Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.
Speaker 2: Ebola has let's call it a family and there are five
Speaker 2: different strains. It's a very dangerous virus, but it's not
Speaker 2: a very contagious virus. It's not COVID that you can
Speaker 2: get by sitting on the bus with someone who has it.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm not concerned that this would become a pandemic.
Speaker 1: Peter Piot, who helped identify ebola fifty years ago and
Speaker 1: has studied viruses ever since. Do you think that when
Speaker 1: you got COVID yourself and got it badly, did it
Speaker 1: change something in your own perception?
Speaker 2: Yes? Actually I was scared to die. It's a lesson
Speaker 2: in humility and we're human beings at the end of
Speaker 2: the day.
Speaker 1: From Bloomberg Weekend. This is the Mishal Husain Show. I'm
Speaker 1: Mishal Husain. Imagine this scene if you will from 1976.
Speaker 1: A group of scientists go to the epicenter of a
Speaker 1: mysterious virus in Central Africa, in the country that was
Speaker 1: then called Zaire. One Peter Piot has already investigated a
Speaker 1: blood sample at his lab back in Belgium, and he's
Speaker 1: seen something strange and as yet unknown. Then at the
Speaker 1: heart of the outbreak, they work out in days how
Speaker 1: the virus is going from person to person, and soon
Speaker 1: it has a name, Ebola, from the nearby Ebola River.
Speaker 1: Today the country they visited is called the Democratic Republic
Speaker 1: of Congo, and it's where there is a new outbreak
Speaker 1: of Ebola, which everyone hopes is not as bad as
Speaker 1: the one in twenty fourteen, because that killed more than
Speaker 1: eleven thousand people across six countries, including the United States.
Speaker 1: But Ebola is a frightening word, not least because through
Speaker 1: COVID we all now know what a pandemic is like.
Speaker 1: So for this episode, I wanted to understand this virus,
Speaker 1: demystify it, really work out how you get it, how
Speaker 1: long this outbreak might last, what vaccines there are. But
Speaker 1: talking to Peter Piot is also a journey into science
Speaker 1: and discovery in the widest sense. After that pioneering moment
Speaker 1: on Ebola, he went on to be a leading figure
Speaker 1: on HIV and now, as he reveals, he worries too
Speaker 1: about what he calls an epidemic of misinformation. So I
Speaker 1: hope you get as much out of this conversation as
Speaker 1: I did. It began when Peter joined me from his
Speaker 1: home in Belgium, Professor Piot, can you hear me?
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yes, hello Mishal. Nice to see you. Please
Speaker 2: call me Peter.
Speaker 1: Very good to talk to you, Peter. And I'm especially
Speaker 1: grateful for your time because I know you're just back
Speaker 1: from a long trip and with many demands on your
Speaker 1: time given the situation in DRC. So thank you most importantly.
Speaker 2: Yes. Well, I arrived home, took a shower, and went into
Speaker 2: the garden checking on the roses that are flowering. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's my mental health program.
Speaker 1: At various times, I might go back and forth between
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six and the present day, just because you
Speaker 1: have all of this knowledge and it helps to set us.
Speaker 1: We're in a time of misunderstanding and alarm, and I
Speaker 1: think someone like you who can guide us through all
Speaker 1: of that and separate out the facts, it's really valuable.
Speaker 2: Hopefully I can remember everything. Yeah, yeah, fifty years ago.
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about that. May I begin by asking
Speaker 1: you to you to use your fifty year knowledge of this
Speaker 1: virus that we now know as Ebola, and take us
Speaker 1: back to the moment that you encountered it for the
Speaker 1: first time when you saw an image of it in
Speaker 1: your lab in Antwerp. What went through your mind?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I was still in training and
Speaker 2: in virology. I was twenty seven years old, just two
Speaker 2: years after graduating from medical school, where my professors had
Speaker 2: told me no future in infectious diseases. So a boy
Speaker 2: like you should not go into infectious diseases. But I
Speaker 2: was passionate about it. And the real defining moment was
Speaker 2: when we saw a virus under the electron microscope. In
Speaker 2: these days, virology and isolating viruses was a bit like cooking,
Speaker 2: which I like a lot, and you put it on cells,
Speaker 2: you injected in mice and some and then you wait
Speaker 2: and then you see something. Today it's all genetic, you know,
Speaker 2: identification and so on, and goes very fast. But the
Speaker 2: defining moment was really to see it under the electron microscope,
Speaker 2: and I said, I was part of a team, it's
Speaker 2: not just me. And what we saw was like a
Speaker 2: bit more like spaghetti or worms or so. Viruses are
Speaker 2: usually spheres around or square, and here we had like, yeah,
Speaker 2: call it spaghetti, and we needed to think what is
Speaker 2: this and we needed to look into an atlas. This
Speaker 2: was before you know, we could go on the internet
Speaker 2: and see it all. And there was only one other
Speaker 2: virus that had the same morphology, the same shape, and
Speaker 2: that is Marburg virus, which had caused a deadly epidemic
Speaker 2: in the city of Marburg among people who are you know,
Speaker 2: producing polio vaccine. And then we got a bit worried
Speaker 2: because that's high mortality and we couldn't take it further.
Speaker 2: We got the news from the WHO that we should
Speaker 2: forward it to the only laboratory in the world, a
Speaker 2: civil laboratory that was allowed to work with very deadly viruses,
Speaker 2: and that was at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 2: In the US. The three other so called P4 laboratories
Speaker 2: were all military laboratories preparing for biological warfare the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union in the UK and in the US. It also
Speaker 2: tells you a bit of a story of the time,
Speaker 2: you know, But that was very exciting and I was,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty seven. I said, oh, my goodness, you know,
Speaker 2: a new virus. But my immediate thought was actually what
Speaker 2: does it do to people? Yeah, you know, how's it transmitted?
Speaker 1: So that's the moment that's the start of this fifty
Speaker 1: year journey. But I want to ask one more thing
Speaker 1: before we come to the present outbreak, and that is
Speaker 1: why had your professor said to you that there was
Speaker 1: no future in infectious diseases? What was the thinking at
Speaker 1: that time in the seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was when I graduated in nineteen hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy four, and it was a prevailing wisdom. Don't we
Speaker 2: have antibiotics, don't we have vaccines, Don't we have hygiene,
Speaker 2: clean water and all that, so it's all under control?
Speaker 2: And today we know, of course that that's not the case.
Speaker 2: Two years later, new virus. There was a lot of
Speaker 2: optimism about that, infectious diseases were on, were gone. But
Speaker 2: not only was there ebola, which was actually, frankly a
Speaker 2: small outbreak, but then came HIV, which has killed more
Speaker 2: people than even COVID, you know, in the meantime.
Speaker 1: And which I think is your second life changing moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I want to take you right to the present
Speaker 1: day because there's so much about this outbreak that we
Speaker 1: are learning, and there's a lot of distrust, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of misunderstanding. So help us to understand it. First
Speaker 1: of all, this particular strain, where do you think it
Speaker 1: emerged from.
Speaker 2: Well, what we know is that most of these, if
Speaker 2: not all, the so called emerging infections, they're what we
Speaker 2: call zoonosis. In other words, they come from other animals
Speaker 2: and they live happily with animals. In this case, we
Speaker 2: assume it's you know, it's about some kind of bat
Speaker 2: And it started actually in an extraordinary way in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six, because there were two outbreaks of Ebola independently,
Speaker 2: one in what was then called Zaire the Equator now
Speaker 2: the Democratic Republic of Congo, and another one in South Sudan,
Speaker 2: independent from each other. And today we know that that's
Speaker 2: the Sudan strain and the Zaire strain, and both came
Speaker 2: from an animal that infected a human being and then transmitted.
Speaker 2: And the same is actually true for HIV. It came
Speaker 2: from chimpanzees. And when we have this deadly influenza epidemics,
Speaker 2: flu comes from animals. So that's why I think we
Speaker 2: will always see it unless we want to eradicate all
Speaker 2: bats in the world. What we can prevent, though, is
Speaker 2: that they give rise to a big outbreak and a
Speaker 2: big epidemic, and that's what's happening now, and.
Speaker 1: This particular strain is the Bundibugyo strain, and as it
Speaker 1: happens that there is a large colony of fruit bats
Speaker 1: right outside the town that's considered the epicenter. The key
Speaker 1: thing about this strain is that it's different from the
Speaker 1: one in twenty fourteen that caused thousands of deaths and
Speaker 1: for which there are vaccines and there are treatments approved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Ebola has like it's nearly let's call it
Speaker 2: the family. And there are five different strains and the
Speaker 2: most common one is so called Zaire after the country
Speaker 2: that first happened and Sudan. And this Bundibugyo has only
Speaker 2: caused two fairly small outbreaks. It's actually a town in
Speaker 2: Uganda on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Speaker 2: and so it is a bit of a curiosum and
Speaker 2: we didn't expect that this would give rise to what
Speaker 2: we see now. What's very very important is that the
Speaker 2: vaccines that we have against ebola is they're only active
Speaker 2: against Zaire because that's the most prevailing one. There's some
Speaker 2: therapies that were developed, but there was really not a
Speaker 2: strong reason to develop a vaccine specifically for this Bundibugyo
Speaker 2: that then suddenly appeared. And that's also one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that it took quite a long time to identify
Speaker 2: and to diagnose that this was ebola, because the diagnostic
Speaker 2: tests also don't work against this new strain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, two months I think before it was actually identified
Speaker 1: as a strain of ebola.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: How contagious is it? Because this is one of the
Speaker 1: key things that really alarms people, especially when they look
Speaker 1: at the evidence that there is on fatalities, in the
Speaker 1: number of fatalities per cases.
Speaker 2: It's a very dangerous virus, but it's not a very
Speaker 2: contagious virus. But this is not corona. This is not
Speaker 2: COVID that you can get by sitting on the bus
Speaker 2: with someone who has it. You really need close contact
Speaker 2: and you need to be exposed to body fluids. That
Speaker 2: is why it's household contacts, often the women who care
Speaker 2: for someone or a child or an adult with ebola. It's
Speaker 2: healthcare workers. Let's not forget. In twenty fourteen when there
Speaker 2: was the biggest outbreak that we know in West Africa,
Speaker 2: it killed fifteen hundred healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, laboratory workers
Speaker 2: and some because they also have a close contact and
Speaker 2: then and that's more cultural. In Central Africa, funerals are
Speaker 2: also a very dangerous moment because people say goodbye adieu
Speaker 2: to their loved ones by touching them, by hugging them
Speaker 2: before they're kind of buried, and that also gives rise
Speaker 2: to explosion. But so it's you need close contact. That's
Speaker 2: why I'm not concerned that this would become a pandemic,
Speaker 2: you know, because that's reserved for you know, for respiratory
Speaker 2: transmission or for sexual transmission, as we see with HIV.
Speaker 1: Interesting, it's so useful for you to separate out dangerous
Speaker 1: but not contagious or not so contagious, because to many
Speaker 1: people those two things are just inextricably linked. So just
Speaker 1: so I understand that a bit more. If you got
Speaker 1: off a plane and you discover that the person you'd
Speaker 1: been sitting next to on that plane had ebola, how
Speaker 1: frightened would you be?
Speaker 2: I would be worried, of course, But unless you touch
Speaker 2: the person and all that, you know, the risk is
Speaker 2: is very close to zero. But you don't want to
Speaker 2: take a risk because the what we call case vitality
Speaker 2: rated chance that you die when you have, it is
Speaker 2: pretty high. I mean, in nineteen seventy six it was
Speaker 2: ninety percent, nine out of ten. In the previous outbreaks
Speaker 2: with Bundibugyo was about thirty percent. I mean, we say
Speaker 2: it's low, but frankly one out of three tight. So
Speaker 2: I think you as you can't get it on the
Speaker 2: duke or in the bus in general.
Speaker 1: So what do you think of travel restrictions which are
Speaker 1: starting to come in, notably by the United States, well
Speaker 1: not only in.
Speaker 2: The United States. I think travel restrictions, let's put it
Speaker 2: this way, it depends how you're applying it. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that what makes sense is to test people
Speaker 2: for fever, and if you're in a neighboring country, like
Speaker 2: if you're in Uganda, then people who come from the
Speaker 2: area with plenty of cases. Yeah, you would screen everybody
Speaker 2: for fever because another thing that ebola is that it's
Speaker 2: really people are stages when they are symptomatic, with some
Speaker 2: exceptions later on. So I would say you have to
Speaker 2: be careful. I would indeed do screening for fever and
Speaker 2: all that from everybody who's coming. But a complete restriction
Speaker 2: I think is really overkilled. And actually the World Health
Speaker 2: Organization recommends against.
Speaker 1: It, but I think you do worry about the spread
Speaker 1: within big cities because yes, human beings living close together,
Speaker 1: there's just much more potential for contamination exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, let's not forget the area where this is
Speaker 2: happening is very densely populated, even by African standards, and
Speaker 2: then you know people are very poor, so they live
Speaker 2: with many in the same room. But the worst case
Speaker 2: scenario for me is that it's in an area with
Speaker 2: extremely high insecurity, with armed struggle, with a lot of violence,
Speaker 2: which means that people will get close to each other.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't move as you want, and that
Speaker 2: means also that controlling it through contact tracing and all
Speaker 2: that is difficult because what do you do in terms
Speaker 2: of ebola one. You try to identify to isolate as
Speaker 2: soon as possible someone who's infected, so from the moment
Speaker 2: that they're having fever, headache and so on. It starts
Speaker 2: like a bit like a flu, you know, nothing specific,
Speaker 2: and although it's a hemorrhagic fever at the end you
Speaker 2: can start bleeding from your nose and so, but so,
Speaker 2: identify someone who you know has it and immediately isolate
Speaker 2: that person and then also isolate all the contacts of
Speaker 2: that person in a household or if they are you know,
Speaker 2: I've traveled or gone to a funeral or whatever. Isolate people.
Speaker 2: Now that's not very fun, and as we know from
Speaker 2: COVID also it's not something people you know, appreciate, but
Speaker 2: it is really as primitive as that. And then you
Speaker 2: try to offer the best possible treatment, supportive treatment to
Speaker 2: someone with ebola, and we know that if you can
Speaker 2: provide good therapy, mortality will go down. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: in Rwanda they had an outbreak of Marburg virus, a
Speaker 2: cousin let's say, from ebola high mortality. They brought it
Speaker 2: down to about twenty percent. And we say only, I
Speaker 2: shouldn't say only, but it's a major decrease because in
Speaker 2: Rwanda they could provide intensive care and so on, but
Speaker 2: that is not available in where we have ebola. Now.
Speaker 2: It's such a poor area with very poor health facilities,
Speaker 2: and ebola just paralyzes the healthcare system, shut since down.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you the moment Peter in the last
Speaker 1: few days that I think really brought home to me
Speaker 1: the inequality and the indignity that is an aspect of this.
Speaker 1: It's when I read a piece in the New York
Speaker 1: Times and Ebola's in the headlines, and yet this reporter,
Speaker 1: Declan Walsh went to the epicenter of this outbreak. Describes
Speaker 1: going to a hospital seeing a body covered by a
Speaker 1: thin sheet, highly contagious, yet hardly anyone in the ward
Speaker 1: was protected. He writes, in the next ward lay the
Speaker 1: hospital's laboratory technician also sick. Seven other hospital workers already
Speaker 1: died from suspected ebola. The most rudimentary equipment was in
Speaker 1: dangerously short supply, tests, protective suits, goggles, masks, even drinking water.
Speaker 1: This shocked me because I guess I imagined that help
Speaker 1: had been sent, or sufficient help to an area affected
Speaker 1: by a bola to this extent, you read that and
Speaker 1: realize it's not the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read the same article, and also I've seen it,
Speaker 2: and I really literally think every day about the people
Speaker 2: who live there. There are health conditions who are already
Speaker 2: the basis is really is already pretty awful. You know,
Speaker 2: just when you think of women giving birth, the level
Speaker 2: of maternal mortality is enormous because around no decent health facilities,
Speaker 2: So ebola is not their only problem is malaria that
Speaker 2: is killing people, HIV TB you know, and just imagine
Speaker 2: you're a healthcare worker, you know, and you have ebola
Speaker 2: patients in your hospital. That means that anybody you touch
Speaker 2: can mean for you the death sentence. And so that
Speaker 2: means that all regular healthcare is actually pretty much stocked.
Speaker 2: And that in an area where people are already suffering
Speaker 2: not only from poor health scare and health conditions, but
Speaker 2: also because of the violence of all kinds, including enormous
Speaker 2: sexual violence against women.
Speaker 1: Today, how far are we, do you think, from a
Speaker 1: vaccine for this strain of a bowler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the first thing we is to see whether the
Speaker 2: available vaccine actually offers at least some protection.
Speaker 1: Oh, the one for the other strain, for the other strain.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a vaccine made against the so called Zaire
Speaker 2: strain and we know that works, So we're lucky. And
Speaker 2: that's only you know, since the West Africa outbreak in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen that we know that that works. That's the
Speaker 2: first thing to do. But then there is now a
Speaker 2: race going on to develop new vaccines against the Bundibugyo strain.
Speaker 2: But that's going to take time. I mean, let's say
Speaker 2: six months. That's by the end of the year. And
Speaker 2: I'm not a pessimist at all, but I'm afraid that
Speaker 2: this outbreak will go on for quite a while, probably
Speaker 2: beyond the end of this year. And the reason is
Speaker 2: we've seen it before in that region also with a
Speaker 2: lot of violence, with attacks of care centers, and now
Speaker 2: it's even worse. The security situation is much worse than
Speaker 2: during the previous outbreak in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: How many countries in the region do you think we'll
Speaker 1: be engulfed by this by the end of the year.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that definitely. Uganda has already some cases,
Speaker 2: but they've been doing a good job in isolation and
Speaker 2: so on. I'm the most concerned about, of course DRC,
Speaker 2: the Congo, Uganda and South Sudan, which also has a
Speaker 2: lot of insecurity, very poor health conditions, very poor people. Rwanda,
Speaker 2: I think they're maybe at risk, but they've done a
Speaker 2: good job in the past in the debt and Burundi.
Speaker 2: I think these are the countries that are the immediate risk.
Speaker 2: And one thing that is I think we should not
Speaker 2: underestimate is that there are no really outstanding world class
Speaker 2: teams in Africa who can deal with it, and that's
Speaker 2: something that did not exist before. So the capacity is there,
Speaker 2: but the means are not there. We need to really
Speaker 2: support them.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you think it's worth trying the
Speaker 1: vaccines for the other strain to try and give people
Speaker 1: some protection. What are stocks of that? Like, how much
Speaker 1: of a challenge would it be to mass vaccinate the
Speaker 1: key region in the DRC for starters.
Speaker 2: GAVI the Vaccine Alliance has quite a big stock of
Speaker 2: I don't know the numbers, but its tens of thousands.
Speaker 2: And the way to deal with this is not to
Speaker 2: vaccinate everybody, but what we call ring vaccination. So what
Speaker 2: does it mean. It's I have it ebola, so everybody
Speaker 2: around me will be vaccinated because these are the people
Speaker 2: at high risk. And so what they're starting to do
Speaker 2: is to vaccinate all healthcare workers and say frontline workers,
Speaker 2: people who deal with funerals, bearer burials and so and
Speaker 2: then the family members and so on. So that's a
Speaker 2: matter of logistics now. Frankly, this is the biggest challenge
Speaker 2: getting the supplies there also the protective equipment.
Speaker 1: You were one of those people at the heart of
Speaker 1: an outbreak when you went to what was then zire
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six after seeing the virus in the
Speaker 1: lab in Antwerp. How much did you think about becoming
Speaker 1: infected yourself?
Speaker 2: Well, first, I was twenty seven. I was very excited.
Speaker 2: I'd never been to Africa, I'd never investigated an outbreak.
Speaker 2: And the first challenge we had is that this is
Speaker 2: a new virus, completely unknown, and we had no clue
Speaker 2: how this is transmitted. Is it mosquitoes, which was my
Speaker 2: biggest worry, because how do you protect yourself? Is it water?
Speaker 2: Is it food? Is it touching someone? Is it blood?
Speaker 2: Is it sex? I mean all the ways that viruses
Speaker 2: transmit it. But we found that out and within forty
Speaker 2: eight hours that it must be close contact. But what
Speaker 2: do you do? Then? We were protecting our eyes. I
Speaker 2: used their motorbike goggles because they're very close, a mask
Speaker 2: for mouth and nose, and gloves, but nothing like what
Speaker 2: they use now in terms of, you know, so called
Speaker 2: protective equipment. It just wasn't there. But we were careful.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, I drew blood, I touched
Speaker 2: patients and yeah, we couldn't do much for them.
Speaker 1: How did you discover in forty eight hours how it
Speaker 1: was transmitted because I mean, this is fifty years ago
Speaker 1: in a really challenged part of the world, even more
Speaker 1: challenged than it is today.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there was definitely no AI to tell us
Speaker 2: what it would be, not even mobile phones. So what
Speaker 2: you ask yourself three questions when you're in front of
Speaker 2: an epidemic, and that is time, place, and person. In
Speaker 2: this case, we said, when they they die, and then
Speaker 2: you see and it goes up and up and up
Speaker 2: it's an epidemic. And then we saw it was going down. Okay,
Speaker 2: very interesting. Then you ask, okay, when did it go down?
Speaker 2: And then it turned out that that's when the hospital
Speaker 2: was basically closed. Eleven out of seventeen hospital workers had died. Secondly, place,
Speaker 2: we mapped it out, and we saw that the closer
Speaker 2: you lived to the hospital, the more likely that you
Speaker 2: have it. And thirdly, most important, who person? And so
Speaker 2: you map it out by age and sex. It's as
Speaker 2: simple as that. And what did we see? One? Very
Speaker 2: few children died and were infected. So that's we said, okay,
Speaker 2: that it makes it very unlikely that this is mosquitoes insects,
Speaker 2: or that it's water or so why because why would
Speaker 2: children be saved? And secondly, we found that there were
Speaker 2: twice as many women between eighteen and thirty who died
Speaker 2: than men. And since we were a bunch of men,
Speaker 2: it took us twenty four hours to find out what's
Speaker 2: the difference between men and women. Of course, women can
Speaker 2: get pregnant at that age, and then you start, you say, okay,
Speaker 2: were they pregnant? And indeed were the excess of women
Speaker 2: were pregnant women or women who had just delivered, and
Speaker 2: they had been at the hospital, so everything pointed to
Speaker 2: the hospital. It's not really rocket science. And then you
Speaker 2: use your brain and you talk to people. I also
Speaker 2: asked in the villages, how do you think that it's transmitted?
Speaker 2: And you know, it's more like journalism, a bit of
Speaker 2: detective story, and it's only afterwards that you prove it scientifically.
Speaker 2: But we needed an answer very very fast, and we
Speaker 2: found it with a high level certainty.
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about the links between my work
Speaker 1: and yours, but I see.
Speaker 2: Them now definitely. No. Yeah, I hesitated between a journalism
Speaker 2: or detective or some like this epidemiology, and I.
Speaker 1: Think the one of the sad moments when you wrote
Speaker 1: about it in your book, you realized that these very
Speaker 1: well meaning nuns who had seen fellow nuns die from
Speaker 1: this mystery virus. You were the one who, you and
Speaker 1: your team who realized that inadvertently, through the syringes they
Speaker 1: were using in that hospital, they were inadvertently spreading the
Speaker 1: virus and passing it from one woman to another.
Speaker 2: What we found is that these pregnant women who had
Speaker 2: gone to an anti natal clinic, the mortality was very high.
Speaker 2: But then it took a while to find out that
Speaker 2: there were only three syringes and that they were not
Speaker 2: sterilized only at the end of the day. And this
Speaker 2: is the most effective way of transmitting a virus, you
Speaker 2: injected directly into you all another person. Yeah, and that
Speaker 2: was yeah, the women. I'm Flemish, so I could speak
Speaker 2: in Flemish dialect and too the and then it was tragic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we live in an age of vaccine hesitancy and
Speaker 1: distrust sometimes in conventional medicine. Those local people back then
Speaker 1: who started to fear the hospital in that particular context,
Speaker 1: they were right.
Speaker 2: They were absolutely right. And that's what they told me
Speaker 2: when I went into the villages and talked to people,
Speaker 2: and they said, they said, there's something wrong at that hospital.
Speaker 2: That's when we stopped going there. But you mentioned something
Speaker 2: that is now extremely important and is added to violence
Speaker 2: in the region, and that is the lack of trust
Speaker 2: amplified by social media conspiracy theories. In the last epidemic
Speaker 2: in the region, they already burned several care facilities already
Speaker 2: too have been burned also now. And so on the
Speaker 2: one hand, I understand it. I mean, you know, just
Speaker 2: imagine you're Ebola. You were put in isolation, and you
Speaker 2: die in isolation, and then all your family sees is
Speaker 2: a plastic bag. And particularly in a culture where ancestors
Speaker 2: are so important, where saying farewell to the ancestors is
Speaker 2: really extremely important as part of life. And then that's
Speaker 2: amplified that the mistrust by social media. We did not exist,
Speaker 2: you know, certainly not fifty years ago, and that's why
Speaker 2: today is far more complicated than before. We have better tools,
Speaker 2: hopefully we'll have a vaccine, we have maybe treatment, but
Speaker 2: we also have the epidemic of misinformation, and that means
Speaker 2: that when we deal with epidemic, we also have to
Speaker 2: invest in social media in the influences. Before we would
Speaker 2: talk to the traditional leaders, religious leaders and people would
Speaker 2: listen to them. That's still the case, but not with
Speaker 2: the young people.
Speaker 1: There are people, pull companies, universities working on a vaccine
Speaker 1: right now. But I wonder if you have a message
Speaker 1: to the pharmaceutical industry more widely, given that today it's
Speaker 1: clear how much money there is to be made from
Speaker 1: weight loss drugs, and there was a study out the
Speaker 1: other day that said that obesity drugs have displaced oncology
Speaker 1: drugs is the largest contributor to the industry's pipeline value.
Speaker 1: That's happened for the first time in more than a decade.
Speaker 1: What's your message to the industry not to forget these needs.
Speaker 2: Well, my message is not only to the industry but
Speaker 2: also to governments and public authorities. We really need to
Speaker 2: invest in vaccines, but also drugs against viruses, antiviral drugs
Speaker 2: that we will need when there's the next epidemic, because
Speaker 2: what we now see is this cycle of Okay, there's
Speaker 2: a new virus or a new epidemic, panic, and then
Speaker 2: we scramble in and there's money, and we will have
Speaker 2: quite optimistic vaccines, and then we forget, you know, think
Speaker 2: of COVID. We've forgotten and I psychologically I understand you
Speaker 2: don't want to remember all the time all the bad
Speaker 2: things that happened. But as a public authority, we can't
Speaker 2: do that. So we need to continue to invest in
Speaker 2: preparedness and that needs industry and you know, there is
Speaker 2: what we could call there's no market incentives. Who are
Speaker 2: making a vaccine against the Bundibugyo virus. I mean that
Speaker 2: requires public money. Fortunately for vaccines, we have SEPI Collision
Speaker 2: for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation and that's working. And like in
Speaker 2: the European Union, now we have here are there are
Speaker 2: now mechanisms which we did not have before. But keeping
Speaker 2: that on the political agenda is quite a challenge. It's
Speaker 2: really bad that we wait when there's another crisis to
Speaker 2: wake up again and then you know, and then we
Speaker 2: all joined forces as we did for COVID, But we
Speaker 2: need to continue to invest in this absolutely.
Speaker 1: I have been thinking about the link to COVID and
Speaker 1: the experience of COVID and how people perceive an outbreak
Speaker 1: of a bowler like this, because clearly science has moved
Speaker 1: on and the progress made during COVID is playing a
Speaker 1: role right now. AI is playing a role in the
Speaker 1: discovery of therapeutics but also people are triggered by COVID.
Speaker 1: If they think lockdowns were an overreaction or there was misinformation,
Speaker 1: then they, you know, revert to those perceptions, and that's
Speaker 1: the lens through which they see something like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true that COVID was collectively a quite traumatic experience.
Speaker 2: I had it myself. I was even in intensive care
Speaker 2: and so so for once the virus got me also,
Speaker 2: but fortunately I'm well. Collectively, I think, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: you can say it's a triumph of science to know
Speaker 2: that we had a vaccine so fast and that saved
Speaker 2: millions and millions of life. On the other hand, there's
Speaker 2: a group of people that believe that all this was
Speaker 2: a conspiracy, that it didn't happen. And this is I
Speaker 2: would say, a relatively new phenomenon because it can be
Speaker 2: accelerated by social media AI will make it even more effective.
Speaker 2: And for me, the big lesson is that we need
Speaker 2: to listen really to people. We need to communicate. It's
Speaker 2: not as many scientists think a matter of give more information.
Speaker 2: It's often about something else because I don't trust the state,
Speaker 2: and that's where we need. Also. The signs of misinformation
Speaker 2: and developed not only vaccines against viruses, but maybe vaccines
Speaker 2: against this misinformation, if I may use that term A plus,
Speaker 2: we should not be naive. Also some of these misinformation
Speaker 2: you know, campaigns, and so they can be you know,
Speaker 2: organized by foreign powers and all that. So it is
Speaker 2: a world that we're in that where we need to
Speaker 2: take these things very seriously because they are there to
Speaker 2: undermine our societal resilience and cohesion. And without that you
Speaker 2: can't deal with epidemics.
Speaker 1: You had long COVID. I think it lasted quite a
Speaker 1: few months. There are doctors today who don't really believe
Speaker 1: that such a thing exists.
Speaker 2: Well, they can call me no, no, the long COVID
Speaker 2: really exists. I mean I could not cross the street
Speaker 2: who's living then in London and we were living in
Speaker 2: one of these houses. The bedroom was on the third floor,
Speaker 2: so I slept downstairs. I could not make no. No,
Speaker 2: you're it is. It's very well documented. Now. I'm lucky
Speaker 2: that I can run ten kilometers no problem, but some
Speaker 2: people for years they're suffering. And fortunately there's quite some
Speaker 2: research going on now, but I still haven't found exactly
Speaker 2: how to treat it. It may be a mixture of
Speaker 2: other things, but I'm optimistic that thanks to the investments
Speaker 2: in dealing with long COVID, we will also hopefully find
Speaker 2: treatments and a way to, you know, to manage people
Speaker 2: who have this kind of chronic fatigue syndrome due to
Speaker 2: other viruses.
Speaker 1: Do you think that when you got COVID yourself and
Speaker 1: got it badly, did it change something in your own
Speaker 1: perception of our relationship with viruses after so many years
Speaker 1: of having been in contact with pathogens.
Speaker 2: Yes, actually one. I was at some point scared to die,
Speaker 2: that's one thing. But it made me realize that, you know,
Speaker 2: we're all vulnerable. It can happen to anybody. And it
Speaker 2: made me also more to say interest not only in
Speaker 2: the virus, but also in the people. And certainly I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm privileged because we were living in London and the
Speaker 2: healthcare is there and so but going back to where
Speaker 2: we have ebola, there is no safety net. It's a
Speaker 2: lesson in humility and we're human beings at the end
Speaker 2: of the day.
Speaker 1: And having done detective work on more than one virus,
Speaker 1: what is left for you to solve? Do you still
Speaker 1: have a burning scientific desire or another problem that you're
Speaker 1: just longing to get to grips with fully.
Speaker 2: I'm seventy seven, so I, you know, supporting young people
Speaker 2: to take it on new ideas, they come up with
Speaker 2: the digital stuff and AI and so that can make
Speaker 2: it all more efficient and faster to solve problems. I'm
Speaker 2: now particularly interested in the societal aspects, but I'm not
Speaker 2: looking for another vir I mean, when you look at it,
Speaker 2: serendipity has been a major element in my life. You
Speaker 2: know it all right? Did we isolated ball in and
Speaker 2: to up in Belgium Because in these days in Zaire
Speaker 2: it was not possible to isolate a virus. Today they
Speaker 2: can do sequencing. They do it in you know, in
Speaker 2: no time, and that gives me also a lot of
Speaker 2: satisfaction that there is progress. Although sometimes you wonder in
Speaker 2: the world, but on the field of pandemic control and
Speaker 2: some we remade fantastic progress.
Speaker 1: Professor Peter Piot, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mishal, good to talk.
Speaker 1: I like the idea that you came back and went
Speaker 1: to check on your roses. That's that's that's very close
Speaker 1: to my heart.
Speaker 2: Do you have a garden, yes, and.
Speaker 1: Well a very recently planted rose garden. So I too
Speaker 1: go and inspect my roses most mornings.
Speaker 2: And when you come to Brussels, let me know I'll come.
Speaker 1: And see your rose garden. Yeah, thank you so much, Peter,
Speaker 1: take care, thank you, And that's it for this week.
Speaker 1: Apart from Peter's own book, which is called No Time
Speaker 1: to Lose, there was so much I read and we
Speaker 1: read as a team for this episode. So on the
Speaker 1: show page, which is Bloomberg dot com forward slash Michelle,
Speaker 1: you'll find the written version of this with links to
Speaker 1: that material and my notes, and also photos of Peter
Speaker 1: at work in Zaire as it then was. The show's
Speaker 1: producers are Jessica Beck and Chris Martlew. Guest booking is
Speaker 1: by Elan Bird. Video producers this week Andy Hayward and
Speaker 1: Maria Grechaninova. Social media is by Alex Morgan. Our music
Speaker 1: is by Bart Warshaw. The executive producer is Louisa Lewis
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg Weekend. Our thanks to Brendan Francis Newnam and
Speaker 1: our executive editor Katherine Bell. Finally, please do subscribe to
Speaker 1: follow episodes as they come every Friday, and until next time, goodbye,