Getting out of this pandemic and staying out of the next one
[Music]
a mysterious respiratory illness shows
up in our city
and starts spreading through our
hospitals killing one out of every 10
people it infects
we soon realize that we’re not alone the
same thing
is happening in other cities around the
world
now here in toronto a colleague of mine
another infectious disease physician
gets sick with the illness and since
we’re both in the same line of work
i start imagining scenarios where i’m
getting infected
we learn that the outbreak likely
started in an animal market in china
and is caused by a virus the world has
never seen before
and has no immunity to under a
microscope it looks a bit like the sun
so it’s called a coronavirus
now this isn’t the story of covid19
this happened 18 years ago
it’s the story of the first novel
coronavirus outbreak
sars which spread to dozens of countries
around the world
now thankfully my colleagues survived
but other health care workers
died on the front lines
the world had never seen anything like
this before but it was clear
this wouldn’t be the last time the clock
to the next outbreak was already ticking
and we weren’t prepared and after
watching this virus our city
i knew that preparing for the next
outbreak or the next pandemic
that this would be the most important
work i would do in my lifetime
and when you’re trying to confront
something as big as a pandemic
it’s pretty easy to feel small
now i’m sure you felt this way at some
point in your life
there’s a problem you see in the world
and it needs a solution
but it’s big but it’s hard to know where
to begin and hard to know if your
efforts will
make a difference but it’s also
important to remember that
every pandemic in history started
with just one person now there’s a
passage in the talmud that has always
resonated with me as a physician
it says whoever saves a single life
it is considered as if they have saved
the entire world
and the lesson is that when we touch one
person’s life
we have no idea what they might then
bring to the rest of the world
and what it reveals is that our actions
however small and insignificant they may
seem in the moment
can create a series of ripples that
ultimately
reach and impact all of humanity
and it’s a powerful idea that inspired
me to take that first step
so i spent the next 10 years studying
outbreaks and how they spread
in doing so i analyzed billions of data
points on the world’s air travel
which is comprised of this vast network
of arteries that
binds the global community together it
was fascinating
research because it was a bit like
studying the anatomy and physiology of a
global organism
now within this network we’ve learned
that outbreak spread
incredibly fast and that if we want to
stay a step ahead
we’re going to have to move even faster
so as a physician and a scientist
i took a complete leap of faith and
founded a company
called bluedot to translate the
discoveries from my research
into digital technologies that could
literally spread knowledge around the
world faster
than any outbreak and for the past seven
years
bluedot’s eclectic team of doctors and
scientists and engineers
we’ve been building a global early
warning system
for outbreaks now this system
uses artificial intelligence to detect
murmurs
of emerging outbreaks across the planet
by reading and sorting through vast
amounts of online data
in 65 different languages and it does
this every 15 minutes 24 hours a day
it then connects each outbreak we detect
with data on the world’s travel pattern
so we can anticipate
how these outbreaks will spread this
system
generates the intelligence we need to
mobilize timely
effective and better coordinated
responses to outbreaks
so let’s fast forward to the morning of
december 31st
- now as most of us were preparing
to ring in the new decade
our system pushed out an alert of an
unusual cluster
of pneumonia cases in a city called
wuhan in china
a few seconds later it identified the
cities that we should be looking to next
bangkok and tokyo were at the top of
that list
and because our team was particularly
concerned about this event
we then published the first
peer-reviewed scientific study on this
outbreak in early january
so we could share our findings with the
world
now a few days later the first case
outside of china is reported in bangkok
and three days later the second case is
reported in tokyo
now at this moment my heart sinks
because
in order for cases to show up in these
cities
this means that the outbreak in wuhan
has to be
much larger than the official report
suggests
and then we learn that the outbreak
is caused by a coronavirus that the
world has never seen before
and has no immunity to
now as the outbreak continues to spread
i’m increasingly concerned that it’s
just a matter of time before this virus
shows up in our city and it’s a bit of a
surreal time because
i’m seeing people go about their daily
lives
blissfully unaware of the disruption
that is coming
now a few days later after our kids are
in bed
my wife and i go over my life insurance
policies and my will
because i would soon be working at the
hospital
treating patients with infectious
diseases
and this angst that i felt 18 years
earlier
deep in the pit of my stomach during the
sars outbreak
that feeling was now back
so here we are in the midst of the worst
pandemic
in a hundred years and today we all
understand
just how interconnected our world is
but i’m not sure we fully appreciate
just how interdependent
our world is now there’s an aphorism
you’ve likely heard
those who cannot remember the past are
condemned
to repeat it do you remember
the zika outbreak a few years ago
or the ebola outbreak a few years before
that or
the h1n1 flew pandemic a few years
before that
in just the past 10 years the world
health organization has declared six
outbreaks
to be global public health emergencies
now that’s an average of one global
emergency every 20 months
which means if we continue on our
current path
there’s a good chance we will find
ourselves in another dangerous outbreak
during this pandemic or shortly
thereafter so what do so many
of these outbreaks have in common
they started when viruses
normally found in animals made the leap
over to humans
we’re stuck in a cycle and
mother nature’s trying to tell us
something she’s trying to tell us that
our health
our security our prosperity
these things that we value are deeply
intertwined with the health of other
living systems across our planet
when we industrialize agriculture and
consume
billions of livestock every year
we’re creating sparks that could ignite
the next dangerous outbreak
or the next pandemic
when we consume wild animals or when our
actions
or our inactions lead to the disruption
of wildlife ecosystems
we’re opening up a pandora’s box of
viruses that could be far worse
than cobit 19.
now our memory of these past outbreaks
faded quickly but this time
mother nature has hit the pause button
for all of us
she’s forcing us to reflect and
encouraging us
to interact more gracefully with our
planet
now getting ahead of outbreaks has been
my life’s work
but i know that it’s not enough the
amazing people i work with at blue dot
can tell the world
that a storm is coming and can help to
safely
navigate through it but we can’t prevent
that storm from happening
that task belongs to you
now i know it’s easy
to feel small and to be overwhelmed by
the sheer scale of this problem
but remember that every pandemic
starts with just one person and know
that there are things you can do
every day to help keep us out of the
next pandemic
in our household we put this into
practice every time we sit down and have
a meal together
before we eat we say itadakimasu
it’s a phrase i first heard in japan and
it literally translates to
i humbly accept and
we’ve used it as an opportunity to be
more mindful
of how something as simple as the foods
we choose to eat
can have far reaching impacts across the
globe
18 years ago i watched a tiny virus
humble an entire city
and that moment was my calling
today a tiny virus has humbled the
entire planet
and this moment might be your calling
covid19 has captured the attention of
every government
every business and every person on the
planet
which is pretty remarkable that we’re
all focused on this one thing
so we’ve got a rare opportunity to help
the world break free of this destructive
cycle
that we’re currently in and to create a
world
that is better than the one we had
before the pandemic
remember whoever saves a single life
it is considered as if they have saved
the entire
world those words inspired me to take my
first step
i hope that they will inspire you to
take yours