Gates Package — page 901

Unfortunately, not every criticism of me is as thoughtful. Throughout COVID, I've marveled at how I became the target of crazy conspiracy theories. It's not an entirely new sensation--nutty ideas about Microsoft have been around for decades--but the attacks are more intense now. I have never known whether to engage with them or not. If I ignore them, they keep spreading. But does it actually persuade anyone who buys into these ideas if I go out and say, "I am not interested in tracking your movements--I honestly don't care where you're going--and there is no movement tracker in any vaccine"? I've decided that the best way forward is to just keep doing the work and believe that the truth will outlive the lies. Years ago, the eminent epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant coined a memorable phrase: "Outbreaks are inevitable, but pandemics are optional." Diseases have always spread among humans, but they don't have to become global disasters. This book is about how we can build a system that will contain the inevitable outbreaks so they don't become large-scale pandemics. There is, for obvious reasons, more momentum than ever to do this now. Nobody who has been through COVID will ever forget it. Just as World War II changed the way my parents' generation looked at the world, COVID has changed the way we see the world. But we do not have to live in fear of another pandemic. We can have a global health system that provides basic health care to everyone, and that is ready to respond to and contain any emerging diseases. What would it look like in practice? Imagine: Research in the next five years allows us to understand all respiratory pathogens and prepares us to create tools like diagnostics, antiviral drugs, and vaccines at scale far faster than today.