Speaker 1: It's January nine and prime ministers, CEOs and celebrities are
Speaker 1: gathering in the Swiss Alps for an annual summit. A
Speaker 1: globalization backlash, growth in China and trade tensions are dominating
Speaker 1: the agenda. Actor Matt Damon is also here talking about
Speaker 1: the need to improve access to clean water. On the
Speaker 1: sidelines of the World Economic Forum, an American doctor and
Speaker 1: a British scientist are sounding the alarm about a different concern,
Speaker 1: the specter of a pandemic. In a press conference, Richard
Speaker 1: Hatchett highlights the mission of his organization, launched two years
Speaker 1: earlier to combat infectious disease outbreaks with new vaccines. Sitting
Speaker 1: beside two drug industry executives and the head of a
Speaker 1: health charity, he says the risks are rising in our
Speaker 1: hyper connected world. Epidemics have the potential to hop from
Speaker 1: continent to continent, spreading far beyond the places where they emerge.
Speaker 1: His group, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, is pushing
Speaker 1: to speed development of exts means against a range of threats,
Speaker 1: including a coronavirus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome or mirrors.
Speaker 1: And there's more to richard strategy. We have also announced
Speaker 1: our first investments to tackle disease X, the disease we
Speaker 1: don't know about, the emerging disease with the potential to
Speaker 1: cause a pandemic. One investment is in a program at
Speaker 1: Imperial College London led by Robin Shattuck. The research ames
Speaker 1: to create vaccines that can be scaled up rapidly to
Speaker 1: respond to outbreaks of those mysterious pathogens. Richard sees on
Speaker 1: the horizon, the event in Davos is a prime opportunity
Speaker 1: to address some of the planet's most prominent decision makers.
Speaker 1: Robin sets the scene standing in front of a screen
Speaker 1: with images of people walking along a bustling city sidewalk. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine you're standing in any major city in the world
Speaker 1: and as an outbreak of what we call disease X,
Speaker 1: an unknown respiratory pathogen, how quickly could we respond. The
Speaker 1: reality is that for most countries there's no regional mechanism
Speaker 1: that could manufacture and distribute vaccines in a meaningful time frame.
Speaker 1: Just think about that for a moment. But many people
Speaker 1: are thinking about a deadly pandemic potentially triggered by avian
Speaker 1: flu as a distant possibility, not an imminent one. Ebola
Speaker 1: killed more than eleven thousand people in West Africa between,
Speaker 1: but that virus and others like Stars, Mirrors and Zeka
Speaker 1: had all faded from the headlines. Robin reflects on the
Speaker 1: prevailing sentiment at the time. The scientific community is set
Speaker 1: up pandemic is coming, It's coming. But having said that,
Speaker 1: for at least ten years, people were getting very used
Speaker 1: to the drumbeat and not actually really appreciating the threat.
Speaker 1: So it isn't exactly a packed house when the Imperial
Speaker 1: scientist warns of a novel and potentially dangerous virus that
Speaker 1: could suddenly strike. There have been the experience with a bowler,
Speaker 1: but that was still relatively geer graphically isolated and wasn't
Speaker 1: a global phenomena. And so in Davos when we gave presentation,
Speaker 1: I think there were about thirty people in the audience
Speaker 1: um and none of them of particular levels of influence.
Speaker 1: For years, scientists that issued warnings and urgent calls to
Speaker 1: bolster our health defenses, and at times those red flags
Speaker 1: captured the attention of global leaders. Richard's coalition known as
Speaker 1: SEPPI is a testament to that. But when disease X
Speaker 1: hits just months later. Many countries aren't ready. Despite success
Speaker 1: in creating vaccines in record time, COVID nineteen exposes the
Speaker 1: world's vulnerabilities, killing millions of people and triggering economic turmoil.
Speaker 1: Two years in, the pandemic still is in over a
Speaker 1: fast spreading and heavily mutated variant. Omicron is the latest twist.
Speaker 1: But virus hunters are already planning for a future, a crisis,
Speaker 1: one that could be just as bad, if not worse,
Speaker 1: and they're pointing to lessons from the past. While a
Speaker 1: number of pathogens are on their radar, the effort also
Speaker 1: depends on anticipating threats they haven't seen before. I'm James Peyton,
Speaker 1: a health journalist at Bloomberg News from the Prognosis podcast.
Speaker 1: This is breakthrough. Richard Hatchett didn't set out to protect
Speaker 1: the country from pandemics. At Vanderbilt University in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: he was an English major and a poet. Later, he
Speaker 1: opted to go to medical school before focusing on treating cancer.
Speaker 1: Then a turning point comes On a bright late summer
Speaker 1: day in two thousand one, News outlets like CNN interrupt
Speaker 1: their coverage this justin you were looking at obviously a
Speaker 1: very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center,
Speaker 1: and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane
Speaker 1: has crashed into one of the towers. A second hijacked
Speaker 1: plane slams into the South Tower, and soon New York's
Speaker 1: tallest buildings collapse. Thousands of people are feared dead. Richard,
Speaker 1: an emergency room doctor a Memorial Slowe Kettering Cancer Center,
Speaker 1: is determined to help the city respond to the September
Speaker 1: eleventh attack. The next morning on Wednesday, he and other
Speaker 1: volunteers hit your ride on the truck down the West
Speaker 1: Side Highway and head to the smoldering ruins at ground zero.
Speaker 1: It was really shocking there, obviously, was this just pulverized
Speaker 1: dust coating everything. There were cars and things that had
Speaker 1: been abandoned. I mean, I think I remember seeing like
Speaker 1: a baby carriage that was just completely coated in white
Speaker 1: dust that it clearly, you know, the parent had picked
Speaker 1: up the child and had fled on foot. It smelled
Speaker 1: poisonous and toxic in a in a way that I've
Speaker 1: never experienced before. Richard's group moves a few blocks north
Speaker 1: to a field hospital set up at Stuyvesant High School.
Speaker 1: With few survivors, nurses and doctors are providing medical support
Speaker 1: to search and rescue workers. Richard is asked to take over.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of volunteers arrive in the next twelve hours, and
Speaker 1: the young physician is energized by the teamwork he witnesses.
Speaker 1: That was obviously the personally transformative moment, very powerful, overwhelming
Speaker 1: in some ways, experience also remarkable to work with the
Speaker 1: medical volunteers, the nurses, the doctors who had shown up
Speaker 1: very dedicated, self motivated, used to taking accountability. But he's
Speaker 1: also frustrated by the lack of organization. Little prior thought
Speaker 1: had gone into harnessing the skills and talents of civilians.
Speaker 1: No one seems to have thought that anything like this
Speaker 1: could happen. After three days, he hops on the subway uptown,
Speaker 1: slowly making his way out into a new world. Along
Speaker 1: the streets are photos of New Yorkers who are missing,
Speaker 1: leaving Friday morning and emerging back into this shell shop
Speaker 1: city that was just devastated and silent and had a
Speaker 1: gaping wound in the skyline. I was inspired too, you know,
Speaker 1: drawing the experience we had, but think about what would
Speaker 1: we need in the future if something like this happened again.
Speaker 1: How could we be better organized? How could we be
Speaker 1: better integrated. Terrorism is now America's most urgent priority, but
Speaker 1: the threat is changing shape quickly. When letters laced with
Speaker 1: anthrax begin appearing in the mail, bio defense suddenly emerges
Speaker 1: as another pressing concern. Richard is said to begin a
Speaker 1: cancer fellowship at Duke University. After nine eleven, he changed
Speaker 1: his course, devising a plan to form a network of
Speaker 1: medical volunteers who can be mobilized swiftly in emergencies, not
Speaker 1: just terrorism, but other health crises like epidemics. The concept
Speaker 1: catches fire. Within weeks, he and his colleagues are briefing
Speaker 1: the White House. President Bush's endorsement follows, and in early
Speaker 1: two thousand two, Richard heads to Washington to help set
Speaker 1: it up. I took a complete right turn in my
Speaker 1: career at that point, you know, deviating from my plan
Speaker 1: to complete an oncology fellowship and to go on and
Speaker 1: practice medicine, to to do this odd thing that didn't
Speaker 1: seem to build on anything that I've done before. What
Speaker 1: Richard doesn't realize is that his idea, initially sparked by
Speaker 1: fears of domestic terrorism would take on increased importance in
Speaker 1: the coming years and put him on the ground floor
Speaker 1: of global efforts to battle biological threats. When you decide
Speaker 1: you need to prepare the country for a pandemic, how
Speaker 1: do you make that happen? And how do you persuade
Speaker 1: a complacent population to brace for a possible catastrophe? A
Speaker 1: pivotal policy sixteen years ago starts with a book. It's
Speaker 1: two thousand five and George W. Bush's worries are expanding.
Speaker 1: Eleven had already been at defining moment. Hurricane Katrina is
Speaker 1: another unexpected disaster. Anxieties over an avian flu strain spreading
Speaker 1: in Asia are also running high. Then the President learns
Speaker 1: about a pandemic almost ninety years earlier that killed tens
Speaker 1: of millions of people worldwide. Richard is working at the
Speaker 1: Infectious Disease Division of the National Institutes of Health. The
Speaker 1: President happened to read John Barry's book The Great Influenza,
Speaker 1: which was a history of the flu, and it, you know,
Speaker 1: really scared him. And here was a natural threat that
Speaker 1: had a potentially an impact that it was catastrophic beyond
Speaker 1: anything that you know, Terrorists could do. Bush elevates the
Speaker 1: issue to the top of his agenda, calling for a
Speaker 1: national pandemic influenza strategy. Putting it together falls on the
Speaker 1: shoulders of Regiev and Kayak, the President's adviser on biodefense.
Speaker 1: Bush believes many parts of the government and economy aren't
Speaker 1: focusing nearly enough on that kind of nightmare scenario. He
Speaker 1: was regieve he didn't see that they were part of this,
Speaker 1: and yet he knew that they would be affected. One
Speaker 1: of the assumptions we made in pandemic planning is that
Speaker 1: up to a third of your workforce could be out
Speaker 1: of work at any given time because either they were
Speaker 1: sick or at home taking care of somebody who's sick,
Speaker 1: or because they're scared to come into work. Reggiev is
Speaker 1: looking for backup, a strategic thinker with a medical background,
Speaker 1: so he contacts the office of Tony Faucci, head of
Speaker 1: the Infectious Disease Unit, and asked for Richard Reggieve knows
Speaker 1: him from projects they'd worked on before what I asked
Speaker 1: for and was allowed to pull together a team to
Speaker 1: work on the implementation plan for the National Strategy for
Speaker 1: pandemic influenza. He was one of the first people that
Speaker 1: that came to mind, and we asked for him by name,
Speaker 1: and so I had to make the difficult call and
Speaker 1: request to Tony Fauci to get him to release Richard
Speaker 1: to be a part of our pandemic flu efforts. And
Speaker 1: of course Tony um saw the importance of it and
Speaker 1: he agreed. Although I'm not sure gladly Bush's plan takes
Speaker 1: shape quickly. In late two thousand five, he explains the
Speaker 1: rationale and a speech televised on c SPAN proposing more
Speaker 1: than seven billion dollars in spending. This moment, there is
Speaker 1: no pandemic influenza in the United States or the world,
Speaker 1: but if history is our guide, there is reason to
Speaker 1: be concerned. The President is determined to pick up outbreaks earlier,
Speaker 1: expand vaccine production, and boost readiness at the federal, state,
Speaker 1: and local levels. Waiting until the lethal pathogen emerges could
Speaker 1: have devastating consequences, and one day, many lives could be
Speaker 1: needlessly lost because we failed to act today. By preparing now,
Speaker 1: we can give our citizens some peace of mind knowing
Speaker 1: that our nation is ready to act at the first
Speaker 1: sign of danger. But the foresight isn't fully app ciated
Speaker 1: at the time, and the US commitment to tackling those
Speaker 1: looming pandemic risks, it's inconsistent. After the Bush years, Richard
Speaker 1: continues to worry with roles on Bush's Homeland Security Council
Speaker 1: and the National Security staff. Under Barack Obama in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, the new president is forced to contend with
Speaker 1: the swine flu pandemic just months into his term. The
Speaker 1: spread of hibola and Africa poses another test. The Obama
Speaker 1: administration was quite good at learning from its experience and
Speaker 1: adapting to the reality of the world that it lived in.
Speaker 1: It and it and it did elevate global health security
Speaker 1: as as one of its priorities. But I think it
Speaker 1: was driven to do that by, you know, what happened
Speaker 1: in the world, not not because it was a priority
Speaker 1: from the beginning. Obama's team drafts a sixty nine page document,
Speaker 1: a pandemic playbook, outlining how to respond to deadly viruses,
Speaker 1: and leaves it behind for the Trump administration. Richard spends
Speaker 1: several years at a US biomedical agency that works to
Speaker 1: spur development of vaccines, drugs, and other countermeasures. Then, in
Speaker 1: early seventeen, another door opens. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness
Speaker 1: Innovations is launched and Richard is lured to run it.
Speaker 1: SEPPI has influential backers. It began with almost half a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in funds and support from a few governments
Speaker 1: and big foundations like Gates and Welcome. But keeping pandemics
Speaker 1: front and center proves difficult. Swine flu turns out to
Speaker 1: be less deadly than people feared ebola, worries EBB. Much
Speaker 1: of the focus is on the Trump election and Brexit.
Speaker 1: Elected officials and governments probably discounted the threat when we
Speaker 1: talked about the pandemic threat and talked about the huge
Speaker 1: global cost of the pandemic. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of people kind of secretly were like rolling
Speaker 1: their eyes, thinking that we were just fearmongering. I don't
Speaker 1: think that I'll have that problem going forward. At the end,
Speaker 1: less than a year after that meeting in the Swiss Mountains,
Speaker 1: officials in China begin investigating a pneumonia outbreak, an unknown
Speaker 1: virus that's spreading fast. Within days, scores of researchers get
Speaker 1: to work on potential vaccines to combat the pathogen. A
Speaker 1: new Coronavirus Visor and its partnered bion tech Sprint out
Speaker 1: of the Gates along with another company, Maderna, which has
Speaker 1: been collaborating with the US government. Those drug makers are
Speaker 1: betting on a technology called Messenger RNA. Richard has been
Speaker 1: tracking progress in that field for years, so when he
Speaker 1: receives an email from Maderna CEO Stefan ben Sell on January,
Speaker 1: he doesn't need long to reply. The biotech company is
Speaker 1: seeking funds to move its shot into human trials. I
Speaker 1: think we basically made a decision in about seven minutes.
Speaker 1: I Stefan's email was like, you know whatever, Diamond was
Speaker 1: eight o'clock and it like eight oh seven. I was
Speaker 1: responding saying, yeah, I think we should do this. Let's
Speaker 1: for seed. But we knew the company, we needed the technology,
Speaker 1: and we knew the urgency at that point. They sign
Speaker 1: a contract just two days later and unveil it the
Speaker 1: next morning back in Davos. And that was actually, I
Speaker 1: believe a week before who even declared the outbreak of
Speaker 1: public health emergency of International Concerned. That's how quickly we
Speaker 1: were making decisions and moving. The vaccine race is on
Speaker 1: and most people know how it plays out. In a
Speaker 1: remarkable feat. Visor and Maderna create highly effective MR and
Speaker 1: A shots within a year. The University of Oxford and
Speaker 1: astras Eneka also crossed the finish line using a different technology,
Speaker 1: building on work to develop a shot against MERS, the
Speaker 1: other coronavirus threat, but gaps in surveillance and testing allowed
Speaker 1: the virus to take off. Many governments respond to slowly
Speaker 1: as cases climb. The Trump administration is blasted for ignoring
Speaker 1: the pandemic strategy and inherited Here's Obama speaking of the
Speaker 1: campaign rally in Philadelphia in October. We literally left this
Speaker 1: White House a pandemic playbook that would have shown them
Speaker 1: how to respond before the virus reached our shots. They
Speaker 1: probably used it, I don't know, prop up a wobbly
Speaker 1: table somewhere. We don't know where that playbook went. Wealthy nations. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Russia had to snap up vaccine supplies, leaving poorer regions
Speaker 1: behind and unprotected as the highly contagious delta variant spreads.
Speaker 1: The inequity of the distribution of vaccine in particular, but
Speaker 1: also the other countermeasures, oxygen and the therapeutics that we
Speaker 1: have to me that's the central story of the pandemic.
Speaker 1: It's also the central moral failure of humanity in our
Speaker 1: response to the pandemic. Richards says a program known as
Speaker 1: Kovac's is helping to right those wrongs. He was part
Speaker 1: of early discussions that led to its creation. The initiative
Speaker 1: aim to deliver vaccines fairly to every corner of the planet,
Speaker 1: but it struggled to access doses and fallen short of
Speaker 1: its goals. Wealthy governments and pharmaceutical companies have faced criticism
Speaker 1: for not doing more to narrow the divide. Next time,
Speaker 1: the world will need to spread vaccine technologies and manufacturing
Speaker 1: capabilities more widely. Petro To Blanche is trying to make
Speaker 1: that a reality. She directs a Cape Town based biotech
Speaker 1: company called Afrogen Biologics and Vaccines. The business is working
Speaker 1: with the w h O and other partners on an
Speaker 1: m R and a hub to produce new shots and
Speaker 1: train people from other countries to make them. They aim
Speaker 1: to reproduce the Madurna vaccine, a product that's failed to
Speaker 1: reach large parts of the globe, and have a candidate
Speaker 1: ready for human trials in about a year. But they're
Speaker 1: looking well beyond that project, hoping to put lower income
Speaker 1: regions in a stronger position in the future. Here's tore blanche,
Speaker 1: and it's part of a global initiative to ensure that
Speaker 1: not in any industry short term, but in the long term,
Speaker 1: low and middle income countries have access to m R
Speaker 1: and A technology platforms, and at low and middle income
Speaker 1: countries are able to sustainably manufactured at least a significant
Speaker 1: portion of the vaccines that they are required to ensure
Speaker 1: health security. This is not a one year program, This
Speaker 1: is not a five year program. This is a fifteen
Speaker 1: year program. A year after the first COVID inoculations arrived
Speaker 1: in rich countries, many African nations have yet to fully
Speaker 1: vaccinate ten percent of their people. The clearing access gap
Speaker 1: during the COVID pandemic as fueled calls to boost manufacturing
Speaker 1: and developing nations and help those regions become more self sufficient.
Speaker 1: Africa imports more than of its vaccines. Petro says the
Speaker 1: past couple of years have been painful, but she's optimistic
Speaker 1: the new technologies and increased investment will have a lasting
Speaker 1: impact beyond COVID. The bigginest lesson for us is that
Speaker 1: you cannot rely on the rest of the world to
Speaker 1: provide us with how security when the rest of the
Speaker 1: world are in a pandemic um. It is the it's
Speaker 1: the it's the selfish gene that you us never underestimate.
Speaker 1: There's a route awakening that this, this, this can this
Speaker 1: cannot be repeated ever. In the West African country of Senegal,
Speaker 1: a new production plant is set to become part of
Speaker 1: the solution as well. By the end of next year,
Speaker 1: the proposed facility at the Institute Pasteur may start making
Speaker 1: twenty five million vaccine doses a month, targeting COVID and
Speaker 1: other diseases. It's backed by European countries, the US, the
Speaker 1: World Bank, and others. Amadou Saw, the veteran virologist who
Speaker 1: directs the institute in Senegal, says the plant could spurre
Speaker 1: more investment and become a model for the continent. This
Speaker 1: is not a project only about making vaccine, but also
Speaker 1: it's a great opportunity to build a future and hope
Speaker 1: that the younger generation won't have to face what we're
Speaker 1: facing right now. Amado has spent decades urging people to
Speaker 1: prepare for outbreaks. After the Ebola crisis, he received a
Speaker 1: painting as a gift from his wife and children. On
Speaker 1: one side, as a family shrouded in darkness, threatened by
Speaker 1: looming virus. The other is filled with bright light, a
Speaker 1: symbol of the science that will save them. He put
Speaker 1: it on the wall of his office in downtown Dakar,
Speaker 1: a reminder of his mission. We should be conscious that
Speaker 1: we may have other covids. They may not be necessarily COVID,
Speaker 1: that they may be influenza or another new disease, and
Speaker 1: the world should be prepared for that. But people are
Speaker 1: talking a lot about having a new normal, meaning that
Speaker 1: we would have to cope with living under some condition
Speaker 1: because the epidemic may be something very regular we have
Speaker 1: to take into account. As Amadou says, Africa, along with
Speaker 1: the rest of the world, will be tested again. Coronavirus
Speaker 1: is influenza, and of other pathogens around scientists watch list.
Speaker 1: Then there are diseases that aren't yet known to infect humans.
Speaker 1: The next ones could be tougher targets. Scientists may not
Speaker 1: be able to easily replicate the COVID success story, work
Speaker 1: that benefited from previous investments in targeting coronaviruses. Despite decades
Speaker 1: of work, there still is in a vaccine for HIV
Speaker 1: as Imperials Robin Shattuck knows well. The danger is that
Speaker 1: something new comes along on people expect it solved within
Speaker 1: a year, and it may just be a bigger challenge
Speaker 1: for the scientific community. Robbin's experience also underscores the complexities
Speaker 1: of vaccine development. After falling behind, Imperial decided not to
Speaker 1: go forward with a larger trial this year, lacking the
Speaker 1: budget of a big farm a company. Instead, it's refocused
Speaker 1: on variants, booster shots, and refining its approach. Their technology
Speaker 1: may not play a role today, the hope is that
Speaker 1: it will in the future. In September, a university spinoff
Speaker 1: Robin co founded attracted astros Eneka as a partner. Imperial's method,
Speaker 1: called self amplifying RNA shows potential and stimulating strong immune
Speaker 1: responses with very small doses. Messenger RNA vaccines temporarily turned
Speaker 1: the body cells into vaccine making factories. This could be
Speaker 1: part of the next generation. If Robin's team can prove
Speaker 1: it works, the technology could reduce manufacturing costs in a pandemic.
Speaker 1: It could allow supplies to reach vast parts of the world.
Speaker 1: If we can meet that challenge of very low doses,
Speaker 1: it completely changes the productivity and will enhance global access.
Speaker 1: So if you can make thirty two a hundred times
Speaker 1: more vaccine, then you're going to have just way more
Speaker 1: doses to to go around. Another goal is avoiding the
Speaker 1: need to freeze or one day even refrigerate RNA vaccines
Speaker 1: during shipping and storage. That could remove an obstacle for
Speaker 1: immunization campaigns into heloping countries. The rollout in low and
Speaker 1: middle income countries has been tragically slow, and we can't
Speaker 1: continue to live with this kind of two phase approach
Speaker 1: where rich countries get vaccinated very quickly and are already
Speaker 1: thinking about boosters, where low income countries just have had
Speaker 1: perishingly few vaccine doses. Richard now wants to draw on
Speaker 1: those lessons. One part of the plan is creating a
Speaker 1: library at prototype vaccines targeting up to two dozen viral
Speaker 1: families that could provide a crucial head start in battling
Speaker 1: future outbreaks when they arise. Scientists are also working on
Speaker 1: experimental all in one vaccines that could offer broad protection
Speaker 1: against multiple coronavirus is not just the one that causes COVID,
Speaker 1: and Richard wants to move even faster on vaccines, potentially
Speaker 1: developing them in just one days. A moonshot ambition we
Speaker 1: can see a pathway and perhaps as little as as
Speaker 1: ten years of focused work two radically reduce the risk
Speaker 1: that these diseases present, you know, for the future. And
Speaker 1: if we can do that, we will live in a
Speaker 1: much safer world. Still, the next pandemic could happen sooner
Speaker 1: than we think. Rising populations and increased travel can allow
Speaker 1: viruses to spread quickly. Encroachment into natural habitats, swelling cities,
Speaker 1: and wildlife trade raise the likelihood of diseases jumping from
Speaker 1: animals to people, and researchers say climate change is expanding
Speaker 1: the range of disease carrying insects like mosquitoes. There are
Speaker 1: a number of trend lines that would increase the risk
Speaker 1: of future emerging diseases, and all those trend lines are
Speaker 1: long term trends, and they're all heading in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: So I think what we're dealing with is a a
Speaker 1: category of of thread that has not been discharged because
Speaker 1: we've now had a pandemic. That doesn't buy us another
Speaker 1: hundred years of safety. Vaccines are just one tool, along
Speaker 1: with expanded monitoring and sequencing to track mutations. Artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: and data analysis are also critical. Sally Davies England's former
Speaker 1: Chief Medical officer is on the front lines of that effort.
Speaker 1: Last year, she formed the Trinity Challenge, a coalition that's
Speaker 1: funding promising projects all over the world from Europe to Asia.
Speaker 1: Technology companies Facebook, Google and Microsoft are members. We came
Speaker 1: together saying never again. We asked people to engineer the
Speaker 1: collision of data science with public health to answer the
Speaker 1: questions by producing innovations that can be scaled, that can
Speaker 1: become public goods affordable in loan middle income countries as well,
Speaker 1: to really make a difference to can you pick up
Speaker 1: spill over earlier? Can you clamp down on an outbreak?
Speaker 1: Can we respond better? Can we recover better? One recipient
Speaker 1: of Trinity funds in Thailand arms local farmers with an
Speaker 1: app that allows them to quickly flag emerging diseases that
Speaker 1: could pass from animals to humans. Another is using AI
Speaker 1: to analyze billions of annual blood tests to try to
Speaker 1: pick up epidemics early. Those initiatives could give governments an
Speaker 1: edge and preventing local outbreaks from exploding into something far worse.
Speaker 1: The former UK health official is focused on a number
Speaker 1: of risks like influenza. She also worries about a different
Speaker 1: kind of pandemic, one that's moving more slowly than COVID
Speaker 1: but killing hundreds of thousands of people every year. I
Speaker 1: am very concerned about anti microbial resistance, the superbugs, the
Speaker 1: bugs that developed resistance to the treatments we use, whether
Speaker 1: it's bacteria to antibiotics, viruses to anti virals, fungi to
Speaker 1: their treatments, which is a slow and silent pandemic that's
Speaker 1: rising steadily up. Money and expertise are important, but galvanizing
Speaker 1: world leaders also requires tenacity. In Sally Davies pushed then
Speaker 1: Prime Minister David Cameron to take on superbugs. Or my
Speaker 1: husband once said, when I was Chief Medical Officer, the
Speaker 1: senior people probably thought they'd appointed a doctor who would
Speaker 1: tell them the evidence. Well, they didn't understand was they
Speaker 1: got a campaigner who was a doctor who would tell
Speaker 1: them the evidence. And the evidence on anti microbial resistance
Speaker 1: is powerful. It wasn't strong enough. When I realized we
Speaker 1: needed as a world to move on it, so I
Speaker 1: went with our Cabinet secretary to see the then Prime
Speaker 1: Minister Cameron. I said to him, it's as complex and
Speaker 1: complicated as climate change. She and her colleagues moved the
Speaker 1: issue out of the realm of technocrats, as she puts it,
Speaker 1: and into the public eye. Report that came out of
Speaker 1: this effort found that without any action, drug resistant diseases
Speaker 1: by twenty fifty could cause up to ten million deaths
Speaker 1: a year and have massive economic costs. It's not too late,
Speaker 1: but we must take action. All there will be many
Speaker 1: dead because you, the politicians haven't committed the money. You
Speaker 1: the companies haven't made new drugs, We have not set
Speaker 1: up surveillance systems. Here I am banging on still seven
Speaker 1: eight years after I started. People tend to believe the
Speaker 1: future will look like the past. So how do you
Speaker 1: prepare for something you can't imagine? Here's regieve again. The
Speaker 1: former Bush advisor now runs the vaccines business for Takeda,
Speaker 1: the Japanese pharmaceutical company, and he's also on the board
Speaker 1: of SEPPI. The swine flu or H one N one
Speaker 1: pandemic should have been a warning instead, because the fallout
Speaker 1: was limited, R. Jeeves says, it led people to relax.
Speaker 1: This is a real concern that people's imagination will be
Speaker 1: limited by their most recent experience. UH the H one
Speaker 1: N one pandemic paradoxically probably drove a level of complacency
Speaker 1: around influenza. Now, COVID will likely be seen as a
Speaker 1: worst case scenario given the massive health and economic pain
Speaker 1: it's caused, But we could see a similar story play
Speaker 1: out again, and it's possible a future contagion could be
Speaker 1: even more devastating, combining an ability to spread easily with
Speaker 1: a higher fatality rate. The virus that causes COVID is
Speaker 1: much less lethal than stars and mers. Another worry is
Speaker 1: a disease that severely afflicts groups beyond the elderly and
Speaker 1: those with underlying health conditions. Take the pandemic the one
Speaker 1: that frightened President Bush. People between twenty and forty years
Speaker 1: old were hit hard by that virus, as well as
Speaker 1: younger and older populations. I see plenty of reasons why
Speaker 1: COVID could be far from the worst UH pandemic that
Speaker 1: we could face, and battling dangerous viruses could become more
Speaker 1: difficult as governments and scientists confront distrust and it divided population. Frankly,
Speaker 1: my biggest concern coming out of this pandemic is the
Speaker 1: undermining of confidence in public health authorities and the scientific
Speaker 1: community that we've seen driven by misinformation and disinformation, and
Speaker 1: that is not something that's going to be corrected overnight.
Speaker 1: Countries cannot afford to let that persist. We're going to
Speaker 1: have to have a comprehensive strategy to deal with with misinformation,
Speaker 1: because in the absence of that, we will have a
Speaker 1: chaotic response, as we've seen in many parts of the US,
Speaker 1: and that will ultimately lead to far more people getting
Speaker 1: sick and dying as we're seeing today than necessary. Regieves says.
Speaker 1: Health officials need to take advantage of the focus on
Speaker 1: COVID to step up development of vaccines, therapies, and testing technology.
Speaker 1: There's no guarantee that whatever we do is going to
Speaker 1: eliminate the pandemic threat, to be clear, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot that we could do to be more prepared, not
Speaker 1: just for flu viruses and coronaviruses, but for viruses from
Speaker 1: other families. One key is messenger RNA. It's a bright
Speaker 1: spot amid the misery of the past two years that
Speaker 1: bodes well for the future, bringing the benefits of speed
Speaker 1: and flexibility, even if traditional methods will still be needed.
Speaker 1: Nations also must brought in their efforts to keep up
Speaker 1: with both old scourges as well as new enemies. Richard says,
Speaker 1: Nipa and Hendra, the deadly paramix of viruses, are expanding
Speaker 1: their global range, and they're just a couple of examples.
Speaker 1: We got out of the gate like Hussain Bold in
Speaker 1: terms of responding to coronaviruses, and we're not ready to
Speaker 1: do that with other viral families. And there are many
Speaker 1: other viral families that present concerns. We need to be
Speaker 1: as ready for paramix of viruses and and for you know,
Speaker 1: the other five viral families that are known to cause
Speaker 1: human disease as we were for coronavirus. Is twenty years
Speaker 1: after nine eleven, Richard again sees an opportunity in the
Speaker 1: wake of a disaster. He envisions the world in which
Speaker 1: pandemics are preventable in the same way famines are no
Speaker 1: longer inevitable thanks to early warning efforts, but achieving that
Speaker 1: will be a massive challenge. After COVID nineteen, I am
Speaker 1: very concerned that in a sense, as as damaging and
Speaker 1: disruptive as it has been, as many millions of people
Speaker 1: as it has killed, and as much economic damage as
Speaker 1: it has caused, which is in the tens of trillions
Speaker 1: of dollars probably that COVID may just be a shot
Speaker 1: across the bowl that there is ahead of us in
Speaker 1: this century, a pandemic that would make COVID look like
Speaker 1: a mild pandemic relative to what is possible For now.
Speaker 1: The priority is getting COVID under control and grappling with
Speaker 1: the risk posed by variants like amicron, taking advantage of
Speaker 1: the innovation that emerges from the pandemic. Strengthening the w
Speaker 1: h O and boosting funding are seen as important next steps.
Speaker 1: That's spending to try to avert a future calamity. It
Speaker 1: would be tiny compared with the potential cost. If we
Speaker 1: stay focused and and leverage the political will that COVID
Speaker 1: has generated. I think we can dramatically reduce or even
Speaker 1: eliminate the risk of future pandemics if we want to,
Speaker 1: and I think we have to, because I think they're
Speaker 1: an existential threat to modern society. It's a message governments
Speaker 1: have failed to heat in the past. Well the world
Speaker 1: assume that this is a once in a century event
Speaker 1: and let its guard down again when COVID finally recedes,
Speaker 1: or will we see this pandemic as a wake up call?
Speaker 1: The health and economic stakes couldn't be higher This episode
Speaker 1: of Prognosis Breakthrough was written and reported by me. James
Speaker 1: peyton To for Foreheads and Magnus Hendrickson are the senior producers.
Speaker 1: Karl Kevin Robinson Jr. Is our associate producer. Our theme
Speaker 1: music was composed and performed by Hannis Brown. Rick Shine
Speaker 1: is our editor. Francesco Levy is the head of Bloomberg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, and if
Speaker 1: you liked this episode, please leave us a review. It
Speaker 1: helps others find out about the show. Thanks for listening.