Currax Pharmaceuticals CEO says the GLP-1 conversation isn’t one-size-fits-all

Hi there. It’s Jack O’Brien digital editor of mm with the mmm podcast. Mark is off this week. So I’m filling in to lead the show where you’re about to hear is an interview. I had with kirac’s pharmaceutical CEO George Hampton. We spoke a couple weeks ago about the glp one Revolution and the opportunities in the pharmaceutical space. Not only for the leading contenders, which is Eli Lilly and Nova Norris but other Pharma companies as well as it comes to offering different solutions and treatments that are effective for different audiences and patients out there. George was very candid in the interview talking about where the space is very optimistic about where the space is going but also really emphasize this kind of changing narrative that we’ve seen around obesity specifically around this idea of one size fits all which Kira acts is challenged in years past as part of different marketing and advertising campaigns. I hope you all listen to this interview. It’s very interesting to have a pharmaceutical leader be able to come in here and give a really objective view of where the Obesity and glp-1 land. Landscape is and I hope you enjoy it. After that. We’re going to be joined by Lesha with a health policy update Lesha what’s on tap today? Hey Jack today. I’ll recap the Biden administration’s moves this week to protect abortion rights by strengthening the health insurance portability and accountability act or HIPAA. Excellent and then we’ll be coming back with a trend segment focusing on Dr. Jen Ashton leaving Good Morning America to start her own wellness company Allergan Aesthetics is putting out a be the face of Botox campaign and we talk about you guessed it dog poop a land Co Animal Health has a campaign out today that I think a lot of people who are K9 owners will want to listen to Mark your school at editor at large and welcome to the M&M podcast medical marketing media show but Healthcare marketing writ large. Thank you George for being on the show. I know we spoke a couple of weeks ago about everything that we’re looking at in the in terms of the glp-1 weight loss drug space want to get your thoughts in terms of where things stand right now. Obviously, there’s been a lot of conversation about shortages the efficacy of these drugs have changing nature of obesity stigma. I want to get into all that but from your Vantage Point, where are you paying most attention to sure and Jack it’s going to talk to you again. And thanks for the attention to obesity. It’s important. The market is getting very exciting. And you know, that obesity is the number one epidemic that we’re facing as a country and that’s because we’ve left it largely untreated. So right now you can figure you’ve got somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% of all patients who are eligible for pharmaceutical care receiving treatment. And it’s despite the fact that accelerated massively last year, right? And we have you know, two of the top companies in the world, you know, when artists from a size perspective unable to keep up with the man. So kind of tells you just how big this problem is of obesity and the market is getting getting very very excited. You know, exciting we have three classes of medication right now with the glp ones who have the muscle Olympic system and we have the entity class. And we have you know 70. Plus products and clinical development. Most of those won’t make it out the system. But those that do I think will you know, bring not only just more competitors in the existing classes of medication but also new classes of medications for Physicians to be able to treat this disease. So it’s very similar to what we experienced as a country in the 90s with hypertension and high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. pharmaceutical companies did their job to put more tools in the Physicians toolbox to combat the disease and I’m really interested you talk about the existing medications. I think that’s where you and your company come into play. Obviously all the focus is gone to these new set of drugs. I think that’s why we’ve seen so much in terms of overextended demand and all the issues that come with it your company produces contrave. And when we had our first conversation, I’d come in with the notion that oh, these glp wants are so popular and they’re so effective. It must be negative on your business, but you would take kind of a different approach where you said no, it’s kind of a, you know, a high tide lifts all boats one of you kind of explained that perspective for our audience because I think it’s very important in terms of saying like hey, even if you don’t have access to say we’ll go V or mongero. These other drugs can help with the other aspects of obesity that you’re trying to treat. That’s exactly right. I mean for my perspective, I want more products not fewer and what new classes medication to come in because they the historical record of our country treating Multi-factorial chronic diseases which is what obesity is same thing as hypertension type 2 diabetes Etc. Chronic diseases is that you cannot solve the problem a single medication or the single class of medication. You need to have all of these different classes of medication because each person’s disease is driven by something else. That’s you know, that’s individual to that person. And so what’s been missing in obesity has been, you know, very large pharmaceutical companies with very good answers to obesity which is the GOP one companies are and you have great companies like Lily that is you know, one of America’s top pharmaceutical companies that when they come into a market they don’t just come in with a medication they come in with all of the services that surround that that medication in order to help patients with their disease journey, and that type of investment has made it better for patients because they can now feel less stigma with walking in the physician’s office to talk about their obesity Physicians more comfortable about talking about obesity with their with their patients. It’s it’s brought light to the fact that this is not a condition obesity is not a condition it Disease and it is driven like all the diseases as its individual to each individual person. So yes, our business is booming and it’s because one size does not fit all when it comes to treating obesity in Physicians need multiple classes and medication to really combat the disease and we benefit from that. We are completely different mode of action than a GOP one or price point is completely different or an oral product and there’s any number of other benefits that specific patient types. I want to ask you a question before we get into kind of the price aspect because I think that’s been such a critical component and I’ve talked with the folks from Lily about the access issues. But you talked about how this is kind of a watershed moment similar to the way in terms of how hypertension and diabetes was treated in the 90s. What are some of the key lessons that we can take from the you know, what happened 2030 years ago and apply to this situation because I think a lot of people are saying, oh it’s such unprecedented demand and it’s changing the way that people perceive this disease. But like you said there is a parallel from a few decades ago. What can we pull from that what’s useful to examine from that situation? Yeah, I think there’s a few things. The first is this is the first time that I’m aware of that as a country as a society that we’ve let a disease run its course unchecked. And what I mean by that is obesity doesn’t need to be where it is today. We don’t need to have 40 plus percent of our adult population with obesity. It should have never happened in this particular case. We fail to intervene with products devices and services in an accessible way to where we could slow the disease progression or even stop or reverse the disease progression with the available medication and this is a great example of a disease that will be turn our backs to it and let it Let a disease just take over without intervening with tools that we do have. This is what we have and it’s the number one up. The second thing is there is no one size fits all the treating a product disease. our physicians in the United States of the best trained physicians in the world and we need to put as many options in front of the most possible so that they can really individualize the care or every single patient that comes in secret with our obesity. when you look back to tattoo diabetes for example, right it was you now have Five classes of medication and within each class of medication you have multiple competitors. So let’s just let’s look at dpp4, right? That’s one class of a type 2 medication type 2 diabetes medication and within that class you’ve got multiple competitors and as a result you have price pressure because those products and those companies compete for you know access that a Managed Care level and they usually end up competing on price. So it is the goes across every medication you say the same thing for hypertension with the calcium channel blockers Inhibitors competing with each other, but ultimately Physicians make the decisions to Which choice is best for that for the patient. So, yeah, I think we’re in a very very early stages of what is going to be, you know our I think a really good shot. It’s slowing progression movies. And where does the insurance side of this have to advance obviously when we had our conversation a couple weeks ago CMS had just made their change in terms of how they were going to cover obesity drugs following the fda’s label expansion for wagovy. What is your sense in terms of where things go from there and how that could change the dynamic in terms of access because I know that there’s obviously a sizeable patient population you talk about the millions of Americans that suffer from obesity or type 2 diabetes that could benefit from this class of drugs, but unless their insurance is covering it with the price point that these drugs are at it’s not really that feasible. So, what do you see the go forward on that front look like I think the most important is to clarify what happened at CMS the focus at Novo Ronnie a very large car you asked a trial and a very specific patient population and they showed cardio protective features of will go be Which is a very very good thing for this for all patients with the BC in those with cardiovascular disease CMS does not have the ability to cover obesity drugs. But because they have the ability to cover cardiovascular products, they approve the use of agave in this very select patient types that are tied to the select trial that that no one would just ran and so CMS still is unable to cover obesity medications on a whole and that’s a really important point because it trickles down to how the commercial private insurance covers obesity and that really is almost not at all. And the only time they cover it is when they sell the employer and additional waiver or or rider for their for their health insurance plan. And so I would say only the Cadillac plans are very very rich plans actually have F obesity coverage right now, which is which is how we got ourselves into this into the situation. Not only did we as a society not recognize obesity as a disease. We also have you know, limited access to all medications and services and devices to almost zero the course of OBC growing throughout the country. So yeah, that’s that’s a very different situation having a covered scenario. Yeah. There’s a lot of unpacking that’s going on here and it’s interesting to hear you talk about kind of the commercial insurance looking to CMS in a way for you know, where they’re going to lead on this because they’re not going to take any sort of action until I see change at the federal level. So it’s seems like there is kind of a waiting game aspect too where it’s like, oh once CMS makes whatever policy decision then we can see the insurance Market at least on the commercial side start to make those adjustments as well knowing that there’s obviously a lot of demand from consumers and from even employer groups, too. I know they’ve been Out there pushing for oh, yeah, our employees want to have access to these drugs and we see the the upside of having more people addressing these chronic conditions earlier on so then they don’t deteriorate or have those issues later down the line. But that’s exactly right. And the last time this happened was with smoking cessation products under the ACA. Back in 2008 or 2010, you know smoking was considered a lifestyle problem. Not a not a disease and that changed under the ACA and when that changed the CMS started covering to attempts per year to stop smoking. Right with medication then the commercial insurance fall very very quickly. And I would hope that this is the same thing with obesity because we have to get to slow this disease and the only way we’re going to be able to do that is through through access. I want to ask you a question because I have a large medical marketing constituency for our audience. And there has been such a difference in terms of how these drugs are being marketed out there in terms of Lily and Nova both kind of taking aim at the stigma. I know that your company as well as talked about there’s not a one size fits all solution. Can you talk about what you’ve seen in terms of the destigmatization efforts around these drugs? I think you you go back five years ago and personal with obesity. Was you know searching up? Ways to lose weight on the internet at night from their home, right? No one else is around Physicians were unwilling to engage their patients in conversations because it was a taboo topic to even talk about and I think one of the biggest, you know, emotional feelings that a person with obesity have with shame and fortunately this is Shifting and shifting very very rapidly. We’ve got to go gotta go a lot further with this. But yeah the idea that you can’t have medication because you’re because you’re obese makes no sense at all. And so yeah, we are we think we don’t have really the resources as a small company to be able to change this mindset, but Lily Anova with what they’re doing the fact that someone can walk in the end of their doctors office now and if you comfortable talking about Their obesity and what they want to do about it and how it’s impacting their life. In fact that a physician, you know now knows that they can have this conversation safely because it’s becoming a safe topic for people for people and in particular those patients with obesity for them to know that it’s not their fault. It’s just not their fault. It’s not a simple life style change that’s going to solve their disease. It’s you know, we’ve made great progress and we have a long way to go, but it’s changing. It’s not only from the ads that we’ve seen around, you know, your Wego vs and manjaros and everything. It’s all been these kind of patient education programs. I know that Lily has rolled out Lily direct to try and address the access issue and be more expansive in terms of how they deal with consumers. What do you make of drug makers taking this sort of approach instead of saying like, oh no, we’re trying to just reach the hcps, which will then reach the consumers. They’re almost taking a different sort of approach where it’s like if this fits for you talk to your doctor. That’s at least what we’re seeing in the advertising that seems to be kind of a sea change when we’ve seen in terms of other prescription medications. What does that mean? And from your Vantage Point? Well, I think it’s these access programs have been around primarily provided by smaller smaller companies. So we have had the Cure Access program for four and a half years now where basically we make the product available at 99 dollars per month shipped right to the patient’s home. They showed you to use a pharmacy Network. Lilies direct program. I don’t know the price or how they’re how they’re exactly handling shipping. But you know, I know the patient can pay cash price and what it’s doing with these programs do two things really one. It allows the patient to assess the product directly and what would be in the patient’s mind and affordable price. Second thing it does. Is it kind of strips the Profiteers in the middleman and farm it out to where you’re going around the managed care plans. You’re going around some of the high wholesaler fees and other things like that. And so it’s it’s just, you know, it’s just a cleaner way to get product to to a patient. It’s not for everyone and frankly these programs can’t last forever either right? These are bridge programs at least in our case set up to address the lack of affordability and lack of coverage. Two patients with obesity. So it’s our 99 dollar price points, you know is is a lower in some cases than what you can buy it and over the counter nutrition shop. Your local mall these programs I think are overdue. I think if Lily is successful as a large company coming in. I think the first one first large company ever really do this. If they’re successful, I think other companies will follow and we have some pretty exciting things. I think Mark Cuban and his team are doing Amazon’s now on the business and I think we’re gonna we’re gonna improve this we’re going to improve this, you know product to Patient. So supply chain and hold hostage for for quite some time. George I appreciate you being on the show I wanted to give you one final question which is if we were to reconnect and say six months time, where would you expect the landscape to be as it relates to how we’re talking about weight loss drugs and obesity in general. Do you think we’re going to make more meaningful progress? Is there any chance that we Plateau? You know, what are your expectations for the near term? Well in the near term, I think we you know, the biggest thing is Troy at the US government level. We you know, this is the treatment reduce BCD act it has an incredible amount of momentum and both the Congress and the Senate on both sides of those bodies as well. And you know, I know a lot of the modeling and forecasting is coming in right now out of the CEO that’s you know, really trying to provide an accurate number to our to our decision makers at the Congressional level. And you know, my hope is that that passes and that passes and people on Medicare and other government programs that have access to BC medicine. I think the private insurance will do what’s right and start to cover start to cover in normal access the way our system actually works. Let’s start to cover BCD as well. The supply issues. We don’t personally have a supply issue. I can’t speak to you know, why the larger companies are having supply issues. But these are these are very very large companies with almost Limitless resources. I’m sure they’ll get those those solved sooner than later. But yeah, this is exciting. I think we’ll see more patients treated. We’ll see more patients treated affordably and as that happens, we’ll get to see this disease start to slow and our country which is really the most important thing that we can be doing right now. Yeah, there’s a lot of wind that people’s backs here. And obviously it’s an exciting time. That’s why I appreciate you being able to come on the show and and give your expert insight into how all this is unfolding and where it’s going to go from here and hope we can have you back on the show sometime down the line to see what other storage developments are are on the horizon. My pleasure. I appreciate the attention on the beach City. The Biden administration made moves this week to put abortion under the same federal privacy protections as other health data under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services released a final rule to strengthen the HIPAA law by prohibiting the disclosure of protected health information related to lawful reproductive health care. Under the rule, healthcare providers can protect access to patients’ health data that could be used to prosecute them in states where abortion is banned or restricted. In particular, the rule would help women who travel out-of-state to receive abortions. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, some 14 states have put near-total abortion bans in place. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra noted in a statement that QUOTE “Many Americans are scared their private medical information will be being shared, misused, and disclosed without permission. This has a chilling effect on women visiting a doctor, picking up a prescription from a pharmacy, or taking other necessary actions to support their health.” OCR Director Melanie Fontes Rainer added in a statement that QUOTE “providers have shared concerns that when patients travel to their clinics for lawful care, their patients’ records will be sought… Patients and providers are scared, and it impedes their ability to get and to provide accurate information and access safe and legal health care.” This week, Biden administration lawyers will also be at the Supreme Court to defend another effort by the HHS to protect abortion under emergency services – in particular, a rule that requires ERs to care for patients facing an emergency medical condition like abortion complications, regardless of state law. I’m Lecia Bushak, Senior Reporter at MM+M The Biden administration made moves this week to put abortion under the same federal privacy protections as other health data under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services released a final rule to strengthen the HIPAA law by prohibiting the disclosure of protected health information related to lawful reproductive health care. Under the rule, healthcare providers can protect access to patients’ health data that could be used to prosecute them in states where abortion is banned or restricted. In particular, the rule would help women who travel out-of-state to receive abortions. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, some 14 states have put near-total abortion bans in place. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra noted in a statement that QUOTE “Many Americans are scared their private medical information will be being shared, misused, and disclosed without permission. This has a chilling effect on women visiting a doctor, picking up a prescription from a pharmacy, or taking other necessary actions to support their health.” OCR Director Melanie Fontes Rainer added in a statement that QUOTE “providers have shared concerns that when patients travel to their clinics for lawful care, their patients’ records will be sought… Patients and providers are scared, and it impedes their ability to get and to provide accurate information and access safe and legal health care.” This week, Biden administration lawyers will also be at the Supreme Court to defend another effort by the HHS to protect abortion under emergency services – in particular, a rule that requires ERs to care for patients facing an emergency medical condition like abortion complications, regardless of state law. I’m Lecia Bushak, Senior Reporter at MM+M. Thank you Lusha for that Health policy update. We’re gonna get into the first part of the trends which focuses on Dr. Jen Ashton. I think our readers will remember a couple weeks ago. We covered her debut of the agenda newsletter focusing on women’s health and wellness. Now, she’s thinking that step further. She’s going to be leaving ABC and Good Morning America where she has served as the chief medical correspondent to launch agenda, which is a health and wellness company focusing on women’s health. Not a lot of details that we know of right now. I think that’s probably going to come out more as she phases out of For TV role by the end of June, but the when I spoke with her via an email interview a couple weeks ago for the launch of the newsletter really was talking about the things that she wanted to emphasize as relates to Women’s Health was menopause and weight loss and a whole other host of factors that play into Women’s Health. I imagine I’ll be the same thing that we see here. I think a lot of people in our audience will probably know Ashton as Dr. Jen. She’s been on Good Morning America for years now prior to that. She had been on the doctors which is a syndicated talk show as well as the early show and CBS Evening News as their senior medical correspondent before she hopped over to ABC. She also hosted GMA 3, which was a spinoff of Good Morning America. I want to bring leche in here because it’s seems like there’s been this renewed focus and it’s interesting actually have this happening a few weeks before we have our women of Distinction event, but to be launching a company that’s focused primarily on women’s health and wellness. I think it really speaks to this kind of renewed focus on the space and having somebody with her. Star power and cash a lending a light on to it. Can’t hurt. Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, she’s obviously very well known in the media world and I’m sure many people have seen her on television. So having her sort of celebrity named tied to a new company could definitely bring in a lot of attention to that. I’m curious what the company itself will actually be doing because I know that agenda is also the name of her newsletter that she just launched. Is that correct? Yeah. I’m curious to see if it’s like an extension of that if it’s going to be sort of like a news Outlet or sort of like a Content creation platform and she’s gonna sort of expand that where she still touching on the topics that she’s talked about a lot like, you know, the weight loss deal P1 space and how they affect women and some of these other women’s health topics. I’m also curious to see if there’s going to be like actual products like wellness and help Women’s Health Products that companies developing or not. You know, I wasn’t really able to find too many details about it online, but I’m sure that’ll be unveiling Soon in the coming weeks and months. Yeah, and I just want to pull up something that when we had had our conversation. She had said I’d asked her are there plans to expand the newsletter scope Beyond menopause and weight management since it’s what it was starting on and she had said, well, there are so many issues affecting women menopause and weight management are arguably two of the biggest Health topics in the US today given my experience at credentials. These are the areas that agenda newsletter will focus on I imagine something will have a similar one as well. But again, it leads into so many different areas of health and she had said that if women inquiring about other issues that she would consider expanding it. I think the company could probably be slated to do a similar thing. So it’ll be interesting to watch it going forward certainly will be sad to see her leave Good Morning America for all the viewers who are all listeners our audience, but we sure the best going forward with the roll out this company. Yeah, defin. I mean, I think you know the menopause topic. I’ve personally seen in the last like year to a lot of campaigns focused on that when maybe that didn’t get as much awareness in the past. I know that like the period underwear makers both thinks and nicks which are two different companies have focused on perimenopause and menopause and some of their recent campaigns and then you know, we’ve seen other campaigns kind of focus on this idea of like aging women in healthcare and how they can kind of advocate better for themselves in their health. So I’m excited to see what she she does in the space. Yeah. I’m glad that you bring that up because she is a she is in her mid-fifties and so being able to have somebody that again have that sort of relatability and on audience size talking about things that for so long were taboo were stigmatized and being able to come out there and say no, this is a normal part of a person’s life and you’re going to have the tools and resources and information most importantly to act on it will be important consideration for our second. Topic we’re going to talk about allergen going back to the well, they are opening up their casting call for Botox. They’re inviting consumers to be the face of Botox last time that they did. This was a couple years ago for the see yourself campaign and that casting call listed about 20,000 submissions. Now, they’re doing it again and they are allowing consumers to apply for a chance to be included in future brand campaign supporting Botox. The casting call will run through June 4th closing at midnight. And anyone who is interested is encouraged to apply by submitting their application at the website, which will we will include in the transcript of this podcast Lesha you and I were talking about before we hopped on the call that obviously Botox is so well known, you know, it’s it’s over two decades old at this point, but being able to put out a casting call, I think a lot of Brands would kill to have 20,000 individualized personalized engagements. Let alone people actually saying no, please put me in your commercials put me in whatever sort of branded advertisements for this. I think it just Speaks of the power that ABV and Specialty allergen have in terms of rolling up Botox and people flock to it like moths to a flame. Yeah, I think it’s you know a really interesting idea. I know they’ve served on this in the past with previous campaigns where they’ve sought to bring in like real patients and real people who use botox as opposed to like inserting a paid actor into kind of a traditional, you know, Pharma or health commercial and you know, I think that Botox has really exploded in popularity as well with tiktok in the last few years. I mean, there’s been reports that cosmetic surgeries the rates of cosmetic surgeries among young people have like skyrocketed since the pandemic so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lot of like young tiktokers who want to apply for this and you know be a part of this campaign we’ve seen so many Botox Trends appear on tiktok. Like we covered Barbie Botox, there’s bro talks which is a botox for men. There’s just so many different ways that people are using Botox now and talking about it on the platform. So I imagine they’ll probably get several. You know tens of thousands of submissions again. Yeah, they said they’re going to make their final cast available at the end of this year which will end up covering inevitably but one thing I thought was interesting too is not only that are they going to get a lot of applicants? I imagine they’re partnering with a few different organizations to kind of promote a more diverse. Look at what the effects can be which I know has been a focus of not only them but some of their other competitors so their partnering with cosmetic executive women the Black Beauty roster Latinas and Beauty and The Black Beauty club, which again, I think speaks this idea where it’s not just this conventional, you know, Caucasian focused you it’s really saying like our products can be across different skin tones and for all sorts of different audiences. So be interesting to see how much I know last time that they whittled it down from 20,000 submissions to 25 cast members don’t know if they’ll be higher this time if they have more applicants, but it’ll be something that I imagine. We’ll see a lot of diverse representation across the board if it’s anything like what they had in 2022 For sure. Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see all so they’re measuring like the metrics of this campaign to see what the impact is, you know bringing in these real people. Does that drive up their numbers, you know, raise awareness about Botox more than you know, more traditional route to The Campaign would be so it’ll be it’ll be interesting to see a play out. definitely, we’re gonna go to our final story of the day, which as I teased at the top is about dog poop a topic that in the you know year or so that I’ve been on this podcast. I don’t think that we’ve delved into but earlier this year listeners will recall that we had the president of a lanco animal health on and today at the time of this recording on Tuesday April 23rd. They are launching a national campaign to spread awareness about the start of a deadly season for canine parvovirus also known as parvo, which is one of the most contagious and deadly dog viruses affecting 900 dogs a day of which up to 91% will die if left untreated and they also cited a statistic here that said only 44% of consumers are even aware of the disease and its symptoms. So in light of national parvo awareness day, which is today, they are launching the Parvo is poop campaign to shine a public light on parvo with what they call eyebrow raising creative and activations that put the conversational topic of dog poop front and center before we get into anything less. I want to ask about this off offline. I grew up with dogs, correct? Yeah, I I grew up with like three golden retrievers as a kid, but you know after I was like five or six after they died we didn’t end up getting dogs again. We just had a cat so I haven’t owned a dog recently, but I have dog sat for my friends in New York. So I have been you know, cleaning up dog poop for my friend’s having to walk the dogs and stuff. I would have had no idea that this like dog virus was even a thing. Yeah. So, you know, I think it’s important that they’re doing a campaign about it, you know, we don’t really often get to talk about Animal Health on this podcast. So I think it’s kind of fun that we’re focusing on this parvo campaign because again as a dog sitter I would have had no idea that this was even a thing. So I think it’s good that there is about it. Definitely and like I’ve always heard the thing we grew up with beagles and it was always the thing like don’t don’t let dogs eat their poop because you know, they can get a tapeworm or right just on a basic obvious things. Yeah, it’s gross. It’s gross on a basic level but the idea that parvo, you know, and they highlight in the press release so they put out for this campaign that it’s it’s very contagious. It’s very deadly especially for puppies too, which I know fifth that affects you because you have a new puppy in the mix, but that the virus is also resistant to heat cold and humidity and drying so it’s like, okay. So it’s this kind of not Everlasting virus with very resilient one and if a dog gets it can have some pretty bad consequences. I do love the idea. They are just leaning into it. Like I’m looking through the press release and there’s mention of the word crappy. I know when we were pitched it was they said the word shity like they are leaning this idea of like Hey, we’re talking about poop and we’re not shying away from right what it is. They do have different aspects here. They’re introducing the online parvo tracking tool which can Empower pet owners and the veterinary Community with intelligence to Further keep puppies safe will include a link to that in the transcript as well and vaccinations and there are also solutions to which I think is where a lanco comes in here is that they have a treatment for this disease and the ultimate goal is to save one million puppies by 2030. I don’t think anyone would ever be opposed to that but they’re going full tilt on this and certainly not avoiding any of the toilet humor that we’ve seen across different campaigns. Yeah, I believe it was last year when elenco won approval from the US Department of Agriculture for its canine parvovirus monoclonal antibody, which is a treatment for the Parvovirus. And as you said Jack, I don’t think anyone could be an opposition to saving puppies. So, you know take the campaign as you will I think it’s funny because we always talk with different brand people in like I’m trying to make people aware of this disease or this Condition it’s symptoms and and you know these people Admittedly just get to go in there and say yeah, you want to save puppies here. You can do it not gonna be a lot of opposition on that front fits is a recent puppy owner. What are your thoughts? This is the first time I’m hearing about this virus never heard of it and I grew up with dogs, too. But yeah, this kind of makes me nervous because I’m walking this puppy’s four months old and he actually he eats everything and he ate poop like last week. I don’t know even know what kind of poop it was could have been dog. Poop could have been I don’t know scroll. I have no idea. What kind of Cooper was all I know is I instinctively put my fingers in his mouth and was like, oh, yeah. That was poop. Oh, yeah. It’s like I try to keep my kids safe. Now. I have to try to keep my puppy safe from what seems to be an almost indestructible virus, right? He proof and and cold it’s crazy. I do want to say that because I know it’s an audio format, but it’s has the map up here that they included as part of the campaign. You can look across the country in terms of risk areas and all so show like where you can get treatment for parvovirus. They pretty much have their own interactive tool, which is very interesting. Looking at New York here. Yeah, New York. It says 306 reported parvo cases reported. There’s currently a high risk. Okay in New York and there’s even see across the states. There’s even higher in like, Illinois, Kentucky. Yeah, it makes sense down south. They would probably have Florida. Yeah. But yeah, this is actually really cool tool. I’m Definitely gonna be keeping up to date with this. Yeah for the sake of your puppy. If nothing else for the sake of my puppy and three potentially heartbroken children. God forbid. They come first and a mom too. Yeah. My wife would be heartbroken. We’d all these awesome. Thanks for joining us on this week’s episode of the MM+M Podcast. Be sure to listen to next week’s episode when we’ll be joined by a pair of honorees from our upcoming Pinnacle Awards. That’s it for this week. The mmm podcast is produced by Bill Fitzpatrick Gordon Jacob Ryan. Our theme music is by Sesame rate review and follow every episode wherever you listen to podcasts new episodes out every week and be sure to check out our website and then life in online.com for the top news stories at Farmer marketing.