Approving the FDA guidelines ‘lays the seed that people can trust’ the vaccine that gets approved: senior fellow

Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, joins The Final Round to discuss his thoughts on the latest developments with the coronavirus as the White House approves the newest FDA guidelines on vaccine approval and the vaccine race.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Welcome back to The Final Round. Let's get to the latest on coronavirus. "The Wall Street Journal" reporting that the White House has dropped its objections and has signed off on the FDA's guidelines for approving a coronavirus vaccine.

For more on this, we want to bring in Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding. He's an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. And we also have Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani joining the conversation.

Doctor, it's great to have you on the show. With the White House signing off on the FDA's two-month COVID-19 vaccine guideline, I guess my first question to you is, where does this put us on a likely timeline for a vaccine to be approved?

ERIC FEIGL-DING: Well, the vaccine actual timeline hasn't changed. It's whether Trump would have previously had the gall and ability to overrule the FDA in approving it without the extra safety data.

So if anything, this will actually make the trials reports in confidence more safe because we will have the extra data to be sure that is efficacy has-- it works well enough and safe. And I think this is good news all around. It just means that Trump unlikely-- would be unlikely to approve it before election day.

SEANA SMITH: And doctor, we talk about the fact that with this vaccine, so many Americans, we've seen survey after survey that they are hesitant about potentially taking a vaccine, that there is a lot of distrust out there. Do you think that this type of headline at least would help improve Americans and their trust for a potential vaccine?

ERIC FEIGL-DING: Yeah, I think this is a really good move. Because one-third of Americans say they won't take it outright. One-third say they will, and one-third said, we'll see. And this wait and see and the huge number of people won't taking is really worrisome because a vaccine is only as good as how many people take it, right? A 100% effective vaccine is only 50% effective if half the people take it.

And so I think this lays the seed that people can trust it, that when the results come out, the scientific community will get behind it, as opposed to panning those too early and too risky. And that key messaging is one of those things where you will actually win the war in the long-term against the coronavirus next year whenever it rolls out in the general population.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Doctor, Anjalee here. I know that Dr. Peter Marks, who we all know is the FDA's top vaccine expert there, has been at various events and symposiums talking about this two-month period, but also saying that they wish they had more time, spurring what I think is a letter from multiple health experts pushing for even more time.

Now that the White House caved on the two months, any chance that we will just continue following science on this one? And is more than two months necessary?

ERIC FEIGL-DING: Yeah, I think we will probably need longer. It depends-- the timeline actually depends. A trial has enough data when, actually, enough people get sick, and you can actually have a contrast between the vaccine and the placebo group.

But I think, you know, this is a good first start. Actually, the FDA posted online, against the White House wishes, in one of their other side websites, which kind of forced our hands. Because then the White House would have had to undermine the FDA publicly, very publicly.

So in certain ways, the FDA won this battle, they won it grudgingly. And hopefully, there won't be any more of these [INAUDIBLE]. But technically, Trump can still approve the vaccine over because as of last month, they assumed all the approval powers from the FDA. So hopefully, they will abide by this. And hopefully, we'll have good data.

SEANA SMITH: Doctor, I want to get your thoughts just on what we heard from President Trump's campaign today. And that's the fact that he's planning to debate Joe Biden next week. Now it's scheduled for October 15th, which will put us just two weeks after the president had tested positive.

Just from your perspective, as a doctor, are there any safety concerns that you have about Trump attending the debate and participating in the debate?

ERIC FEIGL-DING: Yeah, Trump, for example, he took his mask off yesterday. He's still infectious. On average-- and this is average-- people recover and they're no longer infectious after 10 days after they show symptoms. 10 days is very, very close to the 15th.

And honestly, you know, Trump is much older, and he has risk factors. So he could actually be infectious and sick longer than normal. So 10 days is average. Half the people are longer than that. So he could still be infectious at the debate.

So I think at minimum, you should have much better plexiglass, which, by the way, Pence rejected for the debate tomorrow against Kamala Harris, which is very weird and strange. But personally, I think there should be a virtual or rescheduled.

AKIKO FUJITA: Doctor, looking at all the vaccine developments outside of the US, we've got China now looking to get some kind of assessment from the WHO to allow for the emergency use of some of their vaccine candidates.

And I'm curious how significant you think any kind of assessment or approval from the WHO would be, especially given concerns about the way in which the trials have been conducted in China, the safety and efficacy questions. I mean, ultimately, is this really about trying to get the vaccine to more of the emerging and developing countries that are likely to be left out as some of the big names that we've been talking about?

ERIC FEIGL-DING: Yeah, I think WHO, their vaccine consortium is the COVAX consortium with Gavi, a Danish group, that US, as a part of warp speed, are completely separated from because US did not want to join them.

WHO is wanting to make sure that the vaccines are safe and get into the hands of developing countries, and hence why they have developed and actually made pharma commit to actually reducing their profits and waving their profits altogether.

Meanwhile, the US warp speed vaccines have not. And that probably limits the availability of all these warp speed vaccines for developing countries and getting their hands. So WHO cares about global health. Again, Trump cares about America first again.

And that's not a good idea because with all these vaccines, their vaccines could actually be superior to ours. And now we're basically putting all our eggs in one basket. And that is risky.