“My last TED Talk was on global pandemics, but 90% of the views came after it was too late.” video.
“COVID-19 can be the last pandemic. We need to stop outbreaks before they become pandemics. If we can stop it in the first 100 days, we could save 98% of lives. We might be able to eradicate the coronavirus families.”
Taking lessons from ancient Rome, where a devastating fire led Emperor Augustus to create a permanent firefighting organization (with vintage firefighting bucket on stage), Gates thinks we need to invest in and practice pandemic prevention through the creation of a global fast-response pandemic-fighting outfit could get to the epicenter of newly detected pandemics in a matter of days, not months, with the right tools and resources. He calls it GERM:
“G.E.R.M. (Global Epidemic Response & Mobilization) would cost $1B/year to support 3,000 full-time people in the field. They would train and perform drills like firefighters. We have 370,000 full-time firefighters in the U.S.”
“Health systems are not cheap, but they save money in the long run. It would cost $10’s of billions. COVID cost the global economy $14T. We need to spend billions in order to save trillions.”
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