of the membranes where you'd be likely to shed the virus, like in your lungs or in your nose. And so you're less likely to shed the virus after vaccination. But these things need to be demonstrated. And the way we're gonna prove this by and large is with post-market data, by following people who've been vaccinated and seeing if they're less likely to spread the infection or get infected in the first place. There is gonna be some data coming out of the clinical trials to answer this question.
The manufacturers are looking at whether or not people who get vaccinated develop antibodies to other parts of the virus, besides the part of the virus that the vaccine's designed to stimulate antibodies against. So the vaccine is designed to stimulate antibodies against the spike protein. But if you look at people's blood who got vaccinated and you see antibodies against other parts of the virus, like the nucleocapsid protein, that's an indication that they got infected and they just didn't get symptomatic. So there are ways to tell from the clinical trial data, but by and large it's gonna be the post-market data that we monitor to try to answer these questions definitively.