Some areas of the U.S. and across the world are experiencing increased cases of COVID-19. However, there's also plenty of good news. In this video recorded on March 11, 2021, Motley Fool CEO and co-founder Tom Gardner talks with 10x Genomics (TXG +1.75%) CEO and co-founder Serge Saxonov about his perspective on the battle against COVID-19.
Tom Gardner: Serge, I'm going to start with a question that even has nothing to do with your company. Obviously, it does, in a way, but I'd just love to hear what you think is happening with COVID-19 now.
You're somebody in the field that can give us perspective on how well we're doing with vaccinations. What do you think of mutations? What from your background, your experience, any observations you have that can enlighten us?
Serge Saxonov: Right. I will start by saying that as much as we are in the field of biology and genomics and very closely obviously following COVID, I'm not an expert and there are people out there who are better experts at infectious disease or epidemiology.
But I can give you my opinion, which is maybe more informed than an average person, but not as informed as some of the biggest experts in the field. I'm actually feeling pretty optimistic, which is not necessarily something I would've said a couple of months ago. That's both a function of the vaccine rollouts going as well as they have been.
Again, it wasn't the case maybe three months ago, but I think things are really looking up at least within the United States. I think the pace is really, really encouraging. The fact that we have three vaccines that have been approved, that work really well, it's awesome. It's also mind-bending if you think back to a year ago, what the expectations are. I was optimistic in the long run that we're going to come up with a vaccine. I didn't expect it to be here within less than a year.
Then the question on variants, which was the other thing that worried me a lot in December. Two things. First, it seems like these vaccines are at least pretty substantially protective against the major variants we're seeing there. The other thing is, we know that we can create new ones pretty fast, especially with those RNA vaccines out there. We're really getting a handle from all the different sides on this virus now.
So yeah, feeling pretty optimistic all in all, and more so than I was not that long ago.
