A friend sent a link to the following (fascinating) TED Talk, featuring one of the world’s wealthiest men, Bill Gates, explaining how we should prepare for an upcoming viral epidemic.
He gave his talk in April 2015.
I found the YouTube video fascinating, not because it provided any particularly surprising facts, but because it would appear — based on recent events — that most countries around the globe, including the US, have ignored much of Mr. Gate’s insightful advice.
Here is the 8-minute video:
In this 2015 talk, Mr. Gates claimed that the greatest threat to human existence is no longer nuclear war, but rather an unforeseen and “highly infectious” viral outbreak.
“If anything kills over 10 million people in the coming decades, it’s likely to be a highly infectious virus, rather than a war.”
He urged the nations of the world to make five important investments, to prepare properly for this new virus, which he felt was almost certain to appear at some point in the near future.
- Strengthen health systems all around the world, both to improve overall health equity, and to track and quickly report new infectious diseases.
- Develop a “medical reserve corps” similar to the “military reserves” maintained by many countries.
- Pair the “medical reserve corps” with military transport services, to enable an instant response to a new disease.
- Run regular simulations — “germ games” similar to military “war games” — to identify bottlenecks and potential failure points.
- Expand medical research and development capabilities.
A couple of these thoughtful suggestions strike me as completely impractical, in our current political situation. Pairing medical teams with military transport, for example…
Can anyone imagine US Army helicopters landing, uninvited, in Wuhan, China to “assist” with the COVID-19 viral outbreak there?
Probably would have been an unwise move.
But consider the other kinds of preparations that nations have undertaken since 2015. Take, for example, the case of South Korea, the first country outside China to announce confirmed cases of COVID-19. I mentioned South Korea’s aggressive testing protocols in last week’s editorial, but here are some further details:
From an article by Justin Fendos in TheDiplomat.com, March 10, 2020:
In simple terms, containing an outbreak is about identifying and quarantining infected individuals as quickly as possible, preventing them from perpetuating viral transmission. In this process, the first and most important component is having a standard operating procedure (SOP)…
So far, South Korea and Taiwan are among the few countries to have demonstrated robust and consistent SOPs. This is not surprising, given that each has invested heavily in infectious disease control following prior experiences with SARS and MERS. South Korea’s SOP essentially calls for five steps: an aggressive and transparent information campaign, high volume testing, quarantine of infected individuals, treatment of those in need, and disinfection of contaminated environments. These may seem like obvious measures, but proper execution is ultimately what decides their effectiveness…
…To maximize the odds that testing is focused on the people mostly likely to be infected, an aggressive information campaign is needed. In South Korea, this campaign communicates two critical components: risk factors, and useful measures…
…Good information isn’t much use, of course, unless it is combined with effective virus testing. Here too, the government has been very decisive, making tests available nationwide by sending teams into rural areas and even setting up drive-through test centers in large cities like Daegu. Test volume and speed are essential for containing an outbreak. To this effect, South Korea currently has a daily capacity of over 10,000 tests, the most of any country. The results are quick too, reported by text message within 24 hours.
Every expert I have spoken to, domestic and abroad, agrees that South Korea’s information and testing are nothing short of enviable…
As of yesterday, March 17, South Korean medical teams have tested — and provided results to — 270,000 citizens. That’s about 0.5 percent of its 50 million inhabitants. The nation appears to have greatly slowed the epidemic within its borders; it reported only 74 new cases yesterday, down from a peak of 909 new cases on February 29.
Meanwhile, the United States, hampered by a CDC fiasco with delayed and faulty test kits, is merely guessing at COVID-19 infection levels — having tested a mere 0.0074 percent of its 370 million citizens. From the Washington Post, March 16:
As early as February 6, four weeks after the genome of the virus was published, the WHO had shipped 250,000 diagnostic tests to 70 laboratories around the world, the agency said.
By comparison, the CDC at that time was shipping about 160,000 tests to labs across the [US] — but then the manufacturing troubles were discovered, and most would be deemed unusable because they produced confusing results. Over the next three weeks, only about 200 of those tests… would be used, according to CDC statistics.
South Korea has meanwhile emerged as a model to emulate, and it’s done so without locking down entire cities or taking the types of draconian measures that helped China bring its epidemic under control.
“South Korea is a democratic republic; we feel a lock-down is not a reasonable choice,” explained Kim Woo-Joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University… as quoted on the American Association for the Advancement of Science website.
Last I looked, the US was also a democratic republic… but here, the Constitutional right to “freedom of assembly” has seemingly vanished into thin air, as our elected representatives deal with an apparent inability to aggressively test and report back to its citizens in the same manner South Korea and Taiwan have been able to do.
Rather than identifying those with infections and putting them in quarantine, America’s federal and state governments are doing their level best to quarantine everybody, regardless of their health conditions. And they are doing this at the risk of damaging an already fragile American economy…
In spite of Bill Gates’ 2015 advice, we fumbled the ball, you might say… and now all the football games have been cancelled.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.