They call me Mellow Yellow. Quite right, Slick. They call me Mellow Yellow. Quite right, Slick. Is that what happened? What's that next? What song is that? By who? Mellow Yellow, I'm assuming. I actually don't know that it's called Mellow Yellow. Um, I think the band was the itchy buttholes. You think it was the butthole surfers? Ah, yes. That's an actual band name. Look them up! It's true. Hey, welcome back to our Stupid Racks of the Corbin. The best dads get promoted to grandpa. You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, for more juicy content. Thanks, Patreon, for following us on Instagram. Because it means they've taught their children how to properly fornicate. I don't think anybody ever taught me how to fornicate. Yeah, you don't really need to know how to do that. I mean, you could talk about it, but... No, I taught my kids. Here, everybody sit down. I got a book for you. Look at this form, look at that. I saw a video of a guy humping a tailpipe in public. That's weird. What? What category? It's the end of the world. It was actually a real on Instagram. Automobiles. No, it was actually a real on Instagram. Anyways, today we're doing a series review. Is that what that is? Yes, because there's more than one thing. More episodes. I guess. And we are reviewing Jubilee. The came out, I think, maybe a month ago, I think. And I think it came out like, they dropped the first five. Right. And then they dropped the second five. I think two weeks later, something like that. I don't remember. But anyways, I heard a lot about it. I wanted to get to it, directed by... Forgive, I mispronunciation on this, please. Vikramaditya Motwani. Who directed Udan, which we loved. Half of Sacred Games. Yep. What else? Did he direct Queen or was he an AD on Queen? No, he was an AD on Queen. Or maybe I'm going to hold on. No, yeah, he was. Yeah. But I think he also directed Trap. I think there was one other... He did direct, you are correct. He directed Trap. Hold on. I think there was one other thing that I... He was... Did he partially contribute to DevD? He was... I think he was just part of the production team. I don't think he was director. All right. He did AK for AK we never saw. Joshi Super here, which we haven't seen. Right, and there's... Lutera. All Lutera. Lutera, right. Another one we liked. Very similar actually. Very similar. I'll think about that for this. Anyways, so it was directed by Ham, starring a billion...  A big ensemble. Peace. Yes. A bunch of smaller in terms of not star names. Yes.  I don't know what they would call... I don't think they would call them junior actors. They call them weird stuff in India. Yeah. They aren't as well-known. But we've seen before like our Benod. We saw him, I believe, in a couple things. Stree, I think was one of them. And what else? Dangle. So we've seen a lot. I think a lot of these people in... Stree, right? Yeah. In a few things, but they were more supporting roles. Yeah. I don't think anyone we've ever seen has been predominantly a lead in something, except maybe... Her. Was she in something? Who? Forgive me for forgetting the actress's name. She plays Sumitra. Sumitra. Adita. Adita. Padmavat. Rockstar. Yeah, we've seen her quite a bit. Yeah. Did she star in anything? Yeah, I think so. I think she was pretty big in Padmavat. Yeah, I remember that. Maybe that's what... I think she was the lead actress in Rockstar. I think it's those two. I think it's Rockstar and Padmavat where I have the memory of her. We saw those a while back. Yeah, yeah. Regardless, a lot of people in this one, big and subtle pieces. Yes, yes. And a legend in Bengali cinema and Mr. Chatterjee. Yes. But this will be obviously a hundred and four of you. If you haven't watched it, please go watch it. Come back and we decided to do just this way instead of a watch along. I've been told that you could do a watch along, but you didn't need to do a watch along. I'm actually kind of needed more focus on this one. I'm glad we did not do one. Yeah, it's slow. Film. Yeah. There's a lot of stories, but with a lot going on. And it's not a true story, but there's elements of, like I think they said, the first Bollywood scandals kind of peppered in there. A bunch of Bollywood history is also peppered in there. So it's kind of like almost not a full retelling of obviously the actual events, but you kind of get to go over some of Bollywood's history a little bit as well. Did the director also contribute to the writing? I think he was the writer of it. I don't know why. There's the creator, but actual script people. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, he wrote it. And it was also composed by... Say his name. Again, mispronouncing. Ole Kadanda Das Gupta, who I could tell from the outset, contributed to Sacred Games. The score was... I don't know if you looked up who cast it though. I did not. Oh, well, not a surprise. Either way. Abashik Banerjee. Obviously, once again, it'll be 100 minutes for all of you. It's on Amazon. If you want to, please go watch it. Come back. And we're going to kind of go over a lot, obviously, because we're doing the entire series here. So we'll try to talk about as much as we can. Right. But Rick, your initial thoughts of the series? Yeah, initial thoughts and overview of the totality of the series. So I found production design to be exemplary. I found the direction, particularly, for me, the creme de la creme as episode one. And I found the acting to be exemplary. I found the story to be somewhat slow, and I allowed it to be that way. At times, once we got to the end, and I'll explain more when we get into this, it felt almost as if it had been a film that had been stretched into a series, as if it had been conceptualized first as a feature. Maybe it was, yeah. And it may have been. Who knows? But ultimately, my takeaway from it was, even with the exemplary production design, a beautiful score, very good direction, exemplary acting, there were aspects of the writing, both in the way things unfolded, just in terms of crispness, captivation, a sense of just really gripping me that it didn't in ways I was hoping it would. And then there are some things that you just had mentioned about where I did some research in regard to the truth versus what's depicted in here. And for me, that's the takeaway that was really difficult for me to fully celebrate it. This was a mixed bag for me. But this also wasn't trying to tell a true story. It was just inspired by that true event. It wasn't an actual retelling of any particular story. No, but it was just inspired. We can get into that a little bit later in regard to why I have very strong feelings about that aspect of it, which is the primary thing that pulled me away from loving the show. I liked the show. Yeah, I really enjoyed the show. I actually thought the beginning was a lot more slow and then I got a lot more into it towards the second half. So it's interesting that you thought the first episode was... Even though I loved the first episode, I thought the first episode was very good. Yeah, I watched the first episode and then said to Andrani, I said, you're going to want to watch this with me. She watched the first episode with me as I saw it a second time. She loved it. And then we got into episode two and it did a pretty dramatic drop in terms of captivating me with the story and even what I saw with the ingenuity and beauty of the cinematography choices in the first one. Episode two to five were a lot slower for sure. That's exactly the episode for me. And then it goes up again. It has a very nice final episode. It summarizes everything well. There was nothing I hated about this series. That was definitely the slower aspect of it. I think the pacing, even though obviously that was probably their goal, it was just a strict drama with the story telling. But that aspect of it being a little slow was probably the hardest part of the series. Episode two to maybe two to five, I think. Maybe two to four, I don't know. I don't know specifically. Overall, I did really enjoy it. We'll just talk about the set design first because the production design and set design is probably the best in every series we've seen so far. Utterly. Golden Globe, you name it. Incredible production design. Immediately transported to the world that they've created. Every moment of the show. It was extremely beautiful. I don't know if we shout out to the cinematographer because I wanted to Yeah, I'm sure there's a cinematographer. The primary DOP is Pratik Shah. I bet he's worked with him before. Oh, maybe not, actually. I thought he would have worked on Sacred Games. The whole team. The whole production design, art direction, costume design, lighting, cinematography, as good as it gets. There were some really gorgeous shots in this.  What a great thing that set design people made for this series. I loved book ending that. From episode one to episode ten. Taking us right back to that fire. I agree with you. There were so many great scenes in that space, actually. Some of the best. Between Benod and Bengali. Especially episode one. Bengali... Yeah, Chatterjee. His first name. Prasangit? Chatterjee. He looked like... When he had the mustache, I thought he was an Anil Kapoor. He was very reminiscent of Anil. When he shaved the mustache, I thought he was more... What's his name? Just passed away. Or did he? I think of somebody else. The dad from American Pie and... Oh, yeah. What's his name? Um... Hold on. I didn't get that, though. I definitely got the Anil Kapoor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eugene Levy, sorry. There you go. No, he's alive. Who am I thinking of that guy? I don't know. I think of somebody similar to him that died just recently. Anyway, sorry. When he shaved his mustache, which I was... I was like, why did he shave his mustache? It just happened. Obviously, they were doing the passage of time and he decided to shave his mustache down. Where did his mustache go? He almost looked like a completely different person. But yeah, the cinematography and the production design were off the charts amazing in his film. I wrote, from episode one, the very first things that I wrote were sleek, subtle, simmering, stylish, and artistically superb. Yeah. And the production design, which includes everything we just mentioned, art direction, costuming, cinematography, lighting, sound, design was flawless. Yeah. And another aspect I really enjoyed before getting to everything else, actors and everything, the composition and the score. The scoring was superb. They actually made this, they actually put song numbers into a series, which was cool. Which is very much a tip of the hat. For something that's like an ode to old Bollywood. Yeah. I thought it was a great little touch there. Yes. And also the songs were just really, really fun. But also just the background overall score of the thing I thought was really complimentary of it all. And I really, really enjoyed that aspect of it. Let's talk about some actors. Obviously, your lead here, which I think would be, I mean, you have a couple leads, I guess, but let's talk about Benoed. Yeah, it's primarily Benoed. You have Benoed and then Story. Jay Khanna. Yeah. Two and then... There's multiple leads. It's an ensemble piece, for sure. Yeah. But let's talk about Benoed, which is, say his name. Aparshakti Kurana. Which we've seen more in a comedic role in Street and then obviously we've seen him in Dango. I think we've seen him in some other things, too. Yeah. He had such a big arc. Because even in the beginning, I wasn't expecting his character to go in the direction that he went. I don't know if you would... No. I was not from the beginning. I was not anticipating that. No. Because his character arc, and I don't know if he particularly learned anything, but he kind of had to face the consequences for what he did. You know who his relation is to somebody else, right? To the real story. No, no, no. His... Like the actor. The actor. No. He is the younger brother of a Yushman. Oh, easy. I can see that. Can you see that? Yeah, I can absolutely see that. That's interesting. Yeah. They definitely have a similar face. Yeah. Have they ever worked together? Good question. I don't know.  He is equally... They're very different actors, but the... And again, Abashak's casting always in conjunction with whoever's directing is always good, man. If you want to ensure you have actors who have thespianatic muscle and are believable as these characters. Inside of some of the white actors? Yeah, we have few. Although, there was... Where is it? Which episode? I wrote it down. Episode five, the white guy with an exclamation point. It was the scene... I forgot. I looked up his name. Throughout the moment he was, but it's in episode five. I just know that. He has one scene and it's around the time they're talking about getting the Hindi songs on American radio in that ballpark. That guy. Yeah, that guy.  Good. That's good. That's a good thing to do. I'm not going to have you talk, sir. But yeah, I felt... I thought he did a very, very good job. Very, very good job. Very believable. Absolutely. Very emotional moments for his character. I believed him as a very good actor. Yes. And it's super interesting. He has a very similar face to Yushman. I think Yushman has a little more charisma, which might be why he's the bigger star for the big box office, but I think he's an equally as good actor. Oh yeah. In terms of just... Solid actor. So, and then let's talk about Siddhant Gupta, who is, I think, our other lead as well. Correct. A very rent beer-esque look to him. I felt like if rent beer was in old Bollywood, I thought he did a very good job as well. I did too. His character was a little more straight and narrow, not as gray as even though kind of in the end, he kind of... Gets a little bit. He decided to instead of go after love, he decided to follow his dream. Yeah, a little bit to the end. And keep the fame and fortune. And also he would have implicated himself, I guess, with the way their court system is. But I thought he did a very good job. And then the other male, before we talk about the females, him, Chatterjee. In the lead roles, yes. I thought he did a very, very good job. I really enjoyed his character. I really enjoyed his screen presence, actually. Wonderful. And is he a Bengali? Yeah, he's a legend in theater and film in Bengali cinema. It shows. It shows. It absolutely shows. I loved his dynamic with any scenes he did with Benod. Especially that one in the beginning with the fireplace where Benod's reciting the scene. Yeah, the line, the scene. All of them have the capacity, most especially him, but everybody in the lead positions and some of the supporting positions. They have the understanding of being small without contriving that or indicating that. And if they're thinking about being small, it does not show, which is a testament to their process. But every single one of them knew how to just be the characters. And I believed them at all times. Yeah. All the actresses, your lead though, I can't pronounce that name. Yeah, Womika Gaby. Womika. Who played Nilifer. Did a really good job. Really lovely. As did, obviously, our Sumitra, which was played by Aditi Rao Hidari. If it's mispronounced, forgive me. And there's so many other characters and actors. There was nobody who was bad. Everybody was on an elevated, really good level, except for some of the white people. But that's just the norm. Unless you've got Mark Bennington in the role. Yeah, it's true. But it's lovely to see when you don't really have to be concerned at all with the performances going on. Correct. And that is for me, the production design and the acting were what held me to continue through with the watching of it. Again, it's a mixed bag for me because ultimately there's far more to like in this. But I have, we'll get to the summation at the end, the primary things for me had to do with the writing. Both in terms of truth and fiction and then also just some of the character justifications for me. Others may not agree, may not see it. But for me, there were things that lacked some of the riveting, sizzle, caring that I was hoping to feel for them by the time we got to episodes 5, 6, 7, and 8. No, actually I got more interested. Come 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, whatever. I was fully invested by post-5, I think, in the story. I thought it did, obviously, episode 1 to here. I think it did a little down and then it went right back up after 5, basically. It did a slow incline to 5. Agreed. Which, not that it was, but it was just really slow and not as engaging as 1. And then I think it got better towards the end. And through the episodes, there were some lines that particularly stood out to me that were very particular to acting and film and the industry. One of them was, one of the first ones was in episode 4. One of them was, I don't think these guys, I think these guys don't pay their writers.  And this quote, I made you a star. Don't try to be an actor. This other line here. One always has to get in bed with one or the other to make a movie. Right? Acting's just a matter of editing. And I did, I really enjoyed the fact that they incorporated some of... Like they talked about some of the... I think they talked about Awara. They talked about Mughal Islam. Mughal Islam. And different aspects of Bollywood history that we have. I'm sure there's way more that we didn't pick up on, obviously. We're only four years into this, but people that grew up with the industry will probably know a lot more references and stuff that was more subtle than we could pick up. Yes, absolutely. But I enjoyed that part. The arc of basically everything ending badly for everybody. Correct. I enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. This isn't a happy ending series. No. I don't think anybody actually is happy in the end. Benod and maybe his wife, because she didn't want him to be... Maybe. ...Madam Kumar. She just wanted him to be Benod. And so now they're nobodies again. Yeah. So maybe she's the happy one in the end, I guess. You could say. Yeah. But everybody else... No one goes riding off into the sunset happy. Obviously spoilers. Yeah, spoilers.  Bunch of people leave the people that they actually love to stay comfortable in their life and famous and fortune and to not go to jail, I guess, because he lied under oath and all that stuff. So I enjoyed that aspect of it. What did you think about the ending? Yeah. The ending, too. And this is a good place, I guess, to segue into what I had problem with. The minor problem I had with the writing, and it is very minor, was that there were some arcs with characters that I didn't feel... I was wondering about the justification of it, and I don't need to get into the specifics, because that would be boring. There were just some aspects of character arc that when a character made a decision to do something, I wasn't fully convinced as to their why in the writing. The actors fully fleshed out what they were given to me. But there were a couple of those moments. The other thing ultimately was, yes, this is a work of fiction. There's a disclaimer before every single episode. However, so much of this is so closely replicated to truth that I have a hard time, as I always do in these situations, with saying in your disclaimer at the front, and this is actually part of the disclaimer, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental.  That's not coincidental. This is loosely based on the film company Bombay Talkies, and it is loosely based on the lives of Hamanshu Rai and Devakarani. Devakirani.  They mentioned Mughal-e-Azam and other things. There are so many things to this that are so closely represented that to make that disclaimer and say that it's just, if you notice that, that's a coincidence. No. This was done with intentionality. And the story that I know after doing research and reading about it, because it matters to me, truth matters to me, it doesn't, if you're going to tell a story that is that closely representative of true people and true places and true events, you need to be more honest about that because if, for example, if Hamanshu Rai was my great-grandfather or my grandfather, it would bother me that they depicted him this way. It would bother me a lot. So that's ultimately why, for me, theater storytelling and storytelling has morals to the story. And when you take a story that has a huge amount of truth rooted in it and you simply change that for entertainment value or for plot value, it's very difficult for me because people can walk away from this thinking that this is the story of these people, that it's not a coincidence they're being presented this way. That was the ultimate for me. So you just mainly have a problem with the wording of the description? No, I have a problem with the way these characters are represented because they're based on real people. They're inspired by certain people. They're not based on real people. There's a difference. There is. Calling it Roy Takis versus Bombay Takis? We're getting into legalities now. No, we're not. They can't say that it's the real thing because of legalistic. That's the point, though. Every film does that, though. No, they do not. Shindler's List did not retell the story of what happened during the life of Oscar Schindler. But you're telling a real story of Oscar Schindler who were trying to retell that exact story. This was not. I think they should have. That was not the creator's purpose. So you can't say that they should have because you would have because that's not what they wanted to do.  But they also say that it's not real, though. They say it's a work of fiction. This is not the actual events that happened. And that any resemblance to the actual people and events is a coincidence? Once again, I think you're more upset about the wording of it. No, I'm not bothered by semantics. I'm bothered by motivation. I'm bothered by the why. I'm bothered by... It's the same reason I didn't like Raj Kamarao's film that depicted Daniel Pearl's murder by the terrorist the film took that story, showed it to everybody and told it in a way that it did not transpire. So people see that film and think, oh, that's what happened to Daniel Pearl. And that is a lie. So people can see this film and... Serious. Yeah, people can see this series. And even though it has a disclaimer at the beginning, which most people don't really fully read because the thing is never left on the screen long on a few to read every word, it's a legal thing, there are many people who couldn't watch this and it's so connected to so many things in real life that they won't be able to differentiate without researching what's true and what's not. And I have a problem with that when it's so closely resembling real events and real people that, example, the man who founded Bombay Talkies did not gamble away all his money and dive an overdose of pills. But once again, this is not telling the actual true story. But you can have... It's so closely resembling... But Rick, many films have done this where they have sprinklings of truth. They're not telling the actual story, it's just like, oh, you can tell that we're trying to almost inspire by this an actual event that people know. This is not the actual event that's being told. So it's not like a unique thing to this. Many films, series have done that.  It's not the actual Nixon telling, but it's not a unique thing to this. Many, many series and films have done that before. If you could give me an example that would win me to your side of the argument, I'd be really happy. I can't think of any that does that. There are many that do what you're doing and I don't like them equally. I understand. But if you're going to tell a story that is this closely resembling actual events in people, this wasn't farcically removed. This was very, very closely resembling to actual people and actual events and included a lot of actual events. But it wasn't the actual event. That's why the character can die a certain way or they can do a certain thing by actually telling the story of that guy. Right, but there will be people who watch this and walk away thinking that the founder of Bombay Talkies killed himself and was a gambler who cared more about movie stars and money than he did his wife. That's that person's fault because it's already told this is not the actual event that happened, though. I never hold a film accountable for people's stupidity. No, you can't hold a film accountable for people's stupidity, but you can hold a film accountable for feeding the stupidity. It's not feeding it because it says it's not true. Once again, semantics. You can think of what you want. That's fine. It's your opinion. I don't agree. So that's fine.  Cheers. Truth matters. This is not telling the truth. Right. It's not. It wasn't trying to, Rick. Anyways, was there any other aspects outside of what you've already talked about that you wanted to discuss? No, we talked about SCOR, we talked about the great acting, the production design. Yeah, I just ultimately, the takeaway, as I said at the outset, would be I would absolutely, I understand if somebody would love this, I didn't love it, I liked it. There were things I loved about it. But ultimately my takeaway was I liked it but it has so many superlatives in it. Yeah, I mean, towards the end, if we get to do the dummies with like, because I'd at least want to watch at least five series to be able to accurately do the awards and like, so what we didn't do last year was series because we didn't watch enough. But production dies, I can't imagine. Maybe obviously there's other stuff that come out. I mean, this would have went over Farsi in terms of production design easily. We could say a couple other elements as well that it would win. Those are the only two that we've seen though. Correct. But yeah, I enjoyed the series, especially it did a upward trajectory after episode five for me. It did two for me. So I like that. I love that it was also highlighting lesser-known performance. Agreed. People that aren't, obviously Farsi had Shahid and that's wonderful. I don't think there's anything wrong with stars. Headlining series or anything like that. Not at all. But the fact that a series decided to highlight. I feel like a lot of OTT series would do that. Obviously Pankaj and Nawaz are now big names and stuff, but they don't get the leads in films. Right. It may have been a very intentional casting choice by the creators and with Abhishek Helman casting that they wanted to ensure that everybody in these particular roles, they might be known, but they didn't want them to be so well-known that it's on the one hand you get a star because they're the star. And then there's another time you don't want the star. Sally Field said this when she was talking to Spielberg about doing Lincoln. She said, I know I come with a lot of baggage because there is a moment when you see Sally Field on screen. She says this, that you have to stop. Oh, it's Sally Field. You don't instantly embrace her as the character. You have to really get your suspension of disbelief working versus an unknown. That hurdle is not there. And that's, I agree. I love one of those things as well as, hey, the more wonderful actors that can get work, the better. Yeah. Yeah. Just hire us, Abhishek. Because we'll do better.  Yeah. We understand why it's the way it is. They live here. Yeah, we get it. We get it. Anyways, let us know what you thought about the series and what should be the next series we should watch down below.


Hello and welcome to the weekly market update with me David Madden. Today's date is Tuesday the 28th of May 2019 and the time of just count 1135 British summertime It's been a bit of a negative start to the to the European session That's probably the most Important financial markets news has been that there's the possibility of a new row escalating between Brussels and the Italian government essentially the EU have criticized the Italian government for that their death situation to get out of hand and And they're a threatening discipline and that could lead to the Italian government Being hit by the fine of up to four billion euros on the other side of the coin The the Italian joint deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini Has a setback of a single you use all of his energy to fight back against the outdated fiscal rules of the European Union, so With that political tension on the horizon We have seen an increase in Italian government bond deals that in turn has has put pressure on the Italian banking system Which of course has enormous exposure to the Italian government bond market and there is just the old Italian debt fear is resurfacing obviously the eurozone is quite interlinked so if the concerns over Italian banks that spreads out across the region wide and Italy has always been at the back of traders minds Italy is sitting on a mountain of debt. It's running a budget deficit It is and on top of that we've just the tiny economy is just recently come out of recession So the last thing the administration role wants to do is rain in public spending with the risk and send the economy back Into recession and Italy keep mind, you know is one of the largest economies in the eurozone, so If there is to be a kind of a full-on Financial crisis or banking crisis like we saw in other countries Such as you know Portugal or Greece or Cyprus that are maybe it is a different story It's it's a third largest economy in the eurozone and do that really flare up and erupt It could have a major negative impact on Europe on the EU as a whole Speaking of the EU we have the European Union elections over the weekend The kind of takeaway points have been the kind of traditional Bit well established parties in all the various different countries did not do well And there's a kind of a move towards a one-sided divide The more you're a skeptic parties And also that she and all the countries is more does move more towards the Green Party So looking at the UK the Brexit party topped the polls in the UK The the national rally formally known as a national front in France They're they're they're tipped. Well, the country is completed. It's looking highly likely that they have Won the one in France And all as I mentioned the the large the largest party in Italy at the Liga party party of Latteos that be any there are they're also Look to look appear to be the the the biggest winner from the EU elections. So In a number of large EU countries and other UK's even the European Union, but a number of large EU countries Anti-eupon and anti-euretoric is on the rise So we could wind up in a scenario where we when you know when we have the first sitting of the new Brussels Parliament The EU Parliament we could have a scenario whereby a sizable chunk of the politicians are actually opposed to the European project and that could lead to a kind of longer term Structural issues because if there are many if they're a size of a Proportional policy makers who are against I could continue to integration and various different policies of the European Union and I might make Decision-making in the European Union quite difficult, but also it's been kind of a shot across the boughs to the Kind of no usually the kind of slightly Center slightly right center well established parties in old and all across Europe They need to really kind of pull the socks up as it were because they lost out some of them lost out to greens and some of them lost out to More right of center further right further right of right of center Anti-euroskeptic parties, so we have seen a bit of a sell-off in eurozone equities The Italian market no surprise there is probably the biggest decline or the US China trade situation continues to rumble on You know in the last 12 48 hours you heard from President Trump who stated that The US isn't ready to make a deal with China yet He was talking about how China should have taken the deal that that was on the table if you know a few weeks ago Before it's like the renegotiate that situation is is kind of it's bubbling away President Trump is over in Japan at the moment He's looking to readdress the balance and trading a balance in between the United States and Japan But that appears to be a bit more a bit more friendly But keep in mind the China story has been hanging over the markets for the last few weeks And to be fair on and off has been hanging over for seven months now So it still isn't out the woods yet So given that we've you've seen a bit of pressure on economic markets in recent weeks It's likely we could see further pressure in the near term So I'll start off by looking at them at the foot two hundred and see how things are playing out so The wider upward trend is still very much intact We can see a nice series of higher highs and higher lows and this has been a very common theme you know rally between late December and An April or maybe early main some cases has been a common theme across European and US equity markets and Asian equity markets Basically trial 2019 But if you take a look at the foot two hundred here We can see that the market as unfortunately is held even though we even though we had them that the sell-off in Made them and made me managed to take out the lows of late March we have managed to recoup some of that ground and Ultimately kind of while we hold above this red line here the charity moving average which comes to the play at 71 73 if you could hold above that It's likely we could see further ground be made and should you press on higher from here The first ready to keep them out for who this blue line here Which is the fifth and moving average and that comes into play at 7341 and if you go beyond that We could be looking at retesting become a psychology board and 7400 and then if you go beyond that we could be looking at retesting there at the April highs If you do have a size of break to the downside below the dirty moving average And we take out this yellow line here the one-day moving average which comes to the play In around the kind of 71 80 mark we could be looking heading back down forward this year We hear in around the lot the the late February lows have been around 70 40 Take a look now. What's going on over in Germany? It's a similar situation by the German market rally between late December and early May So he had a multi-month high here in May and since then we've come off the boiler bit for like as I said the China US China trade situation now We're looking at we could be in for another kind of you know eurozone Debt-scale in relation to Italy, but the markets are holding the back is holding up. Okay It's you know We have seen you know the lower low or could be you know the lower high Could be potentially looking for another move to the downside But while we would be hold above this this blue line here The fifth any moving average which comes into play at 11,976 while we hold above that It's like we could see the wider upward trend continue. I should be pressed around higher from here They could be looking at targeting the kind of 12,400 12,460 region up around here, which would be in around the early May high If you do have a size of break below the fifth any moving average keep an eye on this area here in around 11,823 we can see that ever assistance in In in mid-March and also after area to support a couple of occasions in in April and also in in mid-May So keep an eye for 11,823 I'll give the size of the break below that we could be looking heading back down towards the 11,600 mark Take a look at what's going on over in the US starting off with the S&P 500 So the S&P 500 keep in mind hit an all-time high here in late late April early March So the market, you know the wider upward trend is still very strong But you know as I said we have seen global equities move to the downside So the market pushed pushed lower here bounced off of 7,800 pushed higher here So we have the lower low lower high here, and we love to be a bit indecisive You know this could be the point where We look to retest 2,800 and I should have a size of break below that that would then be significant because The lows then we would take we would then have been taking off the most recent lows And we have a lower low a lower high and a lower low. So I keep an eye out for 2,800 if you do break below that and if you do have a break below that Support might be found from this red line here Which is the fifth that a moving average sorry 200 a moving average the red line is a turn to moving average and that comes to play in at 2,774 All to keep mind this trend line, which has been in place for quite some time It's is still it's double up keeping on keeping an eye on if you draw a lot from the lows of February 16 To the lows of November 16. You get this trend line along here On a few occasions the back end the last year I'd like to support it act as both support and resistance and you know in In 2019 and we could look at heading back down towards that area It's essentially coincides with the turn to moving average which which to my mind makes it even more Make it even more significant because if a couple of metrics of a couple of metrics Which been important in the past overlap it makes it more likely we could see that area being being an area of importance So we could look at heading back down towards that area In around the two thousand seven hundred and seventy four region But if the market manages to kind of hold above the kind of two thousand in remark I should press on higher from here. We could be looking at retesting the mid may high of in around two thousand eight hundred and ninety two And if you go beyond that we could be looking heading up towards the like up towards two thousand nine hundred and twenty And then beyond that look at retesting the old-time highs I'll take a look what's going on on the Dow Jones now It's a similar situation For the Dow Jones the Dow Jones didn't hit an old-time high a few months ago, but did manage to hit They didn't manage to hit Significant levels back in May But so back in back a neighbor rather at the market if you can see here similar situation or by the trend line from the lows of February February 2018 to the loads of March and April 2018 create this trend along here similar situation with with the S&P 500 for buy the market did manage to act as reasonably good. Okay Support and resistance level in 2019 And the market might effectively retreat a bit below upper The sentence effectively close At or at or above it In mid-March but in mid-May Nonetheless, why we hold above that line is likely we could see further gains on the Dow Jones But if the if the overall trend does turn negative support commitment to play in around that area Which should be in around which also coincides with dirty moving average in around 25,000 435 25,400 keep them out for that area If you do see a significant break below that I keep them out for the the lows of their very mid-March Which come keep so in around the kind of 25,000 225 if you break below that we could point to further losses That you know the upper to the train for the last few months the upper fairness is still in place But if you didn't you know you need to be more in order to be more confident that their wire trainers going to continue We would need to kind of take out this blue line here of the 50 movie average, which comes to the play at 26,060 and a movie on that could take us back up towards 26,400 and they could be looking at a towards the 26,700 region Take a look now. What's going on over in gold? So gold Since February has been a nice example of a downward trend the last series of lower lows and lower highs And essentially what gold remains below this area here in around 1300 1304 The kind of mid may high one remains below that It's likely we could see further pressure on the commodity and if you do manage to push on lower from here We could make you try hitting 12 is 66 and then if you go keep pressing lower from here We could like to try getting this region here in on the 1250. We can see that actually as a Resistance on a few occasions at the back of the last year. So it's possible. It might act as support in the near term If gold does manage to press on higher from here take out the kind of 1303 1304 metric mark here We could then be looking at our getting 1310 which would be the mid April high and then beyond that up towards 1324 the late March high Take a look now. What's going on on the oil market? starting off with brain crude The oil contracts have had similar similar ish moves for the last few months like with equities Oil has had a big rebound between December and April and May But since then we have had a bit of a bit of a shake-up our concerns over future demand prospects because of the US China trade situation is going to dampen them Has that encouraged some traders to sell oil, but we have seen the old mark I've actually recouped some of its losses in recent sessions. So We what's what's opposed well for oil or for Brent crude at least is it's back above this red line here, which is a Trinity moving average and that comes into play just above 69 dollars a barrel So if you can hold above the Trinity moving average, it's likely we could see The wider upper training continue and should you press on higher from here We could be looking at it towards the 72 mark and then if you go beyond that They kind of the mid the mid March high of in around 73 spot 60 and then if you go beyond that We could be looking at retesting the April highs If you do manage to have a slice of break back below the Trinity moving average Then keep an eye out for this this yellow line here the water that we have the average in which comes to play at 67 spot 35 we can see here Back in the start of the year the metric did much act as important as a few occasions And if the metric act as important a few occasions in the past it makes it more likely it will do so in the future Now turning our attention to WTI It's a reasonably similar situation on WTI Providing we've seen a fairly decent move higher from late December up until April May But of course it got caught up with the concerns about future demand because of the US China trade spat was what's What marks out WTI? As the weaker of the two oil contracts versus Brent crude is that WTI is still firmly below this red line here It's 200 moving average which comes into play just above at $60 a barrel So we're currently on around 59 spot 07 So we're circling below the 20 moving average and while we remain below that metric It's likely we could see further losses Notice how on the water day moving average which previous act as support in February March of this year It's holding it's just about it's trying to blow that in a few occasions, but it's managed to hold above it So it seems to me that the market is in a bit of a limbo position where by it's below the turning moving average So the it's a bit of a negative outlook But if you can hold above the 100 it still has a chance of getting back above the turning moving average I'm pressing on our so the wider trend of the last few months has been at the upside Brent is above it's nerdy moving average. So that's that that's positive for the overall oil market if if WTI can retake It's turning moving average in around in about $60 a barrel We could be looking at retesting the this region here in around 63 6375 Because of the bit the kind of mid-may highs If you do manage to get a size of break below this this area here take out the most recent lows Just north of kind of in around the in around the In around the 57 20 mark if you do have a decent break below that We could be looking at targeting this year you here in around 55 spot 45 But actually it's both resistance and also a support not too long ago So it makes it more likely it will do so in the future Take a look now at the euro versus the US dollar So euro dollar has been in a nice downward trend the last few months way series of lower lows and lower highs Yes, I can clearly see the highs of March managed to go up the side of the highs of The highs of March managed to take up the highs of February, but you know, it's still a classic example Oh, it's still it's almost a perfect example of a downward trend But we can see here stood up the bat at this blue line here the fifth removing average Which comes into play in around 112 spot 27? We can see That's been acting as resistance after a few occasions the last few months So probably hold below that metric is likely we could see further losses potentially down or head back down towards the racing lows of one spot 1110 actually should move below that Psychological porn one spot 10 could then come into play If you can manage to press on higher from here We could be looking at tackling this area here the other mid mid April highs of in at one spot 13 22 And if you go beyond that you can look at it towards again at one 14 mark And then they kind of in around that one spot 14 45 one spot 14 48 in a front mid March And lastly take a look at the pound versus the US dollar So we quite a since early March we've had a fairly aggressive negative move on the pound versus the US dollar We do massive series of daily losses along here that our pressure on trees may to announce a recognition At the back in the last week we finally got that so we've seen a bit of a release rally But the pressure is still a very much to the downside on the British pound especially in the wake of the success of the Brexit Party in the EU elections because There might be some of them the Tory party You might suggest that given how popular well the Brexit Party did in the EU elections and their policy is for A no D is for a no deal Brexit. We might see some individuals Looked you can test the Tory leadership on the on a ticket of a no deal of Brexit and should the markets A no-deal mark a no-deal Brexit is something that the French markers we can would fear the most essentially if the Brexit Is this kind of soft as possible? It's likely we could see a benefit to the palm But if it looks like the UK is It looks like the next deal of the Tory party is going to be very much in favor of Brexit possibly even favor of a no-deal Brexit We could see further pressure on the British pound So the trend has been to the downside for the last few months if you look at take off the most recent lows I mean if you look at if you look at if continue to press on lower from here, and we look at start taking off at one spot 26 mark It could take us backers down to this area here in a one spot 24 76 And he moves to the upside in the power versus US dollar could run for distance in around the kind of one spot 28 Region and a movie on that could bring the journey moving average into play in around again at one spot 29 55 area Just want to show a quick run through of the week ahead if you go to our website cmcmarkets.com Under newt and analysis you will find the week ahead section And list off all the major market economic and corporate stories of the week so Wednesday tomorrow, we have the bank of Canada industry decision On Wednesday, we have first quarter numbers from apocambian Fitch over the US. Also. We have Dick sporting good q1 figures On Thursday, we have US GDP first quarter On Thursday, we have full your full your numbers from the British company panel group We also have your first half figures from the Daily Mail and general top general trust Company here in the UK Thursday, we have first quarter figures from Dell technologies and we also first quarter results from Matthew gap and on Friday We have Chinese manufacturing and Chinese non-manufacturing If you have any comments to make on this video or any of the other videos We've made here at CMC markets, please feel free to leave a view on your views and that's all for me this week. Thank you very much


Russia will use hypersonic missiles in Ukraine. The West's air defense systems are unlikely to protect all of Ukraine's military facilities. Russian newspaper Nesidesimaya Gazeta wrote about it. It said that Moscow thinks that strikes by Russia's armed forces delivered on Ukraine's military command system and related electric power facilities are effective. While Kiev denies it and insists that the majority of projectiles were down, the Zelensky regime claims that for a greater reliability of its air defense, the U.S. and NATO members should provide new supplies of air defense systems, including Patriot missiles. Both NATO and Ukraine are ready to continue hostilities. A military expert, retired Lieutenant General Yuri Netskative, noted that so far Moscow has not used any hypersonic weapons on a mass scale. And Ukraine's current air defense is powerless against them. He says, during the entire time of combat action, while carrying out the tasks of the Special Military Operation, the 9A7-660 Kinzhal hypersonic airborne system has been used only three times. The expert noted, only three missiles were launched and at all important targets. Meanwhile, back in 2021, in the southern military district, an entire platoon of the carriers of such weapons, hypersonic long-range fighter interceptor MIG-31K aircraft was created. So far, there is no information as to how many planes it is supposed to include. Yet, I think that it is no less than 30. And the Kinzhal weapon's capacity should be no fewer than 10 units per aircraft, so potentially Russia can hit no fewer than 300 strategic targets in Ukraine with 100% probability.


Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today at Heritage Events Live. My name is Tom Spore, and together with my co-moderator, Ed Hazelmeyer, we'd like to welcome you to today's event, the fight to get a COVID-19 vaccine, the inside story of the administration's Operation Warp Speed. By way of introduction, Operation Warp Speed's goal is to produce and deliver over 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines with the initial doses available by January 2021. We have a great program in store for you, and we want to get right to it, so let's do that. With that, I'm delighted to tell you a little bit about our first speaker. General Gustave or Gus Perna is an Army four-star general confirmed by the Senate on July the 2nd to serve as the Chief Operating Officer of Operation Warp Speed. Prior to this assignment, General Perna served as the commanding general of the Army's Materiel Command. For nearly four years, leading 190,000 military, civilian, and contractor employees with a mission to provide logistics, sustainment, and maintenance for a globally deployed Army. General Perna is a career logistician who has led complex supply distribution and maintenance operations in multiple combat tours with Army and joint forces and has served at the national level, supporting Department of Defense supply and distribution efforts. Well, as this, as his background, it's easy to see why he was selected for this critically important position. General Perna graduated from the Valley Forge Military Academy and has a master's degree in logistics from the Florida Institute of Technology. General Perna is going to provide some introductory comments, and then he's going to be followed by Dr. Hepburn, the head of vaccine development. Following Dr. Hepburn, General Perna is going to come back specifically to talk about vaccine distribution, and then we're going to move into a question and answer period with Ed and I asking questions. And then after a bit, we'll turn into your audience questions. And that's what makes it so important that you enter your questions at the right block on the platform so we can get to your questions. That's our plan. And General Perna, I now turn the floor over to you, sir. Hey, sir, thank you for that very gracious welcome. And it's a real honor for myself and Dr. Matt Hepburn to be here and talk to the Heritage Foundation group. So, you know, first and foremost, it's just an honor to co-lead the task force with, as you said, the mission to develop, manufacture, and deliver safe and effective vaccines to American people. First and foremost, so I just want to highlight, this is a whole of America approach. And in that light, I would be remiss if I did not introduce to the conversation here my other co-lead, because without him, without all that he brings to the table, without his leadership and direction, we would not be successful. That individual is Dr. Montsef-Salawi. Truly a co-leader with me. He serves as a Chief Science Advisor. And every day I learn from him and I am at all at what he brings to the task force here. His efforts tireless as demonstrated by the progress we made are really going to make a difference for us. And in my opinion, will deserves the most credit for our success. Without I said, though, this is a whole of America approach. And we will exceed because of the unparalleled expertise of health and human services, scientists, and logisticians, Department of Defense planning and logistics capability, as well as American industry ingenuity and the innovation from academia. It's this collective effort that will really ensure we're successful in our end state. And I'm proud to be a part of it. I'd like you to think of it this way. Our world's best scientists and doctors working besides the world's best military, with the support of American industry and academia, that is operational work speed. And we are really proud to be working together and this collective team to drive towards the solution of safe and effective vaccine for the American people. And I am very confident that we are going to be successful to this end. And today we'd like to talk to you a little bit about our approach and where we're at to this, to this herculean task that we've been working on for the last four to five months. And we are really just at the brink of finally seeing the fruits of our labor. So more to follow from me. But I turn it back over to you, General Spore. Great. General, thank you so much. And why don't you take it from here? Thank you. If I could introduce Dr. Hepburn, he has a undergraduate degree and his medical degree from Duke University and a 23 year career in the United States Army. And in that career, he has had extensive experience in developing vaccines and therapeutic solutions, particularly against current and future potential biologic threats, including serving as director of medical preparedness on the White House National Security staff from 2010 to 2013, also serving as clinical research director for the US Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases from 2007 to 2009. So he comes to his current position as the vaccine development lead for operation warp speed with quite a depth of experience in this area. Dr. Hepburn, thank you so much for being with us. It is just a privilege to be here. And certainly looking forward to answering the questions. And we'll get there soon. I want to limit my comments actually to the probably the most important question, or at least the question that I receive most often, whether it's at my daughter texting me from college or all of these different public meetings that we've had and communications over the last six months or so. And the simple question is how can you achieve the impossible? How can you take a vaccine development process that typically can take five years, eight years, 10 years and truncate that into the timelines of operation warp speed? I want to basically put my answer into four categories. And hopefully I can convince you that number one, we've made incredible progress so far, but that we can meet the ambitious challenge of operation warp speed. So there's four categories of how we do it. The first is in terms of vaccine technology. I think it's very helpful to point out that the efforts that have gone on for decades in terms of developing vaccines, we stand on the shoulders of giants, the people that worked on polio, measles, the smallpox eradication campaign, all of that that we learned in terms of how to develop vaccines. And there's been massive progress, even before we started operation warp speed, in terms of how you can accelerate vaccine development. There's been investments. This is a key point that the science and technologies investments pay off. It certainly does. These are investments that had been made by Health and Human Services with the National Institute of Health. And actually, I'm very proud of DoD investments, especially at DARPA, but elsewhere. Investments have said, how can we make vaccines at record time? How can we accelerate, especially the early technologies process? And these investments were used for Ebola in the Ebola vaccine development processes. And now I feel like they're really paying off. That's how we're in phase three clinical trials now, because of decisions that were because of those investments and those technologies that were that were started in the spring, that are now really paying off, both for their ability to be developed quickly and prove that they work in animal models, but also that they can be manufactured at a very large scale. The second point is in terms of manufacturing. We've talked about this a lot publicly, but I want to highlight not just one point, but two. Typically, what we highlight is instead of doing the typical parallel process of vaccine product development, where you do a clinical trial, and then you decide to manufacture at a larger scale than another clinical trial than larger scale, that we've run these processes in parallel and really made investments where large amounts of vaccines are being made much sooner. Now, it is possible that some of those vaccines, if they turn out not to work, that we won't use those doses. But by those investments, we're able to have millions of doses available much sooner than we ever would. But I think the second part that doesn't get highlighted as much is really the beauty of bringing together the best of the Department of Defense and Health and Human Services. By bringing the, as we talked about in the introduction, the supply and logistic expertise of a globally deployed force and applying that to the critical supply chain issues and potentially critical shortages in vaccine manufacturing, critical equipment being delivered months earlier than it otherwise would, that has massively accelerated our vaccine manufacturing timelines. The third is in the space of clinical trials, and I want to footstomp on this a little bit, because I think everybody hopefully has been tracking that both the AstraZeneca and the Janssen clinical trials have been given the green light to proceed from the Food and Drug Administration. Both of those products had been on a safety pause and that safety pause, that safety pause has now been withdrawn, but it also emphasizes very much that the prioritization that we have safe and effective vaccines, that we are following the highest ethical standards to ensure that these vaccines are safe and that those clinical trials are conducted to the highest regulatory and ethical standards as well. So our Janssen and AstraZeneca vaccines are back on track. These are not small clinical trials. Again, in a typical product development, you may see a vaccine trial of, let's say, 5,000 volunteers or maybe 8,000 volunteers. Our standard has been 30,000 volunteers in our clinical trials. That's because we want to gather as much safety information as we possibly can. And we also want to know if they work. With the more people you enroll, the sooner you're going to be able to evaluate the effectiveness. What we have done so far, and I think, again, most of you have probably tracked this, that Moderna has now completed their phase three clinical trial in terms of 30,000 patients or 30,000 volunteers enrolled. Pfizer is still enrolling, but they're above 40,000 volunteers now. What that shows you for me, and I don't know if this message is appreciated, but I want to emphasize it, is that that shows me that over 60,000 Americans have decided to say, I will volunteer. I don't know if I'm going to receive the vaccine or I may receive a placebo, but that I'm going to do my part in fighting this pandemic. I think we feel extraordinary appreciation for those volunteers. And but today, as I mentioned, the Janssen and AstraZeneca trials are going to need another many thousand volunteers for each one. So we're hoping that we can send the message through the the participants in this meeting of the importance in volunteering for vaccine clinical trials and to encourage encourage those. We we're very proud of that spirit of volunteerism that we see in America. We also always emphasize the word volunteer means it is a personal choice and no one has ever everyone makes that choice individually. But we think this venue and many others are great opportunities to strongly encourage people to look into that opportunity. Let me give you one more specific example. For our Janssen clinical trial, we're having multiple sites in our VA medical centers that will be enrolling. And for for our nation's veterans, this is another way that they can continue to serve in this way, fighting the event, the pandemic as a volunteer. My final point of those four on how we can achieve the impossible is through teamwork. I think this session is called Fighting the Pandemic. We're fighting the virus and the way we fight the virus is really getting the best from all of us. I think what we've seen is extraordinary integration and cooperation between our Department of Defense and our Health and Human Services. It's it's that the best that our government has to offer. But when that General Perna mentions the whole of nation, all of us fighting this together, the public, the public sector, the private sector, the foundations, everybody all together fighting that virus. I've seen some of the best teamwork that I've ever been a part of as part of Operation Warf Speed, and it is the essential fourth ingredient on how we achieve the impossible. Thank you. Dr. Hepburn, thank you so much for that. I'm now going to invite General Perna to come back and make some very specific remarks regarding a vaccine distribution. Over to you, sir. Hey, thanks, sir. I really want a powerful update by Dr. Hepburn's great teammate that I've just been really blessed to work with over the last five months. So, Matt, thank you. So I'd like to touch up. I'd like to quickly hit where Dr. Hepburn talked about manufacturing. I know it's not lost on anybody listening to this conversation, but in order to really take the risk in manufacturing, we had to do a lot of things parallel. He described, I thought, incredibly well the risk that we took in that, you know, we proceeded with six vaccines while simultaneously implementing the manufacturing capacity that was required to meet our mission. So just simply said, right, we had to make sure that we had the right capacity to manufacture the vaccine, which we didn't have five months ago. So we have done, we have added, actually added brick and mortar capacity. In other words, we have built facilities from the ground up to produce and fill finished vaccine. We have garnered all the materials required to produce the six vaccines, right, not only to execute trial trials, but also to bring it up to scale and full manufacturing for eventual distribution to the American people. And then we had to accumulate the right equipment for all the manufacturing that we put together. And then the last stage of that was making sure we had the right workforce that was trained and ready to to produce and actually manufacture and fill finished the vaccine. So really a remarkable task on its own. In this effort, what we did is we did implement the Defense Production Act authorities, you know, with OWS through the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Defense. Today we've implemented 12 with industry and we're working eight more. So it is this effort that has allowed us to prioritize contracts, prioritize materials, authorize control of scarce and critical materials and then drive industry to expand production and supply resources, which I think will be at the end of the day, really critical to our overall success. We've received nothing but absolute support in this life, whether it was permission from hire to do so and or the execution by our industry partners to do day to day business. So really remarkable effort collectively by again, the whole of America highlighted particularly in this part by industry. So let's assume that we're going to have vaccine available, you know, where science will drive the safety and the efficacy of the vaccine as Dr. Hepburn talked about. Let's assume that we have quantities of vaccine available to go upon FDA approval of an EUA. What is next, right? It goes without saying, but it will be the distribution of vaccine across all of America to include territories and major cities, large metropolitan areas, and it's just a Herculean task all on its own. So, you know, what do we do? We we thought through the process, there was many courses of action, but at the end of the day, I made the decision that we were going to utilize the commercial industry that was most capable of implementing this task, right? And so there was three large companies all capable, all three of them are playing a role in vaccine distribution as well as therapeutic distribution, but the primary industry partner for distribution will be McKesson. And McKesson is well versed on how to do this. At the end of the day, I chose it because they know how to do it. They have experience doing it to at the end of it, we want to be able to transition to them down the road for routine effort. And then third, and most importantly, is that the states are very comfortable with dealing with the commercial industry as we do all sorts of vaccines and therapeutics throughout the year accordingly. And so, in fact, I just let Dr. Sloughy and I were visiting with McKesson yesterday, down in Tennessee, Memphis, Tennessee, and we got to see firsthand a brand new distribution warehouse that's included freezers that can go down to minus 80 and minus 20 and then have the facilities to really distribute across to America. The McKesson will partner with FedEx and with UPS for distribution, not only KONUS, but around the world, as well as local pharma, Walmart, CBS, Walgreens, Kroger's, etc. to ensure that distribution can reach everybody. Four tenants of the distribution strategy that I gave the team as we were working, planning was first and foremost, we needed to understand we need that visibility and control of all vaccines. We need to know where every bio was, whether it was in the factory or it was on a truck or it had been distributed down to administration site. We must have 100% accountability of all vaccines every day. Second, we must be able to track the uptake of vaccine to persons out in America. Two reasons for this. First and foremost, because there are five of the six or two of those vaccines, we need to make sure that people are registered to the vaccine that they were administered and that there is a failsafe checking checks and balances to make sure when they come back 21 or 28 days later, that they get the right vaccine for their second dose. The second point was we want to manage the flow of vaccine to the American people. Initially, we're going to have tens of millions of doses available come December, but come January, February, March, it will quickly and exponentially increase the hundreds of millions of doses. So it'll be essential that we maintain the right flow of vaccine to the American people. So a track in the uptake. Third, we must make sure that we have traceability of the vaccine and that we know where where the vaccine is going at all times. It'll be a hot commodity, of course, and we needed to get to the places where it will be distributed based on state priorities and requirements in accordance with the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. And then last, we want to be able to cover all parts of America, whether you're in the Pacific, in remote islands, in the Pacific, or down in, you know, in the Atlantic, we want to be able to get to those islands. We want to be able to get to all of the Conus America, whether it's in the metropolitan cities or rural America. And we want to be able to make sure we can distribute to those American citizens who are overseas, you know, serving in the Department of Defense or State Department, etc. So we had to have coverage. Those are the four major tenants for our planning. The last thing I'll leave you with before I turn it back over for questions. This is different as we distribute this vaccine than the normal routine execution of something like influenza vaccine. The distribution of influenza vaccine on an annual basis is a pull method. In other words, pharmacies, doctor's offices, hospitals will register and request certain amounts of vaccine and will be delivered to them directly by industry. What we've done since we have purchased these doses from industry, what we're going to do is push, right? We are going to allocate equitably vaccine doses to all of America simultaneously. And as doses become available, we're pushing down and out to the United States of America. Eventually, this will transition to a poll, but probably not likely any earlier than March, April timeframe. And so we must ensure that we have very intricate and inter-coal distribution process to meet the four tenets as I described, be able to ensure the constant flow of vaccine as it's available and then make sure that everybody gets the right vaccine at the right time. So that concludes my comments and I am really grateful and welcome to any questions that you might have. Over. Great, General Perna. That was that was awesome. General Huffer and also thank you so much. We're now going to go to some questions from Ed and I, but the questions are also rolling in from the audience. So we're going to quickly cut to those and but we're just going to ask a couple to get things warmed up. And so my first question is to you, General Perna.  I know you don't like talking about yourself, frankly, but this is really a personal kind of question. You were you were weeks away from retiring from the army after a distinguished 39 year career army career. When you got a call from the president that he wanted you to help lead Operation Warp Speed. And you know, I'm guessing many of the listeners on this webinar might face a similar kind of moment when they're unexpectedly hit with a new task a new mission that they they probably never in their wildest dreams expected to face and they had to pivot to a new environment and a new set of challenges. I know they'd love to hear from you. You know, how did you get this news? How did you get your head around this new mission and and how how did you prioritize what you had to do first in this new immense mission that you were given? Thank you. So sir, what a great question. I still remember, you know, we all have those moments where you know exactly where you were when the phone rang. I know exactly where I was and Susan and I were transitioning into our at the time thought retirement home. It was a weekend. It was about a week before the announcement by the president in the Rose Garden. And I was asked to, you know, if I would be interested. Of course, immediately without hesitation with full support by Susan, who, oh, by the way, I was sitting right next to me when I got the call, you know, it was immediate. Yes, I am honored and humbled to do so. And quite frankly, greatly privileged to co-lead this effort with Dr. Montsef Salawi, who is just, as I said earlier, a remarkable leader and scientist, you know, quickly and then people who know me and read the bio can speculate why I was picked primarily probably to enable manufacturing distribution. But it is also about the collective leadership and experiences of, you know, all the years I've served. And so I would tell you that my experiences have really contributed to what I've done. My instincts that I've developed over the years have enabled and supported decision-making. But in partnership with Dr. Salawi, we've been able to really just put really numerous pieces together simultaneously, understanding, really teaching each other. And as Matt Hepburn said, what I'm finding them to be most rewarding, you know, I've really been proud of working for what I've always called a team of teams, United States Army. But as Matt Hepburn said, I have never, ever worked with a greater collective group of professionals, whether scientists, doctors, military persons, industry and really academia. That's why it is so exciting to do what I'm doing. And then at the end of the day, sir, I know you know this, but it's just a calling, right? And, you know, this is about saving American lives. And for me, it is a focused effort to do so. And it is this great collaborative effort. Egos are checked at the door and we are working this together to an end state that will bring America back to a healthy state. So thanks for that question. I probably underestimated the impact if Susan's listening, but I really appreciate her support in case she is listening. So thanks, sir. Hey, why don't you go ahead with the question? Yeah, I would. Thank you. I've been scrolling through the ones from our audience. And some folks have questions that are very similar to the ones that are on my mind. Dr. Hepburn, I'd like to ask you a couple of things that really is very much in the forefront, not only of our listeners on this, but the general public. And that is some of the safety issues around here. I think one of the things that's gotten overlooked, maybe, and you sort of touched on it in your remarks, is that what most people are used to in terms of vaccines that they got as children or flu vaccines or things like that is different now. We have very different technologies. And some of these are new technologies that are really being applied for the first time in vaccine development, such as messenger RNA. And I would like, if possible, for you to address the concerns that people have. Gee, I got an infection from a vaccine or something like that. What are those concerns relative to these new vaccines? How's the safety profile? Yeah, so first of all, thank you for the question. And I think the probably make a couple of points and happy to elaborate further. I think I want to actually go back to one of my previous comments in terms of volunteers and in terms of clinical trials. I think maybe most people understand, but to state it clearly, that with every vaccine that's been administered as part of Operation Warp Speed, it's done in the context of a clinical trial. What that starts with is that someone makes that individual decision and says, I'm willing to sign up. As part of that process, we explain the risks and the potential benefits in detail, but we also acknowledge that we don't know everything there is to know about these vaccines. It really, again, goes back to that spirit of volunteerism. We appreciate people that are willing to do that as part of developing these vaccines. But what we also do for their willingness to volunteer is we monitor them extremely closely to make sure that they're not having side effects and to make sure we're truly understanding the impact of these vaccines. So when we say 30,000 patients, what we're talking about or 30,000 volunteers, we're saying that 15,000 of those volunteers have received a placebo, but 15,000 volunteers have already received these vaccines and we're watching them literally on a daily basis to say, how are the vaccines going? Okay, are we seeing side effects from them or not? So I think that that's the first point is that safety standard and then all of that information is packaged, processed, and ultimately presented to the Food and Drug Administration for an independent, and I say again, independent evaluation to make sure that these vaccines are safe. The second point is in terms of new technologies and vaccine sort of vaccine technologies in general, that we have been, as I previously mentioned and as you mentioned, sir, that there are very traditional ways of making vaccines, but we've also seen a lot of progress that are accelerating allowing us to make vaccines faster. One of the benefits that we think we're going to see from this is that it also may make these vaccines safer as well. And what we've seen with the products that we've chosen, not for COVID-19, but for other pathogens that these vaccines have been tested in clinical trials and have shown us that they are effective for other pathogens, but also safe. So the essentially for each of the vaccines in our portfolio, we've said, okay, have you used this similar technology for an Ebola vaccine or something like that? And we look at the detailed safety profile of every person that received those vaccines and the safety profiles have looked to be safe so far. Ultimately though, we are not only saying, we're looking at these vaccines in the short term for clinical trials, but as part of the regulatory process, the Food and Drug Administration is providing guidance in terms of how will we follow these people out for the longer term? It's called pharmacovigilance. And that again, like any other vaccine, we're meeting that highest standard so that the long-term safety will be followed according to regulations. Yeah, and I think that gets at some of the other concerns that we've heard expressed by people, which is that if this whole process operation warp speed is pushing things along at a fast pace, then does that imply the corners are being cut that it may not be safe, et cetera? And I think what is not fully appreciated is, as you mentioned, the technologies being used allow for faster mass production than has historically been the case with vaccines, that in some cases, just because of the nature of the technology, there's a somewhat better safety profile. And I think you addressed two things in your comments about the speed. One is that they're taking steps in parallel instead of in sequence. And the risk to that is, well, we may be paying money for stuff that turns out to not work, but hey, better try five things and wait for one to fail than try another. And the other point though, and I wanna drill down on that, is the clinical trials. It sounds like, if I'm correct in hearing you, that essentially to expedite the process, you all are, or the vaccine candidates and their sponsors are doing larger trials than they would normally at this stage. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We agree with all of your points. And if I can just add a couple of points. We are not cutting corners on safety. We are not cutting corners on the quality of the manufactured product. Those will be done to the highest standards. And we are not cutting corners in terms of what would be expected from a regulatory authority, the Food and Drug Administration, which I think has the highest standard in the world for medical products. We are going to meet those standards. I think it's an important message and I think we are practicing what we preach. I think one of the things that we would also highlight is that the Food and Drug Administration has published guidelines and has said, here's what we are going to expect for COVID-19. The FDA has also had a public meeting last week where they had an open dialogue about here's how we are going to evaluate these products and here's why. We've also, with the products in the earlier phases of clinical trials and in their pre-clinical development, the companies are publishing their results in peer-reviewed journals. All of this not only is showing that we don't cut corners, but I strongly feel this has been an incredibly transparent process so that people will have confidence in the vaccines that we are generating. And my second point is, yes, to answer your question, these are large clinical trials. These are clinical trials that are enrolling a lot of volunteers in a short period of time. These are clinical trials where our experts and our professionals are working nights and weekends and as you would expect, we're doing that too, but our partners in the private sector that are running these clinical trials are working around the clock to get these clinical trials up and running. But it's ultimately driven by, again, those people who've said, you know, again, literally thousands of people who are lining up at the door of the clinical trial site saying, please, I want to do my part and volunteer. And if I could just ask one very interesting question that came up from one of our viewers here, Tom, that follows on this line. And that is that there is the probability that there will be, or the possibility, that there will be more than one vaccine available at the same time for COVID. And the obvious question is, well, will people have a choice? And if so, how would they choose which one to take? And I thought that was a very interesting question. Have you all given some thought to that? We have. You know, not coincidentally, we were actually in a meeting talking about this right before. So, and I will say it will be, there will be some complexity, but God, I hope we have that problem. We went into this process, again, doing the impossible with the thought of that we were gonna invest in six vaccines with the hopes that we would have one vaccine that makes it through all of those typical challenges of medical product development. We still have six that are on track. We're thrilled that we've made this much progress so far. But we are working through, I think our Department of Defense colleagues understand this very well as contingency planning. So we have, in all aspects of Operation Warp Speed, have thought about all of the different scenarios and contingency plans. So there are scenarios where we might have more than one vaccine that could be useful. Now, the simple answer to your question is that we're going to let the science drive that process in terms of which vaccines work best for which people. Meaning that it is possible that we may have equivalent efficacy and equivalent safety across the board. We could also be in a scenario where one of our vaccines preferentially works very well in elderly populations that are most vulnerable. So we would then pivot our program so that the vaccine that works best in elderly are given to elderly volunteers. A final point that I'll make is that all of our vaccines in our portfolio are two-dose vaccines, which as everyone can appreciate, adds a lot of complexity. The Janssen vaccine for which we are enrolling, as I mentioned previously in the clinical trial now, is a one-dose vaccine. And so we're again, thinking through contingency plans as well in situations where if we have a one-dose vaccine, what would be the optimal use of that? Right, and presumably the large studies doing 30,000 in a phase three trial, 30,000 patients as opposed to say 5,000, as you mentioned earlier, that enables the companies, the sponsors and the FDA to get a better handle on some of these issues like differences in age and race and other demographic issues. Yes, sir. Yes, that's correct. Yeah, so I think this question, and I'm going to try and bundle a couple of questions together because we're getting a lot of good ones here, and this is for General Perna. And I was hoping a lot of people have asked about the military's role in terms of distribution of the vaccine. And they've also asked, should, I've heard we have an election coming up, would it change in administration and how would that affect operation work speed? They sort of thanks so real quickly to answer your first question directly, the military is providing planning, right? We're helping with, you know, things with logistics augmentation, program support, log cap support. We're running program management for them, for the team. So what we're doing is bringing enabling capability and capacity to the fight. There will not be this vision that some people have that there'll be army trucks driving through the streets, delivering a vaccine. That's not one feasible or the right way to do it. You know, this is the greatest country in the world. We know how to do this, right? Commercial industry knows how to do it, and that's how we're going to do it. The second point to your question, nope. You know, we've got our heads down and we are driving the sled. And we are going to execute our mission as directed. And so I see nothing that would cause us to stop doing what we're doing, no matter the results of the election. And it's a great break. I would like to highlight though, again, we talked briefly about the whole of America approach. I want everybody to visualize really, the brilliance of this, of what we're doing here. And this is not my vision or Dr. Slough's vision, but really of others who had the foresight and vision to bring the collective team together. This team is partnered at the highest level by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Defense. We are a direct report to them. We don't have to go through staffs. We don't have to coordinate time. We are pick up the phone and we have direct and immediate access to these senior secretaries. Two, everything we are doing is from scratch. This whole process is built from the ground up scratch. There was no structure in execution. There was no strategy in execution. There was no training guidance or budget in execution. And all of it had to be brought together simultaneously as we started our effort collectively. So we built the team across, as I talked about, HHS, Department of Defense, Industry, Academia by those who we thought could contribute and those who would help us really make the strides necessary to achieve our goal by the end of the year. And so to that end, we really had to, as I said earlier, check egos at the door. You had to come in and no matter what you were a part of before you had to, one, shoulders the burden of responsibility of execution, not just of sitting at the end of the table. Two, you had to have the right relationships to garner support in all that we were doing. And then three, at the end of the day, we're all being held accountable to how far we're moving the ball. We're mildly interested in theory or pontification of what could be.  And I gotta tell you that some of them are very illuminating and very helpful and they're welcomed and we're really appreciative that we receive them. On the other side of that spectrum though, we get a lot of conversation about everything we're doing and how it's not gonna work and how it's not the right way to do it. Quite frankly, not very helpful. So my thing is, is being part of the team, help us become successful, understand that this has never, ever been done before. And we have successfully, so far, taken a process that normally takes between five and 10 years, built an extraordinary team, put it all together and we are successfully driving down the field. So at the end of the day, come be a part of what we're doing, come help us do it better, but sitting on the sidelines, just poking away is not helpful to what we're doing. Over. Great, thank you very much. Again, I have a lot of questions that I wanna get through as many as possible. Dr. Hepburn, maybe this is for you. Couple of people have asked, does this effort that you're in now change fundamentally how vaccines are developed in this country? Have we moved the goalposts permanently or is this just a thing? And are we gonna go back to eight to 10 year vaccine development cycles? And then if I could piggyback on that, a couple of people asked about the really cold temperatures that some of these vaccines may have to be stored at. Could one of you talk to what kind of challenges and solutions we have for that situation? Sure, so happy to start. Yeah, frankly, I find it profoundly exciting to say, to imagine a world post pandemic where we can rapidly develop treatments, where we can rapidly develop vaccines, not only for the new threats that come up that we weren't expecting, but for all of those infections that plague us as a global community. So I do hope we can revolutionize vaccine development. I hope we can show people what is possible in terms of how we can achieve accelerated product development without compromising the making sure that the vaccines are safe and effective.  Yeah, Tom, I saw an interesting question here if I can jump in from one of our listeners. And it was asking about the estimated duration of protection that these vaccine candidates will give. That's one of the open questions is, okay, if it generates a response, how long does that response last? Do you have anything you can share with us on that, Dr. Hepburn, or is that just something we have to wait to get the clinical trial results? Well, we're gonna have to wait, we're gonna have to wait until the clinical trials results. But the intention is, this is why the people that are vaccinated in the clinical trial now, our intention is to follow them for up to two years so that we can get a better idea on that critically important question of duration of protection. What we are also doing though, and again, we are informed by great scientists in the National Institute of Health and in academic collaborations that we're watching, we don't understand the duration of protection from coronavirus infection itself. So can you get coronavirus again? And there's a lot of recent publications that are coming out, getting a better characterization of the immune response to coronavirus infection. All of that scientific knowledge is just feeding into our vaccine programs so that we are understanding that duration of protection and ultimately that we will design the trials and the medical research to answer it. Great. Let me pick up on a question that a couple of people have asked, and I'm sure you probably have a word for it operation one speed, but it's a vaccine hesitancy. And so some people reluctant in the best of times to get a vaccine and this might be a bit more than that. What are your plans, I guess, going forward to kind of try and attack this problem that this fear or this reluctance people might have to get these vaccines? Yeah, we acknowledge, we acknowledge, appreciate. And acknowledge, appreciate it. And we've been very kind of thoughtful about this. That is a much bigger issue than just operation warp speed, but it will certainly impact what we do. From my standpoint, and I'll turn it over to General Perna for further comment. From my standpoint, what we've said is it's the product development. This is why we don't cut corners. This is why we make sure we maintain the highest ethical quality and regulatory standards and that we're transparent throughout the process so that we can create a sense of confidence, that what we know is being communicated publicly so that people can make the decision about these vaccines, but that again, where you can help us today, everybody on the phone, conveying that message that we're doing everything we can to assess these vaccines for their safety as well as their efficacy. Hopefully that will inspire confidence that once we show that these vaccines meet the regulatory standards that people will be willing to get the shot. General Perna? Yeah, I just would add to that. I have 100% confidence that we have executed to make sure that the vaccines are safe. And in the development, I feel confident that they'll demonstrate efficacy. Against the virus. In that light, I also have 100% confidence as Dr. Hepburn alluded to in what I think is the gold standard for the world. And that's our FDA and their approach to determining whether or not the vaccine is safe and effective. And we will make sure that we will follow the science to that end. We will not distribute vaccines that are not determined safe and effective. And you could take my personal word for that as well as, you know, well, just my word. I don't want to speak for others. What I think about every day when I come into work, quite frankly, and just to personalize it for me, right? I think about my 84-year-old mother and her husband, right? I think about my three granddaughters, right? And then, of course, extended all the way through all my family and friends and everybody I've ever served with over the last 39 years, right? That's how I extend myself personally to this effort. And, you know, nobody in this organization, this task force is going to allow a vaccine to go out to the American people that is not safe and effective. And it would just be shameful if we get a vaccine out to the American people and people don't take it, because there's doubt or concern. So we're working hard, diligently, to increase confidence in the vaccine. It'll be everybody's individual right to determine whether or not they want the vaccine. But, you know, what we stand behind is the safety and the efficacy of the vaccine that will be delivered to the American people over. Great. One last question that we may go over a bit over the hour, so I'll understand if people have to leave. It's got to do with the actual, I would call it the tactical distribution of the vaccine, the who decides between the elderly, the first responders, all those type of things. Where is those lines between the federal government operation warp speed and the states and the territories and that? Can you talk about that briefly? Yeah, I think, so I'll make some initial comments on the product development and scientific side and then hand it over for General Perna in terms of the distribution. I think, you know, what we are, we have designed our clinical trials to really assess if this vaccine will protect those that are most vulnerable. Those broad categories are people, the elderly or people over 65, and also people with other types of medical conditions. We're ensuring that a large percentage of our clinical trials are enrolling those volunteers so that we can understand how effective it is. And I hope it will be. So the answer to your question ultimately is that the first step is to really understand how these vaccines perform. Again, we emphasize the science drives the process. Once we understand that, it will go into a prioritization process and I'll let General Perna comment a little bit more on that. So as Dr. Hepburn really did a great job talking, the science will drive it. It'll be determined, the safety and efficacy by the FDA. The CDC will play a role in helping to define, based on the FDA findings, the priority and recommendation of how the vaccines will be distributed. And then of course approved by the Health and Human Services Secretary accordingly. At that time, we'll distribute vaccines accordingly to all of America simultaneously. We will make sure that there is equitable distribution in accordance with that priority. And then the states will, they own the actual final distribution and administration down to individual arms. And so really a collective team approach to that effort over. Yeah, in general, my understanding is the states have submitted plans to HHS and CDC on the local distribution. Is that correct? Yes, they did a remarkable job. They've all submitted plans. We spent about five to seven days reviewing them, providing synopsis and we returned them yesterday. All weekend teams were working on them and returned them yesterday so that we continually improve our effort to make sure it's done the right way. All right, we can get Secretary Azar to disseminate those more broadly. Yeah, that would be helpful. Well, teammates, we have run to the end of our time, although I personally could go another hour so listening to this great discussion. I wanna thank General Perna, Dr. Hepburn, one for participating today, but in more general terms for your great work on this. I know you're working really long hours and it's not going unnoticed by America. So thank you so much for joining us today. And I wanna, on behalf of Ed and I, thank you for your time today and wish everybody on this call a great thing. General Perna, Dr. Hepburn, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.