- You have a book that is coming out that speaks

to a situation that we all find ourselves in right now

and that is we are isolated from people

that we know and love, many people are forced

to stay at home either by themselves

or not with the community they're used to.

You write in your book about how society is struggling

with a new disease and that is essentially loneliness.

What are some of the things people can do

to try and maintain their mental health

as well as their physical health?

- I'm so glad you asked, Trevor, because it's important

not just because loneliness makes us feel poorly,

but also because we now understand that chronic loneliness

is actually bad for our health.

It increases our risk for heart disease.

It's associated with a shorter life span.

But there are things that we can do

to ensure that we strengthen social connection.

And as hard as this time is,

I think that we can potentially come out of it

even stronger if we do a few things.

So number one, I think it's important that we spend

at least 15 minutes a day if not more engaged

with the people that we love,

whether that means video conferencing with them,

writing to them, calling them on the phone

so we can hear their voice.

The second is it's really important

that we make that time count.

And that means improving the quality of our time with others

by decreasing the distractions that we experience

during our interactions.

So instead of talking to somebody on the phone

while you're also scrolling through your social media feed

and refreshing your inbox and watching the news on TV,

just try talking to them with your full attention.

One of the greatest gifts that we can give people

is the gift of our full attention.

And finally, it's important also to recognize

that one of the back doors out of loneliness, if you will,

one of the great but hidden solutions to loneliness

is service.

It's by helping others that we actually take the focus off

of ourselves and place it on someone else.

It's how we rebuild a connection to someone

or establish a new one.

And it's also how we remind ourselves

that we have value to give to the world.

Because one of the great prices that we pay

when we're lonely is over time,

we start to buy into the idea that maybe we're lonely

because we're not likable.

Maybe in some way, it's our fault.

Maybe this is evidence of some personality flaw.

And none of that is true.

But when we serve other people, we're reminded

of how good it feels to connect

and that we have something of great value

to bring to them and to others around them.

(upbeat music)

- You delivered a TED Talk

where you predicted pretty much what is happening now.

Now, thanks to the world we live in, that has sprouted

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 I feel like,

hey, I told you so.

Because we didn't use that time when it was clear

is the biggest threat to kill millions of people,

to have the diagnostic standing by,

to be ready to ramp up a vaccine factory.

A few things were done.

Some countries, our Foundation funded some work

that will help with the vaccines now,

will help with the diagnostics,

but 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,

those things didn't get done

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

to get our act together faced with this threat.

- Here's a question I have as an individual.

How is it that you as a non government knew this information

and knew that it needed to be 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 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

who were as worried as I was, 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 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 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 what kind of quarantine would we do

and as we enter into this, we haven't practiced at all.

And so you can see it's every state is being forced

to figure things out on their own.

And it's very ad hoc.

It's not like when a war comes and we've done 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 were one of the first people to come out

and donate a large chunk of money to fighting coronavirus

or helping medical workers get the equipment they need.

I remember the last I read it was yourself and your wife,

Melinda, who had pledged over $100 million.

It seems though that money isn't able to fix this problem.

It seems like governments around the world

are trying everything they can,

but it doesn't seem like it can be fixed.

What are you hoping to achieve in this moment in time?

- Well, if we get the right testing capacity, you can change

by literally millions the number who are infected.

And governments will eventually come up

with lots of money for these things,

but they don't know where to direct it,

they can't move as quickly.

And so because our Foundation

has such deep expertise in infectious diseases,

we've thought about the epidemic, we did fund some things

to be more prepared, like a vaccine effort.

Our early money can accelerate things.

So for example, there's of all the vaccine constructs,

the seven most promising of those, even though we'll end up

picking at most two of them, we're gonna fund factories

for all seven.

And just so that we don't waste time in serially saying,

okay, which vaccine works and then building the factory.

Because to get to the best case that people like myself

and Dr. Fauci are seeing is about 18 months,

we need to do safety and efficacy and build manufacturing.

And they're different for the different constructs.

And so we'll abandon, it'll be a few billion dollars

we'll waste on manufacturing for the constructs

that don't get picked because something else is better.

But a few billion in this situation we're in

where there's trillions of dollars, that's 1,000 times more,

trillions of dollars being lost economically, it is worth it

in normal government procurement processes and understanding

which are the right seven, in a few months,

those may kick in.

But our Foundation, we can get that bootstrapped

and get it going and save months because every month counts.

Things can reopen if we do the right things in the summer,

but it won't be completely normal.

You'll still be very worried.

We may decide masks are important, although right now

they're in short supply for health workers

so people should not go and hoard those,

but the capacity of that can be brought up

so it may be something that like China today

everybody's walking around is wearing one of those.

So we'll have a lot of unusual measures

until we get the world vaccinated,

7 billion people, that's a tall order.

But it is where we need to get to despite a lot of things

in between now and then to minimize the damage.

- You predicted this pandemic almost to a tee

and maybe it was because we were dealing with other things

at the time, we didn't really pay that much attention.

Is there anything else you wanna warn us about now

that we should be looking forward to,

is there anything else that keeps you up at night?

- Well, this is a naturally caused epidemic

and as bad as it is,

it looks if you have reasonable treatment

to have a 1% fatality.

There could be epidemics that are worse than that,

including ones that aren't naturally caused,

that are a form of bioterrorism.

But one thing I feel good about is this is such a big change

to the world that this time it won't be like Ebola,

which was just there in West Africa or Central Africa.

This time, the tens of billions

to have the diagnostics standing by,

the vaccine manufacturing standing by,

this time we will get ready for the next epidemic.

- Well, I hope your words are prophetic once again.

Thank you so much for your time.

Good luck in all of your work and stay healthy out there.

We need you.

(upbeat music)

Right now across America,

it seems like there's a huge divide

and there's a disconnect in understanding whether or not

the federal government should be stepping up

or whether or not states should be going at it alone.

We know that your state has been asking for supplies.

It sounds like your state is not getting the supplies

that it needs, but then there are states like Florida

where they've gotten 100% of what they've asked for

and they are nowhere near close to being in the situation

that your state is in.

Does it feel like there are politics at play with regards

to what relationship a state has with the president?

- Well, all I can say is this, you know,

the fact of the matter is it's on all of us

to remember that the enemy is the virus.

It's not one another.

It's not the federal government versus the states.

My experience is similar to that of a lot

of other governors, Republican and Democratic, frankly,

that we're not getting as much as we hoped to

from the federal government.

And so we've got to supplement that by contracting

with anyone we can buy masks from or test kits from.

And we're ending up bidding against one another

and it's really a destructive way about going

to fix this problem.

A national strategy with a national buying power

that actually ensured everyone had equitable access

to what we need when we need it would be the wisest thing