Bill Gates Gives TED Talk Proposing New Global Team to Quickly Prevent Epidemics

Bill Gates: "Despite what you see in movies, there is no group of experts standing by to prevent this disaster. So we have to create a new team. I believe we should create what I call the GERM team." [It's an acronym standing for Global Epidemic Response & Mobilization.] "This group is full-time — their only priority is pandemic prevention. It's made of a diverse set of specialists, with a lot of different realms of expertise — epidimiologists, data scientists, logistics experts — and it's not just scientific and medical knowledge. They also have to have communication and diplomacy skills. "The cost of this team is significant — it's over a billion a year to support the 3,000 people who would be on this team. And its mission is to stop outbreaks before they become pandemics.... They'd work closely with the national teams, depending on the income level. They'd have more in the lower-income countries... "And a very important thing is that, like firefighters, a GERM team would do drills. When you want to have quick response, when you want to make sure you have all the pieces there, and you can move very quickly, practice is key.That's how you make sure everyone knows what to do...

They would work with countries to strengthen their health systems. You need to know if a lot of people show up with a new kind of cough, and if GERM needs to look into it and say, is this an outbreak? Is there a new disease here? What is the sequence of that?

America has 370,000 full-time firefighters , and 9 million fire hydrants, Gates points out. "And so that type of investment, that type of practice, that type of system is what we need to stop pandemics."

Vaccines can eradicate entire families of viruses, which is incredibly beneficial.

Gates underscored the seriousness of the threat, also pointing out that the Covid pandemic "increased the health inequities between the rich and the poor — survival depended partly on your income, your race, the neighborhood you lived in." But even then, Gates argues, during the last pandemic, "We didn't have the people, the systems, or the tools we need... Now with the right investments, we can have a whole new generation of tools — better diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines." And many of them can even be positioned in advance for future use. But in a lighter moment towards the end, Gates was asked about his prominence in anti-vax misinformation. "Well, it's kind of weird. Uh...." Gates said — drawing a laugh and then applause.

The Gates Foundation is very involved in vaccines, the invention of new vaccines, funding vaccines, and we are very proud that through joint efforts like GAVI, that has saved tens of millions of lives. It is somewhat ironic to have someone say that they are not using vaccines to kill people or make money, or that we started the Pandemic. I want to track the location of individuals, even some strange things. I want to know where everybody is. The audience is laughing. I don't know what to do with that information. Is it possible that there are always crazy people showing up? Who knows? Hopefully as the Pandemic calms down, people will be more rational about vaccines.

Gates also made one very sobering remark:

"When I was on the stage in 2015, I was one of many people who said we weren't ready, and we needed to get ready. We didn't. "The speech actually was watched by a lot of people. But 90% of the views were after it was too late.

"So now I hope the need is clear."