Tag: steve pagliuca

Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca speaks on pandemic, return to play

Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliucca recently spoke on WBUR’s “Morning Edition” to talk Celtics, coronavirus, reopening the state and more.

Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca has taken an active role in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, even helping form an advisory board comprised of executives and medical specialists to aid the Governor of Massachusetts as the state moves towards reopening the economy.

Pagliuca appeared on WBUR’s “Morning Edition” show to talk about the state of the state with regards to the pandemic, specifically about how things have been handled to date, what he expects to see in the immediate future, and of course how these things affect Pagliuca’s basketball interests.

Specifically on the topic of how the handling of the pandemic has gone so far, the Celtics owner had plenty to relate; “my observation from from the outside is is that it’s going well,” offered Pagliuca.

“We learn more every day, but the [Massachusetts] high tech council started this study about eight or nine weeks ago, and every day, there’s more data coming in. So far, we’ve learned that about two-thirds of the deaths in Massachusetts have been from nursing homes. So I think there’s there’s been a renewed focus on on keeping those safe, which will be really important.”

“Amazingly, 99.6% or so of the deaths at Mass General have been people over 60 and 95% over 70. So the disease is actually taking a toll on the older generation,” he added.

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Pagliuca discussed developments in testing technology currently in the pipeline, including using gene editing tools like CRISPR to identify the presence of the virus quickly and cheaply.

“And then … throughout the nation, we’ve learned there’s 700 other kinds of testing companies springing up with isothermal tests which may be [a] cheaper and quicker test,” he explained.

The Bain Capital executive also spoke on new research pointing to the importance of wearing masks to prevent the spread of the virus, noting a “combination of masks, distancing and hygiene has been very effective.”

He also discussed how Massachusetts General Hospital is involved in clinical trials of drug combinations that may be able to blunt the impact of the virus’ worst effects; “and then there’s 101 companies now in the world pursuing vaccines, and many are [further] down the track than I think they thought they’d be.”

Pagliuca urged continued caution, however, noting “the virus is not defeated.”

With regards to his other, more popularly-known hat as a Celtics co-owner, he had some things to say about Boston and its soon-to-be-resumed season as well.

“We’re very excited the NBA announced yesterday at 22-team format. The goals of the tournament is for safety for the players and it’s going to be … in Orlando.

“Just players and staff and to maximize safety, but they’ve got a great facility down there. They’ve got to negotiate — all that’s not done yet — but hopefully we’ll be able to start up soon. The 22 teams came about from the principle of allowing six clubs who were less than than five games out [have a chance to make the playoffs].”

“So, our team is very excited to get back into action and our players are chomping to get back out there,” he finished.

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Just over two months ago, there were …

Just over two months ago, there were owners unclear that they would need to shut down arenas to fans — never mind stop games. But the world changed fast. Today, owners are championing testing and research studies. Sacramento’s Vivek Ranadive has discussed the Israeli breathalyzer test for the virus with his peers, sources said. Boston co-owner Steve Pagliuca is monitoring a Harvard study on possible saliva testing.

Today, owners are championing testing …

Today, owners are championing testing and research studies. Sacramento’s Vivek Ranadive has discussed the Israeli breathalyzer test for the virus with his peers, sources said. Boston co-owner Steve Pagliuca is monitoring a Harvard test study on possible saliva testing. And the owners understand something else too. Silver is the best messenger to reach players on the financial strain approaching the NBA. That’s why a week ago, Silver was on the phone with players describing scenarios where revenue could plummet, where fans could slowly, if it all, return to NBA arenas as ticket buyers.

Celtics Co-Owner Steve Pagliuca advising MA Governor on reopening

Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca has assembled a panel advising Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker on reopening the state.

Boston Celtics co-governor Steve Pagliuca has been taking an active role in helping combat COVID-19 in New England and the U.S. more generally, and has been part of a group advising the governor of the Celtics home state on how to safely re-open the economy.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker recently released a four-step plan directed at that goal, and Pagliuca recently appeared on WBUR Boston to discuss his role in helping formulate that plan.

As The Celtics Wire has previously highlighted, the head of Bain Capital (when he’s not helping run the Celtics) assembled a panel of healthcare leaders and business executives who presented a report to the Governor’s advisory board on the pandemic and strategies for safely ending it.

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The four-phase plan envisions key industries being allowed to return to work with proper precautions and severe restrictions on what is and is not allowed.

“As we studied the problem, the real issue is we have to keep our hospitals back in balance,” began Pagliuca. “There’s three ways to do that.”

“One is by segmenting the people going back to work, which is what this plan talks about this this in this initial phasing. So the second are treatments of therapeutics in the near term. And the third are really policies at the workplace to reduce the spread of the virus.”

“As you know, the virus has a very, very high spread factors at 2.5 exponential factor,” he added, referring to the viral disease’s highly contagious nature.

Recommending that testing and ‘contact tracing‘ (the practice of identifying individuals who may have had extended contact with an infected person in order to help slow the spread of the illness) the Celtics owner then turned to Baker’s plan.

The plan “calls for a phased in rollout where you are going to have to observe a lot of these — we’ll call new workplace norms, distancing, wearing masks, washing hands — for all the techniques to really stop that spread of the virus.”

“And so those will be, I think, really important for the public and for any businesses going back to work,” finished Pagliuca.

And which business might be first allowed to return to work?

“I’m assuming [the Governor] has stated that is businesses that don’t require large crowds and a lot of contact with people.”

That, unfortunately for Pagliuca and sports fans more generally, excludes professional sports; “I think that certainly sporting events, large gatherings, that’s a real problem with how these fires spread.”

Noting that the state won’t open events or businesses relying on crowds anytime soon, Pagliuca intimates it’s mostly likely manufacturing and other parts of the economy where social destinacing and other precautionary measures can be safely used.

What happens next depends on whether there is a second wave — and if so, how strong and long.

“Studying this virus across the world and comparing to past pandemics, they’re most likely is a second wave,” he noted. “And the goal would be to try to put everything we can possibly in place with new workplace norms.”

“Having a map progression in the transit system to doing testing and tracing, wearing masks are really critical to wear masks, the study studies we’ve looked at, show that mask is one of the key factors of reducing the outflow of the virus and therefore the spread.”

“But even with all that many, many times you see a kind of second wave, the key is to keep that second wave down as low as possible,” Pagliuca finished.

The Bain Capital head honcho proceeded to emphasize this plan is to “buy time until we can have a vaccine” or therapeutics that can make quotidian life safe again for most.

Asked on his level of optimism for and timetable to see the arrival of such therapeutics or vaccines, Pagliuca was upbeat.

“I would say it’s more likely next year, given the complexities of the building of vaccines, and making sure that vaccine is safe,” he began. “hoping for the best, I’m hoping it can be in the fourth quarter of this year.

“But normally, vaccines take, you know, 2, 3, 4 years. So it’s incredible what companies are doing right now. And the technology has really changed — you can you can use mapping of the genome to really enhance the vaccine development process and their parallel processing.”

Pagliuca spoke of the many efforts around the world already working on this problem from a variety of different angles, then pivoted to the challenge of scaling the effort to the billions of doses that will be needed worldwide.

“360 million doses and billions for the world,” he emphasized. “I think the Governor is right, you know that we have to be very cautious and this could be an 18 month timeframe.”

“We prepare for the cases, maybe 18 months and use these techniques to mitigate the virus and hope that therapeutical come along and are effective, but I think the over-unders somewhere around between 18 months or so.”

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Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca on front lines in fight vs. COVID-19

Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca has taken on an active role in the fight against COVID-19.

Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca is leading the charge against the coronavirus behind the pandemic suspending the Boston Celtics’ NBA season and much else about our usual quotidian lives.

As part of his non-sports work as head of Bain Capital (a major investment firm), Pagliuca teamed up with a group of a dozen esteemed scientists — including a Nobel laureate — along with several other high-profile businesspeople to create “Scientists to Stop COVID”.

The group, a Manhattan Project-like organization dedicated to combat COVID-19 and get the economy going again with the hopes of functioning as an advisory board to the federal government.

“I think we’re all cautiously optimistic,” said Pagliuca via the Boston Herald’s Mark Murphy. “America’s a great place, and with the technology we have and people working together – that’s why we’ve named this presentation the war on COVID. It’s been a great partnership between government, science and business – a real team effort.”

The business people involved have been using their contacts to gain access to the White House while scientists worked to identify potential treatment options while a vaccine is developed.

Work by the group helped speed development of experimental drugs such as Remdesivir through lowering regulatory hurdles with the help of FDA connections.

“Remdesivir is a treatment,” explained Pagliuca. “It would hopefully act like Tamiflu acts for the flu. Therapeutics would soften the blow of the disease, that prevent you from getting pneumonia.”

Even the pace of vaccine development has been a pleasant surprise to date, with things advancing ahead of schedule in the early stages of its development in several trials around the world.

“Some of the scientists here acknowledge there is a possibility that it can be done quicker – that would be almost miraculous … That’s why I say cautious optimism – it took four years to do a mumps vaccine, we still don’t have an AIDS vaccine, there’s never been an mRNA vaccine developed to date, and this is an mRNA vaccine. There’s a lot of hurdles, but today’s technology has changed dramatically from five years ago with all the genome research.”

“People are saying late this year, which would be miraculous progress, because it’s never been done that quickly before. But there’s been some optimism,” he added.

“You can hope for the best, but prepare for a longer period of time which would be 18 months to two years.”

The latter outcome is unfortunately even optimistic for historical examples, as Pagliuca notes, but that even early results are producing such positive returns is heartening in a season of loss and despair.

While there’s still plenty of heart-rending news out there saturating the media, it’s a welcome change of pace to see a smidgen of positive developments in the fight against the pandemic coming from a most familiar — if unexpected — corner.

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Steve Pagliuca, who is generally part …

This wealth of information in hand, …

This wealth of information in hand, Pagliuca then urged NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to consult with the group while determining a way to bring back the league. Silver’s cautious approach considered – with the exception of some impending practice facility openings – Pagliuca has no interest in discussing anything in terms of an NBA timetable. “I can’t comment on that. Adam Silver is studying this, and they have an incredible staff, and they’ll base it on the data and safety of fans,” he said.