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ANY sOlies = = arc e=------ g WY qs av ¥Si. ,\e um = tix "er 019, ro uaran 'Goer conom,s Us S ca Cov ¢ Fill ad Corona virus 4 yarmi idemic"?#Virus P: anie Vi~- poils oe ie = tn u reaches Us ' Viral Threat I outk cris isiS Chinese Media Sprea. NCe1 tay S_. usOutbre ear of Se ark iN A "Uiunese Regime Spreads Coronavirus navir \y ANT BEF AE los sures How Bad ian It Get® er iden cn rself from. coronay"' er EDOSSI NE ; ies eget wiRES RPE "cou P= a aie oe Die ws Iv tea xs - pee cS SEN TANGER I > stay ® _ one es as us ~ anand} isu ; aa adem _ ae Aoset Lex WOU wea cl Earlier this year, before we knew the drug worked, the foundation supported an effort to streamline the process of producing molnupiravir in order to bring costs down. Merck is letting generic manufacturers make this simplified formulation, which will make the drug accessible to a lot more people. We also recently committed $120 million to making sure the drug is available in lower-income countries where it will save a lot of lives. I just wish it had come along sooner. The area I see as the biggest disappointment is the inequity of vaccine allocation. This is something I've written about at length and something I'm going to keep talking about any chance I get, because it didn't have to be this way. The world has done an outstanding job manufacturing and distributing billions of doses of vaccine, but the fact that so few people at high risk in low-income countries have received them is unacceptable. It just doesn't make sense that so many low-risk people got vaccinated before we reached everyone who's older or had an underlying medical condition. Moving forward, we need to change how the world allocates doses and find ways to ramp up manufacturing even faster, including by expanding global vaccine-making capacity and helping more countries develop, manufacture, and approve vaccines themselves. The other area where there is huge room for improvement is in finding ways to combat disinformation. As I mentioned, I thought demand for vaccines would be way higher than it has been in places like the United States. It's clear that disinformation (including conspiracy theories that unfortunately involve me) is having a substantial impact on people's willingness to get vaccinated. This is part of a larger trend toward distrust in institutions, and it's one of the issues I'm most worried about, heading into 2022. Declining trust makes it harder to tackle big challenges I've had a lot of people ask me recently if I'm still optimistic about the future. While the answer is yes, being an optimist doesn't mean ignoring problems. I am deeply troubled by one challenge in particular. The pandemic has been a massive test of governance. When the pandemic finally comes to an end, it will be a tribute to the power of global cooperation and innovation. At the same time, this era has shown us how declining trust in public institutions is creating tangible problems and complicating our efforts to respond to challenges. Based on what I've seen over the last