(chuckles): It's great to be on.

Let's, uh, jump straight into the first question

that everybody would want me to ask.

You delivered a TED Talk

where you predicted pretty much what is happening now.

Now, thanks to the world we live in,

that has spouted a bunch of conspiracy theories,

everything from "Bill Gates invented this virus

to prove himself right," or "He knew it was gonna happen,

and that's why he said it."

Was that Ted Talk about this virus,

or was that a hypothetical that has now come true?

Well, I didn't know specifically that it'd be coronavirus

and that it would hit in late 2019.

But the goal of the talk was to encourage governments

to make the investments so we could respond very quickly

and keep the case numbers very, very low.

And so sadly, this is not a case where,

you know, I feel like, "Hey, I told you so,"

-Mm-hmm. -uh... it, because we didn't use that time,

when it was clear as the biggest threat

to kill millions of people,

to have the diagnostics standing by,

to be ready to ramp up a... a vaccine factory.

A few things were done, uh, of some countries.

Our foundation funded some work

that will help with the vaccines now,

will help with the diagnostics.

But, uh, you know,

well, most of what was called for,

particularly in a New England Journal of Medicine article

I did that went into way more specifics

than I could in a short TED Talk,

uh, those things didn't get done,

and so that's why it's taking us a long time

to get our act together, uh, faced with this threat.

Here's a question I have, um, as an individual.

How is it that you as a nongovernment

knew this information and knew that it needed to be act on...

acted on, and governments and organizations

that are specifically tasked with protecting people

from this very thing

either didn't have the information or ignored it?

What-what do you think happened there?

Because I know you interact with governments.

You talk to organizations like the CDC, like the WHO.

What went wrong?

Well, there are lots of individuals,

uh, who were as worried as I was.

You know, people like Dr. Fauci,

who'd been through various epidemics.

And, so, when we had Ebola,

Zika, SARS, MERS,

we were lucky that they didn't transmit very easily.

They weren't, uh, these respiratory viruses

where somebody who's not very symptomatic

and is still walking around can spread the disease,

in some cases to literally dozens of people.

So the respiratory transmission,

particularly because world travel is so intense,

that's where I show the simulation in that speech

and say, "This keeps me up at night,

uh, more than even war,"

which is no small thing.

And yet, in terms of being systematic

about, okay, let's run a simulation

and see how would we reach out to the private sector

for tests or ventilators

and, uh, what kind of quarantine would we do?

You know, as we enter into this,

we haven't practiced at all.

And so you can see it's, you know,

every state is being forced to figure things out on their own,

-and, uh, it's very ad hoc. -Mm-hmm.

It's not like when a war comes

and we've done, you know, 20 simulations

of various types of threats

and we've made sure that the training,

communications, logistics,

all those pieces fall into place very rapidly.

You are in an interesting position

where, in many ways, you are an expert on this topic

because of the work that you now do in philanthropy.

You know, your goal has been to eradicate malaria

across the globe, focusing in Africa.

You work with infectious disease.

You work with experts in and around infectious disease.

When you look at the coronavirus as it stands now...

It's happened. Leaders acted late.

But what do you think needs to be done going forward?

You wrote an interesting op-ed about this,

but what do you think we need to do from the ground up?

From the people to the leaders to the private sector?

Well, the main tools we have right now

are the behavioral change,

the social distancing,

which, uh, often means staying at home most of the time,

and the testing capacity to identify

who in particular needs to get isolated

and then testing their contacts

to make sure that we can catch it so early

that a lot of people who get sick

don't infect anyone else.

Now, you know, so, our foundation is engaged

in projecting, uh, what's going to go on,

the modeling.

Uh, our partner IHME

is, you know, telling each state what they should think about

in terms of ventilators and capacity.

Further on out, the work we're doing now

to find a therapeutic, a drug to reduce the disease,

to cut the deaths down, you know,

we're hopeful, uh, that even in six months,

some of those will have been approved.

Uh, but the ultimate solution,

the only thing that really lets us

go back completely to normal

and feel good about sitting in a stadium

with lots of other people is to create a vaccine

and not just take care of our country

but take that vaccine out

to the global population

and, uh, so that we have vast immunity

and this thing, no matter what,

isn't going to spread in large numbers.

You have a unique vantage point

in that you have been communicating

with various governments around the world

in and around their COVID-19 response,

um, what they plan to do

and what they-they haven't done thus far.

Which countries do you think we should be looking to

for models that work, and can we apply those models

to a larger country like the United States?

So, you know, many people say Italy and Korea,

yes, have their numbers,

but they can't necessarily be applied to America.

Is that true or not?

Or is there a model that does seem to work

and should be followed for everybody?

Well, countries have differences.

You know, uh, South Korea

did get a medium-sized infection,

but then they used testing,

enforced quarantine, contact tracing

and really bent the curve,

uh, even though it looked pretty scary there for a while.

The epidemic in the United States

is more widespread, uh, than it ever got in South Korea.

So we're like the part of China, uh, Hubei province,

where a lot of the cases were in one city, Wuhan.

And the U.S. and China are different.

You know, the lockdowns that we do

won't be as strictly enforced,

but they are very, very important.

The way we do contact tracing

won't be as, uh, invasive

and so won't be quite as perfect.

But it is very good news that China,

uh, although they're maintaining a lot of measures,

they are not seeing a rebound.

They're not seeing cases coming back

even though they are sending people back to the factories,

sending people back to schools.

And, you know, so, thank goodness,

if we're seeing a big rebound there,

uh, the idea you could keep it under control

once you have a large number of cases,

like the U.S. does and many countries in Europe,

then it, you know, would seem almost impossible.

So it can be done.

You know, China ended up

with .01% of their population infected.

You know, our goal is to stay so it's only a few percent

so at least the medical penalty, uh, isn't gigantic

even though the economic penalty will be very large.

When-when you look at that balance

between the economic penalty and, um, the human penalty,

there are some who have argued that the economic penalty

will, over time, equal the human penalty.

Now, you are one of the few people in the world

where you actually have enough money

to tell us about whether or not an economy shifting

in this way or another way is going to cause mass deaths.

But how do you think we should be looking at this?

Because, yes, there is an economy,

and, yes, there is human life,

but where do you think the truth lies?

Well, the, uh...

There isn't a choice where you get to say to people,

"Don't pay attention to this epidemic."

Uh, you know, most people,

uh, they have older relatives.

You know, they're worried about getting sick.

Uh, the idea of a normal economy

is not there as a choice.

You know, about 80% of people

are going to change their activities.

If you get the other 20%

to go along with that nationwide,

then the disease numbers come...

will flatten, hopefully in the next month,

and start to go down,

hopefully in the month after that.

And then when they've gone down a lot,

then, in a tasteful way,

using prioritized testing,

you can start to reopen a lot of things,

like schools and work.

Probably not sports events,

because the chance of mass spread there is-is quite large.

-Mm-hmm. -And so to get back economically,

uh, taking the pain extremely now

and telling, you know, those who wouldn't,

uh, curb their activities,

"No, you must go along with the rest of society

"and not associate in a way

that we have exponential increase in these cases,"

uh, you know, that is the right thing,

even though it's extremely painful.

It's-it's unheard of.

And, you know, there are particular businesses

that, uh, it's catastrophic for.

-Mm-hmm. -That's the only way you get

so you can feel like you can say to the entire population--

ideally in the early summer, if things go well--

yes, now please do resume,

and we are through testing,

making sure that it won't, uh,

spread in some-some very, very big way.

So people will need the confidence

that the system is working

and smart people are making decisions,

and overoptimistic statements actually work against that.

What do you think most people are missing right now?

Because everyone has an opinion.

You know, everyone from my mom

to my friends to people online--

everyone has an opinion on coronavirus,

because we have very few centralized sources

that people trust.

But what do you think people are missing about this virus

and this moment and what we need to be doing as people?

Because we know the basics-- wash your hands,

stay at home, stay away from other people,

um, try to, you know, maintain a world

where people are moving as little as possible--

but-but what do you think we're missing

that-that people might make a mistake