-
Not Synced
When I was a kid, the disaster
we worried about most
-
Not Synced
was a nuclear war.
-
Not Synced
That's why we had a barrel like this
down in our basement,
-
Not Synced
filled with food and water.
-
Not Synced
When the nuclear attack came,
-
Not Synced
we were supposed to go downstairs,
-
Not Synced
hunker down, and eat out of that barrel.
-
Not Synced
Today the greatest risk
of global catastrophe
-
Not Synced
doesn't look like this.
-
Not Synced
Instead, it looks like this.
-
Not Synced
If anything kills over 10 million people
in the next few decades,
-
Not Synced
it's most likely to be
a highly infectious virus
-
Not Synced
rather than a war.
-
Not Synced
Not missles, but microbes.
-
Not Synced
Now part of the reason for this
-
Not Synced
is that we've invested a huge amount
in nuclear deterrants.
-
Not Synced
But we've actually invested very little
in a system to stop an epidemic.
-
Not Synced
We're not ready for the next epidemic.
-
Not Synced
Let's look at Ebola.
-
Not Synced
I'm sure all of you read about
it in the newspaper,
-
Not Synced
lots of touch challenges.
-
Not Synced
I followed it carefully through
the case analysis tools we use
-
Not Synced
to track polio eradication.
-
Not Synced
And as you look at what went on,
-
Not Synced
the problem wasn't that there was
a system that didn't work well enough,
-
Not Synced
the problem was that we didn't have
a system at all.
-
Not Synced
In fact, there's some pretty obvious
key missing pieces.
-
Not Synced
We didn't have a group of epidemiologists
ready to go
-
Not Synced
who would have gone,
seen what the disease was,
-
Not Synced
seen how far it had spread.
-
Not Synced
The case reports came in on paper.
-
Not Synced
It was very delayed before they
were put online
-
Not Synced
and they were extremely inaccurate.
-
Not Synced
We didn't have a medical team ready to go.
-
Not Synced
We didn't have a way of preparing people.
-
Not Synced
Now Médecins Sans Frontières did a
great job orchestrating volunteers.
-
Not Synced
But even so, we were far slower
than we should have been
-
Not Synced
getting the thousands of workers
into these countries.
-
Not Synced
And a large epidemic would require
us to have hundreds of thousands
-
Not Synced
of workers.
-
Not Synced
There was no one there to look
at treatment approaches.
-
Not Synced
No one to look at the diagnostics.
-
Not Synced
No one to figure out what tools
should be used.
-
Not Synced
As an example, we could have taken
the blood of survivors,
-
Not Synced
processed it, and put that plasma
back in people to protect them.
-
Not Synced
But that was never tried.
-
Not Synced
So there was a lot that was missing.
-
Not Synced
And these things are really
a global failure.
-
Not Synced
The WHO is funded to monitor epidemics,
-
Not Synced
but not to do these things I talked about.
-
Not Synced
Now in the movies, it's quiet different.
-
Not Synced
There's a group of
handsome epidemiologists
-
Not Synced
ready to go, they move in,
they save the day.
-
Not Synced
But that's just pure Hollywood.
-
Not Synced
The failure to prepare could allow
the next epidemic
-
Not Synced
to be dramatically more devastating
than Ebola.
-
Not Synced
Let's look at the progression of Ebola
over this year.
-
Not Synced
About 10,000 people died,
-
Not Synced
and nearly all were in the three
West African countries.
-
Not Synced
There's three reasons why
it didn't spread more.
-
Not Synced
The first is that there was
a lot of heroic work
-
Not Synced
by the health workers.
-
Not Synced
They found the people and they
prevented more infections.
-
Not Synced
The second is the nature of the virus.
-
Not Synced
Ebola does not spread through the air.
-
Not Synced
And by the time you're contagious,
most people are so sick
-
Not Synced
that they're bedridden.
-
Not Synced
Third, it didn't get into many urban areas.
-
Not Synced
And that was just luck.
-
Not Synced
If it had gotten into a lot more
urban areas,
-
Not Synced
the case numbers would have
been much larger.
-
Not Synced
So next time, we may not be so lucky.
-
Not Synced
You can have a virus where people
feel well enough while they're infectious,
-
Not Synced
they get on a plane or they go to a market.
-
Not Synced
The source of the virus could be
a natural epidemic like Ebola,
-
Not Synced
or it could be bioterrorism.
-
Not Synced
And so there are things that would
literally make things
-
Not Synced
a thousand times worse.
-
Not Synced
In fact, let's look at a model
of a virus spread through the air,
-
Not Synced
like the Spanish Flu back in 1918.
-
Not Synced
So here's what would happen:
-
Not Synced
it would spread throughout the world
very, very quickly.
-
Not Synced
And you can see, over 30 million people
died from that epidemic.
-
Not Synced
So this is a seriousl problem.
-
Not Synced
We should be concerned.
-
Not Synced
But in fact, we can build a really good
response system.
-
Not Synced
We have the benefits of all the science
and technology that we talked about here.
-
Not Synced
We've got cell phones to get information
from the public
-
Not Synced
and get information out to them.
-
Not Synced
We have satellite maps where we can see
where we can see where people are
-
Not Synced
and where they're moving.
-
Not Synced
We have advances in biology
that should dramatically change
-
Not Synced
the turnaround time to look at a pathogen
-
Not Synced
and be able to make drugs and vaccines
that fit for that pathogen.
-
Not Synced
So we can have tools, but those tools
need to be put into an overall