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I want to lead here by talking
a little bit about my credentials
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to bring this up with you,
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because, quite honestly,
-
you really, really should not listen
to any old person with an opinion
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about COVID-19.
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(Laughter)
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So I've been working in global health
for about 20 years,
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and my specific technical specialty
is in health systems
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and what happens when health systems
experience severe shocks.
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I've also worked
in global health journalism;
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I've written about
global health and biosecurity
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for newspapers and web outlets,
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and I published a book a few years back
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about the major global health threats
facing us as a planet.
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I have supported and led
epidemiology efforts
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that range from evaluating
Ebola treatment centers
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to looking at transmission
of tuberculosis in health facilities
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and doing avian influenza preparedness.
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I have a Master's Degree
in International Health.
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I'm not a physician. I'm not a nurse.
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My specialty isn't patient care
or taking care of individual people.
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My specialty is looking at populations
and health systems,
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what happens when diseases
move on the large level.
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If we're ranking sources
of global health expertise
-
on a scale of one to 10,
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one is some random person
ranting on Facebook
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and 10 is the World Health Organization,
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I'd say you can probably put me
at like a seven or an eight.
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So keep that in mind as I talk to you.
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I'll start with the basics here,
because I think that's gotten lost
-
in some of the media
noise around COVID-19.
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So, COVID-19 is a coronavirus.
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Coronaviruses are
a specific subset of virus,
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and they have some unique
characteristics as viruses.
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They use RNA instead of DNA
as their genetic material,
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and they're covered in spikes
on the surface of the virus.
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They use those spikes to invade cells.
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Those spikes are the corona
in coronavirus.
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COVID-19 is known as a novel coronavirus
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because, until December,
we'd only heard of six coronaviruses.
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COVID-19 is the seventh.
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It's new to us.
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It just had its gene sequencing,
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it just got its name.
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That's why it's novel.
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If you remember SARS,
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome,
-
or MERS,
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Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome,
-
those were coronaviruses.
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And they're both called
respiratory syndromes
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because that's what coronaviruses do --
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they go for your lungs.
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They don't make you puke, they don't
make you bleed from the eyeballs,
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they don't make you hemorrhage.
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They head for your lungs.
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COVID-19 is no different.
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It causes a range of respiratory symptoms
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that go from stuff like
a dry cough and a fever
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all the way out to fatal viral pneumonia.
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And that range of symptoms
is one of the reasons
-
it's actually been so hard
to track this outbreak.
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Plenty of people get
COVID-19 but so gently,
-
their symptoms are so mild, they don't
even go to a health care provider.
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They don't register in the system.
-
Children, in particular, have it
very easy with COVID-19,
-
which is something
we should all be grateful for.
-
Coronaviruses are zoonotic,
-
which means that they transmit
from animals to people.
-
Some coronaviruses, like COVID-19,
also transmit person to person.
-
The person-to-person ones
travel faster and travel farther,
-
just liked COVID-19.
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Zoonotic illnesses
are really hard to get rid of,
-
because they have an animal reservoir.
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One example is avian influenza,
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where we can abolish it
in farmed animals, in turkeys, in ducks,
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but it keeps coming back every year
because it's brought to us by wild birds.
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You don't hear a lot about it
-
because avian influenza
doesn't transmit person-to-person,
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but we have outbreaks in poultry farms
every year all over the world.
-
COVID-19 most likely skipped
from animals into people
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at a wild animal market in Wuhan, China.
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Now for the less basic parts.
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This is not the last major outbreak
we're ever going to see.
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There's going to be more outbreaks,
and there's going to be more epidemics.
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That's not a maybe. That's a given.
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And it's a result of the way
that we, as human beings,
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are interacting with our planet.
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Human choices are driving us
into a position
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where we're going to see more outbreaks.
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Part of that is about climate change
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and the way a warming climate
makes the world more hospitable
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to viruses and bacteria.
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But it's also about the way we're pushing
into the last wild spaces on our planet.
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When we burn and plow
the Amazon rain forest
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so that we can have
cheap land for ranching,
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when the last of the African bush
gets converted to farms,
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when wild animals in China
are hunted to extinction,
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human beings come into contact
with wildlife populations
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that they've never come
into contact with before,
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and those populations
have new kinds of diseases:
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bacteria, viruses,
stuff we're not ready for.
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Bats, in particular,
-
have a knack for hosting illnesses
that can infect people,
-
but they're not
the only animals that do it.
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So as long as we keep making
our remote places less remote,
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the outbreaks are going to keep coming.
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We can't stop the outbreaks
with quarantine or travel restrictions.
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That's everybody's first impulse:
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"Let's stop the people from moving.
Let's stop this outbreak from happening."
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But the fact is, it's really hard
to get a good quarantine in place.
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It's really hard
to set up travel restrictions.
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Even the countries that have made
serious investments in public health
-
like the US and South Korea
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can't get that kind of restriction
in place fast enough
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to actually stop an outbreak instantly.
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There's logistical reasons for that,
and there's medical reasons.
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If you look at COVID-19 right now,
-
it seems like it could have a period
where you're infected and show no symptoms
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that's as long as 24 days.
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So people are walking around
with this virus showing no signs.
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They're not going to get quarantined.
Nobody knows they need quarantining.
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There's also some real costs to quarantine
and to travel restrictions.
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Humans are social animals,
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and they resist when you try
to hold them into place
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and when you try to separate them.
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We saw in the Ebola outbreak that as soon
as you put a quarantine in place,
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people start trying to evade it.
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Individual patients, if they know
there's a strict quarantine protocol,
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may not go for health care,
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because they're afraid of the medical
system or they can't afford care
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and they don't want to be separated
from their family and friends.
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Politicians, government officials,
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when they know that they're
going to get quarantined
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if they talk about outbreaks and cases,
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may conceal real information for fear
of triggering a quarantine protocol.
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And, of course, these kinds
of evasions and dishonesty
-
are exactly what makes it so difficult
to track a disease outbreak.
-
We can get better at quarantines
and travel restrictions, and we should,
-
but they're not our only option,
and they're not our best option
-
for dealing with these situations.
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The real way for the long haul
to make outbreaks less serious
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is to build the global health system
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to support core health care functions
in every country in the world
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so that all countries, even poor ones,
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are able to rapidly identify and treat
new infectious diseases as they emerge.
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China's taken a lot of criticism
for its response to COVID-19.
-
But the fact is, what if COVID-19
had emerged in Chad,
-
which has three and a half doctors
for every hundred thousand people?
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What if it had emerged
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
-
which just released its last
Ebola patient from treatment?
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The truth is, countries like this
don't have the resources
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to respond to an infectious disease --
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not to treat people
and not to report on it fast enough
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to help the rest of the world.
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I led an evaluation of Ebola
treatment centers in Sierra Leone,
-
and the fact is that
local doctors in Sierra Leone
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identified the Ebola crisis very quickly,
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first as a dangerous
contagious hemorrhagic virus
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and then as Ebola itself.
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But, having identified it,
they didn't have the resources to respond.
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They didn't have enough doctors,
they didn't have enough hospital beds,
-
and they didn't have enough information
about how to treat Ebola
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or how to implement infection control.
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Eleven doctors died
in Sierra Leone of Ebola.
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The country only had 120
when the crisis started.
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By way of contrast,
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Dallas Baylor Medical Center has
more than a thousand physicians on staff.
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These are the kinds
of inequities that kill people.
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First, they kill the poor people
when the outbreaks start,
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and then they kill people
all over the world
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when the outbreaks spread.
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If we really want to slow down
these outbreaks
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and minimize their impact,
-
we need to make sure
that every country in the world
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has the capacity to identify new diseases,
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treat them
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and report about them so
they can share information.
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COVID-19 is going to be
a huge burden on health systems.
-
COVID-19 has also revealed
some real weaknesses
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in our global health supply chains.
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Just-in-time-ordering, lean systems
are great when things are going well,
-
but in a time of crisis, what it means is
we don't have any reserves.
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If a hospital -- or a country --
-
runs out of face masks
or personal protective equipment,
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there's no big warehouse full of boxes
that we can go to to get more.
-
You have to order more from the supplier,
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you have to wait for them to produce it,
and you have to wait for them to ship it,
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generally, from China.
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That's a time lag at a time
when it's most important to move quickly.
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If we'd been perfectly
prepared for COVID-19,
-
China would have identified
the outbreak faster.
-
They would have been ready
to provide care to infected people
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without having to build new buildings.
-
They would have shared
honest information with citizens
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so that we didn't see these
crazy rumors spreading
-
on social media in China.
-
And they would have shared information
with global health authorities
-
so that they could start reporting
to national health systems
-
and getting ready
for when the virus spread.
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National health systems would then
have been able to stockpile
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the protective equipment they needed
-
and train health care providers
on treatment and infection control.
-
We'd have science-based protocols
for what to do when things happen,
-
like cruise ships have infected patients.
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And we'd have real information
going out to people everywhere,
-
so we wouldn't see embarrassing,
shameful incidents of xenophobia,
-
like Asian-looking people getting attacked
on the street in Philadelphia.
-
But even with all of that in place,
-
we would still have outbreaks.
-
The choices we're making about
how we occupy this planet
-
make that inevitable.
-
As far as we have an expert consensus
on COVID-19, it's this:
-
here in the US, and globally,
-
it's going to get worse
before it gets better.
-
We're seeing cases of human transmission
that aren't from returning travel,
-
that are just happening in the community,
-
and we're seeing people
infected with COVID-19
-
when we don't even know
where the infection came from.
-
Those are signs of an outbreak
that's getting worse,
-
not an outbreak that's under control.
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It's depressing, but it's not surprising.
-
Global health experts,
-
when they talk about
the scenario of new viruses,
-
this is one of the scenarios
that they look at.
-
We all hoped we'd get off easy,
-
but when experts
talk about viral planning,
-
this is the kind of situation and the way
they expect the virus to move.
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I want to close here
with some personal advice.
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Wash your hands.
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Wash your hands a lot.
-
I know you already wash your hands a lot
because you're not disgusting,
-
but wash your hands even more.
-
Set up cues and routines in your life
to get you to wash your hands.
-
Wash your hands every time
you enter and leave a building.
-
Wash your hands when you go into a meeting
and when you come out of a meeting.
-
Get rituals that are based
around handwashing.
-
Sanitize your phone.
-
You touch that phone with your dirty,
unwashed hands all the time.
-
I know you take it
into the bathroom with you.
-
(Laughter)
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So sanitize your phone and consider
not using it as often in public.
-
Maybe TikTok and Instagram
can be home things only.
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Don't touch your face.
-
Don't rub your eyes.
-
Don't bite your fingernails.
-
Don't wipe your nose
on the back of your hand.
-
I mean, don't do that anyway
because, gross.
-
(Laughter)
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Don't wear a face mask.
-
Face masks are for sick people
and health care providers.
-
If you're sick, your face mask
holds in all your coughing and sneezing
-
and protects the people around you,
-
and if you're a health care provider,
-
your face mask is one tool
in a set of tools
-
called personal protective equipment
-
that you're trained to use
so that you can give patient care
-
and not get sick yourself.
-
If you're a regular healthy person
wearing a face mask,
-
it's just making your face sweaty.
-
(Laughter)
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Leave the face masks in stores
-
for the doctors and the nurses
and the sick people.
-
If you think you have
symptoms of COVID-19,
-
stay home, call your doctor for advice.
-
If you're diagnosed with COVID-19,
remember it's generally very mild.
-
And if you're a smoker,
-
right now is the best
possible time to quit smoking.
-
I mean, if you're a smoker,
-
right now is always the best
possible time to quit smoking,
-
but if you're a smoker
and you're worried about COVID-19,
-
I guarantee that quitting
is absolutely the best thing you can do
-
to protect yourself
from the worst impacts of COVID-19.
-
COVID-19 is scary stuff,
-
at a time when pretty much all of our news
feels like scary stuff.
-
And there's a lot of bad-but-appealing
options for dealing with it:
-
panic, xenophobia,
agoraphobia, authoritarianism,
-
oversimplified lies that make us think
that hate and fury and loneliness
-
are the solution to outbreaks.
-
But they're not.
-
They just make us less prepared.
-
There's also a boring
but useful set of options
-
that we can use in response to outbreaks,
-
things like improving health care
here and everywhere;
-
investing in health infrastructure
and disease surveillance
-
so that we know
when the new diseases come;
-
building health systems
all over the world;
-
looking at strengthening our supply chains
so they're ready for emergencies
-
and better education,
-
so we're capable of talking about disease
outbreaks and the mathematics of risk
-
without just blind panic.
-
We need to be guided by equity here,
-
because in this situation, like so many,
-
equity is actually
in our own self-interest.
-
So thank you so much
for listening to me today,
-
and can I be the first one to tell you:
-
wash your hands
when you leave the theater.
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(Applause)