![]() ![]() I would say that, states are not designed to fight major public health crises. Within the U.S., look, I think- I would venture to say that most governors are taking this seriously, although they are taking different approaches. We have these cultural tensions around our rights and our freedoms and our- and so forth and that puts us in categories with countries like Brazil, like Russia, and it's a- it's too- it's not necessarily clear that there is a cause and effect, but there certainly is a correlation there that appears. Your ability to have a unified message, to listen to scientists, to get everybody, relatively speaking 80-90% of people on board, is just easier. We value a lot of the reasons why we're in the first category, but the countries in the second category have done far better. ![]() ![]() Secondly, if you look around the world and you were to kind of in your head just mentally shuffle countries into individual rights and freedoms and entrepreneurial versus communal and society-oriented- and I'm not making a value judgement between the two. We've got a lot of investment in the private health care system, not so much in the public health system. It's not beyond our grasp and, you know, what's different about Africa and African nations, one is they have experience in public health crises, more so than the private health care system. So, what's the lesson from that? If you knew nothing else, you would probably assume the answer is not extremely high-tech. > Andy Slavitt: Let me point to Africa, 1.3 billion people, to this point, about 35,000 deaths. The question of course is why aren't we doing it. So, if you want me to spin this as a positive success, I don't think it's a big mystery at this point how to avoid more casualties, more losses, more suffering. And I would venture to say that as a global community we understand how to do that. Our ability to avoid infecting one another and getting infected ourselves is our only medicine. Generally speaking, we have we still have holes in our knowledge around what makes people susceptible, how immunity works, and we're completely flummoxed with what this thing does once it gets inside the human body, but that's a fair amount of progress because it helps us understand that, look, as citizens of the world, without a vaccine, we and how we relate to one another in our communication is our medicine. I mean we are a lot smarter than we were nine months ago. > Andy Slavitt: You know, I think in some respects we're doing pretty well at the hard sciences- what I would call the hard sciences- vaccine research, the kind of continual learning process that your publication and others continues to roll. ![]() I think the entire- in some respects, confidence in government to implement big programs was in the balance, and, you know, politically, I think President Obama needed it to work for presidency, but, you know, at the end of the day, just say that you learn a lot about fighting crisis and about how all of these pieces work and come together and can come together. I think we have a lot at stake, you know, millions of people who had never had insurance for the first time were kind of hanging in the balance. But it was an incredibly stressful and exhilarating and important period. I think I was the only one that made the phone call and two days after they announced in a public that I would leading that effort to be the chief firefighter and then they ended it by saying and it will be fixed within five weeks, which was news- which was news to me. It turns out that I probably got tagged to do this by process of elimination. Of course, I assumed that hundreds of people were making that same phone call. I actually called Washington after the website crashed and just offered to help and said, hey, if you need some help, I'm glad to come lend a hand. Look, I, you know, it's funny how that happened. Andy Slavitt: I was fortunate enough to be involved, but it took every one of us. ![]()
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