Let's start here Bill.
Five years ago, you stood on the Ted stage
and you gave this this chilling warning that the world
was in danger at some point of a major pandemic.
Today the greatest risk of global catastrophe, doesn't look like this.
Instead it looks like this.
If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades,
it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus, rather than a war.
Not missiles, but microbes.
We're not ready for the next epidemic.
People watching that talk now, you know the hair stands up on
the back of their neck it is it is exactly
what we're living through.
What happened did people listen to that warning at all?
Basically, No, you know,
I was hopeful that with the Zika and Ebola and SARS and MERS,
they all reminded us that particularly in a world where people move around
so much, you can get, huge devastation.
And so the talk was to say hey, we’re not ready for the next pandemic.
We're not ready for the next epidemic.
But in fact there's advances in science that have we put resources against them.
We can be ready.
The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic
to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola.
You can handle a virus where people feel well enough while they're infectious.
That they get on a plane or they go to a market.
The source of the virus
could be a natural epidemic like Ebola
or it could be bio terrorism.
And so there are things that would literally make things a thousand times worse.
We've actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic.
In fact, if there's one positive thing that can come out of the Ebola epidemic.
It's that it can serve as a early morning wake-up call to get ready.
If we start now we can be ready for the next epidemic.
Thank you.
We’re really interested in your insight Bill on
whether you think we're heading in the right direction.
Do you feel like our economy is heading in the right place?
That humanity's heading right in the right place?
Are we in a better position now than you thought we were in five years ago?
Well the five years ago I said that the
pandemic is this un-addressed very very scary thing
and that,
you know, if we did the right things we could be more prepared.
Science is on our side.
The fact we can be ready
for the next epidemic.
It's very clear how to do that.
And yes, it will take tens of billions but not hundreds or trillions of dollars.
So it'll be tiny compared to the economic cost.
Still very much an optimist,
you know, whether its climate change, countries working
together, biology, taking the disease's, Malaria ,TB,
you know even advances for way more ritual diseases
like cancer. The amount of innovation the way we can connect
up and work together.
Yes. I'm super positive about that.
You know the message from me.
Although it's very sober when we're dealing with this epidemic.
You know, I'm very positive that this should draws us together.
We will get out of this and then we will get ready for the next epidemic.
