When I was a kid, the catastrophe we worried about most was a nuclear war. That’s why we had a cask like thisdown in our vault, filled with cans of menu and water. When the nuclear assault came, we were supposed to go downstairs, hunker down, and eat out of that cannon. Today the greatest gamble of world-wide catastrophe doesn’t look like this. Instead, it looks like this. If anything kills over 10 million peoplein the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a campaign. Not missiles, but microbes. Now, part of the reason for this is that we’ve invested a huge amountin nuclear discouragings. But we’ve actually devoted very little in a arrangement to stop an epidemic. We’re not ready for the next epidemic.Let’s look at Ebola. I’m sure all of you read about it in the paper, a lot of tough challenges. I followed it carefully through the case analysis tools we use to move polio eradication. And as you look at what went on, the problem wasn’t that there was a systemthat didn’t work well enough, the problem was that we didn’t have a system at all. In fact, there’s some pretty obviouskey missing pieces. We didn’t have a group of epidemiologists ready to go, who would have gone, checked what the disease was, recognized how far it had spread. The example reports came in on paper. It was very delayedbefore they were put online and they were extremely inaccurate. We didn’t have a medical team ready to go. We didn’t have a way of preparing people. Now, Mdecins Sans Frontires did a great job orchestrating volunteers. But that being so, well far slowerthan we should have been getting the thousands of workersinto these countries.And a large epidemic would require usto have hundreds of thousands of craftsmen. There was no one there to look at treatment approachings. No one to be addressed the diagnostics. No one to figure out what tools should be used. As an example, we could have taken the blood of survivors, managed it, and articulated that plasmaback in people to protect them. But that was never tried. So there was a lot that was missing.And these things are really a world los. The WHO is funded to monitor outbreaks, but not to do these things I talked about. Now, in the movies it’s quite different. There’s groupings of handsomeepidemiologists ready to go, they move in, they save the working day, but that’s just pure Hollywood. The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola Let’s look at the progression of Ebola over this year.About 10,000 beings died, and nearly all were in the threeWest African countries. There’s three reasons whyit didn’t spread more. The first is that there was a lot of daring task by the health workers. They saw the people and they impeded more infections. The second is the nature of the virus. Ebola does not spread through the breath. And by the time you’re contagious, most people are so sick that they’re bedridden. Third, it didn’t getinto numerous urban setting. And that was just luck. If it had gone into a lot more urban areas, the client multitudes would therefore be much greater. So next time, we might not be so lucky. You can have a virus where people feel well enough while they’re infectious that they get on a planeor they go to a market.The source of the virus could be a natural epidemic like Ebola, or it could be bioterrorism. So there are things that would literallymake things a thousand times worse. In fact, let’s look at a modelof a virus spread through the air, like the Spanish Flu back in 1918. So here’s what would happen: It would spread throughout the worldvery, very quickly. And you can see over 30 million peopledied from that epidemic. So this is a serious problem. We should be concerned. But in fact, we can builda really good response system. We have the benefits of all the scienceand technology that we talk about here. We’ve got cell phone to get information from the public and get information out to them. We have satellite delineates where we can seewhere people are and where they’re moving. We have advances in biology that should dramatically alter the turnaround time to look at a pathogen and is well positioned to draw drugs and vaccinesthat fit for that pathogen.So we can have tools, but those tools need to be putinto an overall world health care system. And we need preparedness. The best lessons, I feel, on how to get educated are again, what we do for war. For soldiers, we have full-time, waiting to go. We have stockpiles that can scale us up to large numbers. NATO has a mobile unit that can deploy very rapidly. NATO does a lot of war games to check, are beings well trained? Do they understand about fuel and logistics and the same radio frequencies? So they are absolutely ready to go.So those are the kinds of thingswe need to deal with an epidemic. What are the key sections? First, the work requires strong health systemsin poor countries. That’s where mothers can give birth safely, kids can get all their inoculations. But, too where we’ll identify the eruption very early on. We need a medical stockpile corps: lots of people who’ve got the training and background who are ready to go, with the expertise. And then we need to pair thosemedical parties with the military. taking advantage of the military’s abilityto move fast, do logistics and secure regions. We need to do pretendings, germ recreations , not war games, so that we are able read where the holes are. The last-place experience a germ play was be done in order to the United Government was back in 2001, and it didn’t lead so well. So far the score is germs: 1, people: 0. Eventually, we need lots of advanced R& Din areas of inoculations and diagnostics. There are some big breakthroughs, like the Adeno-associated virus, that could work unusually, very quickly.Now I don’t have an exact budgetfor what this would cost, but I’m quite sure it’s very modestcompared to the potential distres. The World Bank estimates that if we have a worldwide flu epidemic, world-wide property will go downby over three trillion dollars and we’d have millionsand millions of deaths. These speculations render significant benefits beyond simply being ready for the epidemic. The primary healthcare, the R& D, those things further reduce world state equity and impel the world more just as well as more safe. So I think this should absolutelybe a priority. There’s no need to panic. We don’t have to hoard cans of spaghettior go down into the basement. But we need to get going, because duration is not on our side.In fact, if there’s one positive thingthat can come out of the Ebola epidemic, it’s that it can serve as an early warning, a wake-up call, to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic. Thank you.( Applause ).
