Yes i can understand wire you writing about it now hasnt happened jet. Im learning about the things we can write about now. I deliberately took a step back. Im not writing as things unfold. Im not about this or that misstep by this so that government. Im not talking that level at all. What i am doing is standing back and saying okay, why pandemic why now. That is something i could do. Youve been reading my work, you know, i like many other people been writing about this for years. Weve been saying this is going to happen. These are the viruses we need to worry about. This is what we need to do. It is already so obvious those predictions were back on. And we havent done a lot of things we need to do. This was kind of the moment to repeat all of that stuff. At a time when people can really understand it. Therefore the message might really come home to the right people. I think that point out emphasizes how strongly am how political leaders have been represented to them previously for preparedness. I just want to read one quote, its almost as if countries are interested in vital emergencies but not preventing the emergence that causes emergencies in the first place. Was that something came at you in your writing the book . One of the ways days is postcolonial. The deeper issue than that. Prevention is not very sexy. Going and stopping something from happening. People are always complaining. Were we succeed people wonder what we are therefore, nothing happens. Prevention just does not attract a lot of attention. Where it is so obvious it is way cheaper. Its been estimated 2 of what it is costing us, think that is an overestimate. What we need to be good preventive measures would stop this from happening in the first place. And then people would say what are we spending this money on . Throughout the city of los angeles. Both of them took the learning. And both of them put together stashes of ventilators in case they were ever hit by a disease that required a lot of people to go on ventilators. Los angeles had ajit crisis a few years ago and said what are we keeping this stuff around for . And got rid of it. Sent out theres a shortage. I wonder how many people over the years attacked City Government and said what the hell are we spending money on these ventilators for . Well get rid of it. Well starsky back even worse. Theres also the challenge, the Surveillance System is going to bring out the disease that dont go anywhere. And the challenges of balancing those against the threat of the true pandemic. How do you think political leaders can walk that line . Guest they spend a lot of various kinds of insurance already. What is the chance we are going to be hit with an overwhelming Nuclear Attack . Why do we need to renew our nuclear defenses very expensively to guard against that . There seems to be very few questions if that is necessary. But that cost a vast amount more than investing in a few vaccine vaccines. That is insurance. People will say chia, if you buy Fire Insurance and your house doesnt burn down you go to the Insurance Company and say hey i want my money back . No. Its similar. I think people just did not see it as a risk. People got out of the habit to see Infectious Disease is really being a risk. And a pandemic is not happening now, ive got a chunk of money here i can spend it on something. Is a going to be pandemic next year . Well know, but we know there will be one sometime. And its going to be very, very bad. But yes this is one i hesitate to say low probability high impact event. Thats what most experts call i it. You might get a catastrophic explosion in your port like beirut just had who would have predicted that a week ago . If you might get others the flu pandemic at the same time as the Covenant Team pandemic. Postings on the roam of possibility. But no one can say if theyre going to happen. The impact is going to be huge. How do you convince someone is going to spend unlimited pot of money to set some aside for that risk when you cannot even quantify if that risk will happen in the lifespan of this budget. You cant do that. Thats the first one to go by the side. You cannot predict when this is coming. You can say that is coming but you cannot give policymakers the kinds of tools they typically need to make budget decisions. I think now that we can all see what this could do the arm waving it may be more effective. Stuart you mention of course some political leaders are starting to make the event vested in array of different approaches that are preparing us and to quote the g20 is increasing development, vaccines and leverage. Rapid development so where do you start . Whats the most important thing to focus on . The most important thing is for the g20 to follow through on the immediate said it would hold in order to enact some of those. It really did its homework. This a number of things we need to do its not a mystery. They said we will hold a meeting of health and finance in the coming months. It was a statement made in a mark jim march to discuss it. They had really done their homework. When they asked what should be asking for it was a pretty comprehensive list. And it was all the right things. In fact on the g20 website to see if anything has changed. It hasnt. I heard some scuttlebutt that maybe that meeting was happening in september. But i dont see it scheduled anywhere yet. There is one point that they did not hit. One of the things that covid has really brought home, is the National Sovereignty still rules unchallenged in International Health management. China said to the w. H. O. , with got this infection but it is not spread human to human. The w. H. O. Could not then say great will be there tomorrow. We will sit and talk to your technical experts. Houston went technical experts get together the truth comes out for that have an srs. Doctors in beijing started talking, all the sudden actually have had more deaths than that. If you have your technical experts getting together, especially if you have confidence Building Measures that used to talking to each other, the truth comes out. We need some mechanism to do that. As it was a w. H. O. Could not go in. Chinas eight weve got it, you dont have the right to commend. Except it is the whole planet that as at risk. Its a shared risk there has to be shared responsibility. Theres apparently no way of understanding that. China suffered mightily from having delayed admitting this thing spread persontoperson. Because of long as i didnt admit that they cannot have Infection Control measures and move on. In the end on the 20th of january when they finally did admit that shut the city down. Some of us have been that through that ourselves have heard basically we should all know that we are all in this together only to share response. We need to share information. We cannot leave it to the whims or the governing of Different Countries, whatever they are. To be in charge of responding to these things. Its not just china that keeps things quiet. As you know is a Public Health expert the only treaty weve got governing this came into being because back in the 1800s, port cities were not telling people when they had cholera outbreaks. And ships were sailing in i could not set sail again because they had been in a collar report. There some effort to get people to share information on cholera outbreaks for that reason. There is so much to that in all the major powers of the time. It took them decades to reach a decision. This is a problem humans have trouble talk about disease. But we have to find a way to do that that is not held hostage to National Sovereignty. Its a global risk. It has to be some kind of global governance. We could do that with the existing International Health regulation. Just tweak it a little bit. Happen against the backs dro drop. Distrust of multilateral organizations which is not going to help. The finding the bodies help drive the content. It is such a key player. So given where we are now and the events of the last few weeks even, since it came in what can w. H. O. Do to bolster efforts. Particular with the threat of the u. S. And general lack of trust its facing now . Who cannot do anything until the Member States let it do something. As people always say that w. H. O. Is its Member States. They have never giving it the authority to override National Government issues. Theyve never given enough of a budget to do very much. Although it does with it can with what its got. I think we have all seen we actually need some sort of global coordination in the management of these issues. And Member States its their game, its their power, theyve got to do this. Theyve got to pull their own sovereignty that will collectively do this. And it is not beyond their capability. They collectively manage materials to the international agency. There is an inspection regime there which everybody is subject too. They give up enough sovereignty that they have all said we will declare how much material weve got, we will declare what with got from emergent. And you can commit inspectors and zipper telling the truth. The could conceivably make nerve gas for if you want to commit and check you can come anytime. We can be subject to inspection along those lines any time. We want to make sure neighbors are not doing it too. Everybody has declared thats okay in their own interest. Disease is a much worse risk. Why dont we have declarations under International Health regulations. We arty have a requirement for that, that threatens people internationally. Why dont we have a declaration of the International Health regulations at countries declare what diseases they got. Its one of the got a novel disease. They say great will be there tomorrow. Member states will kindly give me enough of a budget i got some inspectors and i can do that. They can see what youve got everybody can be in this together from the start to. If the country says i dont have a novel disease a w. H. O. Can say how good is your surveillance . How do you know that . Now at the country says some reports say i dont have any polio the w joe says great, how many diseases similar to polio have you diagnosed in the past year . If he was diagnosed as many you should have had your not doing a hard enough. If you have not diagnosed for many you havent looked hard enough you dont know you dont have polio lets Work Together on improving that capability. Theyve done that in all the countries in africa. They could do it now for general surveillance. If there is one thing we need all the experts say is im sure you know, we need more than anything else is surveillance. That is one thing the g20 declaration did not mention. That to figure out ways of getting vaccines and diagnostics and tested people that is great. That is really good. But it should also figure out a way of somehow getting us together on surveillance, making sure people come to watch for diseases. One of the problems is these diseases are mostly viruses, its mostly going to happen in the places with the most animals which is the tropics. A lot of those countries are not very wealthy. It is easy. We need to work on surveillance. We really need to get that together. And we can do it under a treaty thats not unlike treaties weve already all signed up to. I think its a nuclear in chemical reaching is very powerful. We have verification protocols. Their disagreements through certain powerful states. Come back to surveillance also. The idea of strengthening Surveillance System stands for decades. Recently highlighted in 2014. Its a great response, right . At the things that have been in the works. I just want to mention on that note, when it comes to strengthening systems to what extent is the World Health Organization empowered to make these kind of decisions . How much buyin is needed . To the extent that w. H. O. Is totally chronically underfunded organization, its actually accomplish some miracles in the last few years. After a bullock. If they play in the debit over slow reaction there. Yes institutional structure did the problem with that. The w joe maybe gets a little too much. It was slow, theres just one guy in the whole place who did not jump at the right time. It happens in Organization Running on a skeleton staff and a skeleton budget. Given that is the case, after bola the global Emergency Response organization. During the fox nation program, we think this drug works okay. I have preapproved this vaccine they are people have developed. Unless i forget that soy six years ago. So the data good job there. But at the same time after 2008, it had a huge cut in its budget. Naxals in the states for reasons that do not make sense. And, that is just putting all of us at more risk. Because frankly you can criticize deborah jo, i am a journalist to do it all the time, they know that. We are supposed to do that. But this is the only game in town. I went the global collaborative effort to control the systemic disease for the w. H. O. Is where you have to start. Its really the only agency weve got. Host theres always the question that should w. H. O. Be the ambulance chaser, the ambulance drivers that for the organization . Absolutely. That remains the question. But you need to have a budget commensurate with that and the responsibility. Take up that, to being a journalist, as a veteran reporter here what have you seen during this unfolding pandemic in terms of communicating their findings. Terms with accurate information. I have to say thats one of the few right spots that have arrays from the sprint there are some people covering themselves with glory. I mean like helen rental right into the american press, and international. Thereve been lots of other people really doing well. A lot of scientists i have to say is a moment of sheer panic one is writing the book. Usually make a statement in print, i checked with at least two scientists per is getting a lot of emails back going hi deb, sorry cant get back to really busy. Scientists are working 24 7 after rerouting most of their research towards various things having to do with covid. And also engaging in a lot of public outbreak, marks case in point. He was calling me up and helping me with things ive been talking him for years. Eventually psychiatric kit do this anymore. Hes been writing for the boston globe. And thats great he is doing that. But there few people helping, their points of writing the book. Fortunately most the point that already talked about. Says pretty much looking. To what extent do you continue your research . Have to pick out public outreach. Im sure scientists are not as comfortable. I getting that type of change the type of information that comes out . Were not hear from all scientists. I think that is something, im assigned to see that happen with my peers as a challenge as well. It has been a hugely prominent feature about this pandemic. Maybe facilitate by social media in some cases. Certainly perhaps some state sponsored risk. So how damaging has this information been . And you think journalists, scientists do to counter that . Guest thats one of the reasons i wrote the book. This is mostly like preaching to the crowd. Or to the choir. Pete preaching to the people who are the scientist for the usually pretty synthetic to science in these things. The book hopefully contribute what you can pray this is the moment when i can tell people what i know it is time they can really hear it. I think a lot of scientists have been doing that as well. No information is ever perfect. On the vaccine front, horse thats going to happen. Overhearing for measure say the scientists are more articulate than others. We dont go into science because theyre good at that. There are some really notable exceptions there also some people in trouble. Maybe skewing what we hear. Theres meetings among scientists and dont trouble talking to each other. Function of honest brokers delivering what they have to say getting a scientific message. Scientists dismiss with her hearing outbreak there told scientists are the devil or something. Listen to any Conspiracy Theory just because conspiracy theories of all because they appeal to certain psychological traits. And a lot of people are not constrained by facts. They can be as appealing as they need to be. There been a lot. Stuart one which hasnt struck me as i read the book is the idea that people might think the industry was inventing the pandemic to commercial. That blew me away. More broadly about this incredible situation that we are in. Its against the accident doesnt even exist yet. The data showing one in six persons and one in six people the u. S. Would probably not take a covid19 if it is in existence because of various concerns. In this day and age it seems really challenging. On one hand the vaccine is the Silver Bullet. We may not even have enough people are willing to take it. I think it is wrong to look at is informational problem but i talked to Risk Management people about this they say scientist just think if they sincerely explain the facts of people, that will bring them around. Of all the Psychological Research says in fact it doesn doesnt. You explain Global Warming to a Climate Change lawyer i will make them more confirmed. So why is she trying to explain this to me . [laughter] you cant win. There must be a broader answer and establishing trust among communities to begin with. And also, not so much speaking from one community to another. We need to get going within communities. We need to have people speaking in terms of values and language that they understand. And somehow the facts should be able to spread that way as well as from one self defined group to another. I dont know how you get around that. Thats sort of the takehome. Your report of not expert myself only report what i hear myself. But what im hearing is we need to allot more aware people who are denied lists, call these people dismissively the enumerates. They cannot understand the necessarily quantitative arguments that you make. That is really kind of the problem i think. There is a lot of us and them in these dialogues for they are not dialects they are lectures. There needs to be more ways to present both factual evidence that anyone can relate to in terms that every group of people can relate to. Regardless of their politics are or what the personality is. The really has to be more of that. I dont know how to do that. If you did ill be writing another book. Who knows i may do that. [laughter] make a very good point about that. Its inaccurate and disrespectful. I guess my biggest concern in this particular space is because the covid19 pandemic is the extent it may cloud really important conversation about vaccine safety. He wanted to be a safe and effective vaccine. I do worry that the rhetoric thats used by some anti fox nation advocates make it very difficult in this kind of space. We will see how that involves in time i guess. So with the vaccine being the Silver Bullet to the pandemic for it something you hear a lot. You have to wait until theres a vaccine. Is there a different way we should be thinking about this . First of all i understand. And its only funding in the rush to get to a vaccine, i have been wondering where is something similar for antiviral drugs . I looked around and actually discover there are people saying we are not doing nearly as much for antiviral drugs and we should be. There is very good work done on antiserum. Their preventive measures. But there were some very promising anti corona virus drugs in the wake of sars. All that was abandoned a couple of years after sars. For some reason everybody decided it was not coming back. I need to do more digging or someone needs to more do more digging there. Im not quite sure. I reported them in the book but i would like to know. It strikes me as very odd that everyone just gave up on that. Had the w. H. O. Is still saying its a threat but not the research was happening. But at the same time, the whole business of the Silver Bullet to brother regrettable that we have this week. But that generates a vaccine thats apparently only been through a phase one safety tria trial. Maybe a bit of phase two. Certainly not. Phase three trial that thousands of people you to establish whether it works and in whom it works and when it works and against what. You need all of that. Now apparently its not all clear that has been approved for general use. They talk about preapproving it is kind of an arcadian whi thing approving potential medications. But it is being taken in a way thats trying to get some kind of kudos to the government. And it has all become kind of a nationalistic thing. That could be a nationalistic goal, that is a real problem. This virus clearly does not care what country it is in. And we get a vaccine were going to need it for everyone. In the book i outlined the situation were let say rich countries cannot afford vaccines. They make sure the friends who are poor countries get it. There are a few poor countries that dont. That virus is going to keep circulating in that country. Its going to evolve. Eventually going have a virus on your hands that your vaccine does not work and against. So this is not in anyones interest. You say were all this together, is not some pollyanna, i am a survivor of the 70s. We are all meant to love each other hippy thing. It really isnt. Its true, we are all in this together. We cannot protect yourselves without protecting everybody. I worry with the vaccine sort of put in this frame of being the Silver Bullet. We are going to be the hero scientist that save the world. Our people are going to get it first. That is just going to undermine everything. Its going to be impossible to get this thing distributed. Inventing a vaccine in many ways is the easy part. Assuming this not all the many problems with the coronavirus. Getting it out there to peoples going to be the rough one. And people like gabby, berkeley who runs the organization here in geneva, told gabby to make sure countries get ordinary vaccines. Make sure they get the budget and so, thinking more generally about vaccine issues and refer a lot to the parallels of influenza in terms of the manufacturing and also more generally in terms of our understanding of the pandemic and theres been talk about 1918, 1919 and how what lessons from that we can bring to this current pandemic but theres differences in influenza and how it operates so to think influenza is a helpful metaphor for understanding our Current Situation versus one that might be misleading connect. It is like anything that is both helpful and misleading. Those are both accurate reflections of the truth. There are two ends of the elephant. We have a pandemic in 2009 that everyone was worried about because it was h1n1 in a direct symptom of that 1918 virus but everyone thought before 1957 was probably immune to it and they didnt actually check that very early but they were worried this would be pretty nasty because 1918 and it was okay because anybody born before 1957 and the older people were the ones normally die of flu anyway so there will be [inaudible] and thats one of the reasons why the 2009 pandemic was not that nasty but it only needed a small antigenic change and that would not have been the case. It couldve been pretty bad but right now we have got in both europe and china viruses like that circulating and could go pandemic and are already jumping to people and you know, we have no idea what their verlyns will turn out to be. I mentioned before wouldnt it be great if we had a flu pandemic in the middle of what were dealing with and covid19 and that is a possibility. One of the problems with flu is you handle it with a particular way and it travels very fast and there is no point doing the track and trace containment of the who has rightly been promoting from the first with governing team and everybodys pandemic plan was for flu because that was the only pandemic they thought happened and im going to they read but no they dont. We talk about flu pandemics a lot but also other kinds. The thing is as we look at the uk pandemic plan it doesnt say pandemic plan but because of the flu pandemic plan. Theres a bit of a mention of the canadian plan lets talk about the flu so we know thats the one virus that will go pandemic and we have to be prepared for it but hey, we just got a pandemic of something completely different and we went we were were not prepared for this other thing so okay, obviously it cuts both ways and i think we need to be grownups and, you know, read the article to the end and we need to do a lot of Different Things to prayer for disease threats in general. Flu certainly i cant believe that there is currently a lawsuit and you talk about misinformation being undertaken in the states against the National Stockpile of one antiviral drug we know works and that is tamiflu because people have been doing this Systematic Disinformation Campaign and they talk about some prominent science journals on this claiming to have science that shows it to the mark but they dont because they got science looking at how it works and seasonal flu and how it works if someone is dying of viral pneumonia and a pandemic is completely different. In that case it works well in a lot of countries including the United States have stockpiles of the drug tamiflu in case there is a flu pandemic and that is being subjected to legal challenges in the states and i think in europe as well because theres denial is to say it doesnt work and i honestly dont know what their problem is and i try to understand it but its just a thing theyve latched onto and its not true. There are facts showing it is not but you know, weve got a preparation there and thats one bit of pandemic preparedness but some countries have done and there is a group campaigning against it. I feel like throwing up your hands and times. Its like misplaced energy in the middle of a pandemic and there are areas of investigation that needs energy and attention and on that note i think one thing that i thought was so interesting in terms of what youre saying about influenza as the next pandemic we all recognize it didnt have to be influenza. Who year ago put disease a list and they reckon eyes but the next thing could be something unknown and of course it could be, 19 and that the new virus thats unknown hyper virus spirit who says sars like coronavirus is on that list so we knew the preparation was [inaudible] and yet we didnt that beat the coronavirus is discovered in china over the last few years and raised a concern about the possible transmission to humans and yet nothing happens. Where is that link missing between the scientists and policy makers and who is responsible . You say at one point well, i was talking to david who is doctor Anthony Faucis righthand man and he was buried on this issue and i was encouraged to say the same thing i did that it is no ones job and its the scientist job to discover the viruses and say this is what they can do and this is a threat and we are putting [inaudible] at the title of the article in case you missed it and what else can they do . The North Carolina lab went to work on drugs because no one else was doing it even though there primarily virologists and basically it is no ones job to take those warnings and sit down together and say okay, what will be due and now the who effectively did that and he mentioned it a minute ago by putting together a list of the viruses that are most worried about and that did include the viruses like what turned out to be covid in 19 so we cant say we werent warned. They said we should be working on vaccine and we have a roadmap which were working on jobs and we should work on diagnostics and all. Good and lots of hours were put in and on the top scientists in the world came together and agreed on the priorities in his job as a ticket and say you do this cremated this and heres the money. That is what we need. We need some kind of an acting agency and someone whose job it is to take the warnings and act on them, not just put them out there and hope someone blinks. They put together the coalition for innovations which is leading the research on some of the vaccines and the only organization that was funding Coronavirus Vaccine when this all hit and it was from another coronavirus but at least they were funding the work and that was what was going on in one of the things that was set up in the wake of ebola we have an ebola vaccine that works because everybody was scared about ebola possibly being used as a biological weapon a few years ago so a lab in canada went to work on it and was never ready to go to the market because there was money to do it and it took an entire year to get that out there to test it in the field during the bola pandemic of 2014 and it finally got into the field in 2015 and basically you know steffi was set up [inaudible] weve got to do this better and more systematically for more viruses well good, they took that lesson home but that was all that was done and it wasnt really enough because they didnt have a multimillion dollar and want to develop Coronavirus Vaccines and they had the warning and the roadmap and the who said we need the stuff we also need stuff for [inaudible] when i talk to scientist thats when they tend to say they worried about. Got to say is worrying. You mentioned that a few times so tell us why that particularly strikes you . People, basically i was in a meeting and the meeting in vienna that every couple years and we were all talking about the diseases and the sort of thing and i talked to the guys from equal Health Alliance saying we found this interesting coronavirus and that could be the next big pandemic but this was in 2016 and i want to point this out. What keeps you awake and night and they said i dont need them. Okay, usually scientists will say my virus or whatever but theyre all worried about [inaudible] but kills upwards of an upwards i mean 75 of the people who got it in outbreak so its been limited because you catch it directly from what was contaminated and, you know, is moved into Southern India as you probably know starting to spread between people in respiratory droplets and where have we heard this recently . That is scary. It was spreading like ebola does and shared bodily fluids that would be bad enough but respiratory droplets, we all know now is really hard to control and flu spreads that way. Covid19 spreads that way. If this virus were to do that and would not become less legal then yeah, i know scientists who call that civilization ending and i think they are rightparenthesis the thing about this is theirs is very oriented belief and not i wouldve thought there was some scientist out there and i think theyre working there out there they dont have time to read the book but i talked to number assigned is over the word year that they say if something goes pandemic and necessarily has to become wild and i was told that once. That on, straight in the eye, thats okay, if the bird flu which goes 60 of the people and effects ever goes pandemic it will become milder. How do you know that . It just has to in some evolutionary rationale and there are lots of other rationales out there and its not necessarily any virus interest to become milder if it looks to spread from person to person very readily. It is not i think its been there since the 1920s is the latest guest and certainly since the 1980s its been spreading handil and it has it not gotten milder yet . Has that one last mutation that allows it to sprea between people and what it become milder . I donthink we can count on that. That wouldnt necessarily happen in the first place when we did the experent and covid19 and everybodys going on my g, it will turn the world upside down but this is a mild virus a sars headed 10 fertilityate and covid has a 1 so half the people over 60 who got sars died so what if that thing had gone pandemic and we were on the edge of it . If it had gotten loose people were telling me the senior people at the who were telling me at the time look, this thing is here to stay in bombay or manila where we just cant control it and we will never get rid of it but fortunately we got lucky and the who actually let in Effective Campaign on that occasion and we stand to know a contact tracing, quarantine, same purpose for using our covid19 unfortunately this thing only got spread by people with symptoms so it was easy to quarantine people who had it and stop it from spreading and everybody cooperated and everybody played ball and eventually the chinese were open and energetic but it was like this time, first they tried to deny it was there but then when they couldnt anymore they launched an Incredible Campaign to get it under control since they have with covid19. While, when they go to work on something they really go to work on something and they got it under control eventually and so did everybody else and toronto almost let it get away but i speak as a canadian here but yeah, we finally got it back under control two. That is ten times and people dont realize that we are going through an awful lot of disruptions for a virus that isnt anything like as bad as a virus could be. You mentioned the lack of transmission largely before any symptoms arose and how that was for containment and we dont have that here and particularly early on in this pandemic part of the challenge in terms of the containment measures and the extent of miley transmission wasnt known and that confusion lead to difficulty in terms of the efforts i want to impact the idea that you have those issues so another example when you mentioned sars setting off in bombay or another credit city i think back to july when he the first ebola case arrived and everyone came out and it was the worst Case Scenario and Public Health peoples eyes and its this incredibly deadly Infectious Disease among the worlds most densely pop related cities and we counted the structure and then i neared cheery as it did a phenomenal job of tracing, isolating, developing protocols and i think that comes back to full circle to the earlier part of the conversation so one of the things that need to be and what needs to be the thing we can do now to really focus on preventing say even the next fluence of pandemic should strike later this year mac. Interestingly, the nigerians had in place of the structures, medical organization and had to get polio under control and that was still there and it was the polio infrastructure that did it. Right now india is talking about it and still got its flu infrastructure and it kept the info structure in place and its trying to transition that into a general Public Health monitoring and Implementation Agency and i think thats our clue. What we need is we need surveillance and that is my [inaudible] we need surveillance, surveillance, surveillance trade we need to know what is out there and to be on top of it and the reason nigerians were able to get that under control is get that structure for polio in place. The world needs more cats, clearly. I thought i would get that in there. [laughter] what we need is to gather what diseases people have and where the novelties are coming in and thats what we dont have. We really need much, much more work to do that and we have to totally retool, i think, the who to really spearhead an effort to do global surveillance and that some scientists who want to randomly characterize the think there would be an onerous waste of what scientists do. They basically go out to see whats in people developing good diagnostics and going to places that are hotspots of emergent diseases and i understand india will cut down and coal mines and i was latest on announcement on that permit and i think the word bats comes to mind here and they have fruit bats and is anybody talking about going in there and doing regular hightech surveillance of exactly what viruses people there are carrying . We could do that and we have the technology but nobody has ever organized it. Should go in and do that and we can do that in china weve always had a track record of coronavirus is jumping from insects or go to places where people are in contact with species like the various and a few other but just regularly monitor what theyve got and catch things early. That shouldnt be difficult and maybe were not set up to do it but someone needs to do it and i think doing it globally and together is the way forward on that. Preventing those initial from becoming epidemic and pandemic is key and by far the most but we need to think about the response and structure when there are cases of these and one of the really startling things like over 19 is how its blown out of the water these assumptions [inaudible] weve seen how some of the highest Income Countries in the world have failed for various reasons and i think what are your thoughts on bridging the two kind of schools of thoughts in terms of this idea of healthiness and strength and being focused on lower and middle Income Countries when really we need to think more holistically about what pandemic preparedness really is. I love the fact that you take and put together a Rapid Response team that could be in any country in the world 24 hours of an epidemic been announced to help out and they gave me the highest death rate in europe but when it came to its own response it turned out that the top was too did the rain. There needs to be clear plans and people who are not political and they need to be scientific experts and there needs to be a lot of thinking and planning and investment in response at all levels but i think luckily leadership at the top and impact im currently residing in the European Union and camino, countries are pulled in the same direction to begin with they were having trouble doing that too. I think this has taught us where the problems are. Obviously, countries will stand by their independence in many respects and thats a good thing but we need to Work Together because if one country is doing a bad job than the country nextdoor is doing a great job its not going to really help because that huge viral load from the country nextdoor will spill over. We can really only do this if we coordinate what we do in new zealand has done a fantastic job and really helps to be an island and to have extremely enlightened leadership and that suggest its not a factor. But it helps to, you know, not be bordered by people who are not doing as good a job as you are. Everyone should see its in their interest coordinate what they do with other people and to let the scientists take the lead because they tend to agree with each other a lot and we need to do this we need to sit down before it happens and i like who will do that but what our options are and how we will deal with the possibility that what we thought we were going to have to do it might not be quite the right thing but we were prepared to not contain or not prepared to do social distancing because of the flu pandemic. No one thought to beef up our capabilities in tracking and tracing and i think still doesnt have an app and its just been incredibly in a number of major countries and we should also organize that so why not . A lot of viruses that havent use to us in fact even a pandemic flu when its just Getting Started might not spread so fast that the containment is not an option and we could do tracking and tracing and quarantine and all that good stuff early on and even the flu pandemic if that is the way the virus is behaving and so we need agencies that note these responsibilities and have got the top scientific advice as it becomes available to change track as it becomes necessary and anybody who specializes in organizing institutional responses to anything knows that these are the facts you need to continue and consider. Nobody has done that for pandemics. Is there a Pandemic Response agency in any country whether health agencies, Health Ministries or the ranking laboratories that things with these viruses all weigh in and theres the chief scientist who might be a physicist and there is not a Pandemic Response agency in most places and not one sufficiently funded and equipped. Or by the way, people are not virologists or experts at Risk Assessment or Risk Mitigation in the who was starting to rain social scientists to help after it make serious mistakes in some cases and trying to communicate risk to people in west africa during ebola and its starting to take those things on board. When it retooled itself as an Emergency Response agency and had to bring in people from humanitarian Response Community traditionally who only hires mds and start hiring people who did not even have doctorates but who are brilliant at Emergency Response and it was a rough learning curve, im told but Bruce Elliott told me its like teaching a penguin to fly. I dont know if you saw this but then we threw it off a cliff and behold, the thing flu. You can evolve institutionally to deal with this and what you know is coming as long as you bring everybody in and anybody who is likely to be a stakeholder in this has got a safe peanuts. There are changes to be made for bringing organizations that traditionally might be against vaccines or my Natural Science and in the planning stages so they know what the risks are and why this is, you know, in their interest and all i can say is expecting a small elite to do the right kind of planning and everybody to listen to them is probably not going to work and we need to find a way. Just to back up and may be going deep into that thought but we talked about these epidemics and pandemics in the socalled cycle of neglect. Neglecting the response, so how do we break that cycle and come out of this . And the way it shows on board so theyre just driving this multilateral perspectives how do we convince government and philanthropists in the big funders out there that they know what now is how we change our we will [inaudible] lets just have a pandemic trait that should do it. We should put people down and say it could have been worse and our response couldve been a whole lot better and every country but almost everybody could have done a better job and what is seriously take stock of this and lets see where we make mistakes and put money into this and i think where there is money it builds up an establishment and builds up a bunch of people whose jobs it is to do this and we need institutional frameworks and we need networks of experts and we dont need more hierarchies and Winning Networks of experts around the world to be talking to each other and things that come out of the Network Arena complex problem here and you solve complex problems with networks not with hierarchies with one guy at the top telling us what to do. We need a lot of people say their piece and having ways of coming up with Point Solutions to various problems just identifying the problem for a start. Everybody then feels they have a stake. Those are just the general principles that i think anybody in private industry probably starting to become aware of. We need more of that in the public sphere and more of it in the Public Health sphere. As you know, its been neglected by governments ever since we all decided to seated Infectious Diseases in the 70s. We havent and we known for some time this was coming but basically you know, that is nobodys job to deal with this and it has left us people like me waving our arms and journalists and so its not everyones job to do so only but we need to create networks of agencies in Different Countries that talk to all the other agencies from the Different Countries so we set up a kind of Community Globally of people who are used to dealing with this and let go and visit each others laboratories and no other Surveillance Systems work and can swap advice on how to make things work and abdicate for more money for preparedness with governments and i think as a result of this we need more than anything else is that Global Network that sufficiently funded to continue to phase off these problems. It will be some little vocal agency and some highly country who spots the next outbreak. It was probably some doctor in a wuhan hospital doesnt hang on, were getting a lot of pneumonia lately but testing negative for flu and i dont know what it is. And then there was actually a system which would have allowed the doctor to tell the beijing director and the local people told him to turn it off. That kind of system if everyones job and theyve got Something Weird to tell some Central Authority directly so local people who are worried about the Economic Impact that was a good system the chinese setup and i think we should all have that and i think its a shame for local people decided to tell the doctors to disregard it for whatever local political reasons they may have had. Who knows . But if we all have the people whose job it is to monitor these diseases talking to each other, issuing alerts and there is the online boulevard called [inaudible] it so if theres a problem we find out they were among the first to let everyone know they were the first to let everyone know it was ours and there are a lot of things like that but more of that but on an official level where everyone is talking to everybody. I was talking to an economist at the university of toronto who also wrote a book during lockdown about covid who thanks we need to find a way of getting past National Sovereignty as a matter of dealing with disease and he uses an example of the agreement rather than Arms Treaties but interestingly hes thinking the same way and says the pandemics are primarily an information problem. Great idea, i wish i had included that in my book but. [laughter] but they are. Preventing a pandemic is primarily an information problem. We need people talking to people and institutions that can get things done. Once again, i cannot agree more and certainly i hope these are the lessons that we will continue and hope all the World Leaders reader book and these principles are moving forward and its been an immense pleasure to discuss these issues with you today. Thank you for reading the boo book writing the book great i enjoyed reading it. It was great to be here and ill have to think about my next one. [laughter] here on cspan2 the committee caters is next with a look at how phone, broadband and Video Services are made available through independent providers and after that booktv has memoirs from former president barack obama, former senator connie mack and former federal prosecutor sonny houston. You are watching cspan2 your unfiltered view of government. Created by americas Cable Television company as a Public Service and brought to today by your television provider. 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