If you withdraw the incredible focus on polio, it will spread back, and in poor countries you'll get something like 100,000 cases a year. So by being very intense and getting the cases down to zero, what you do is... ...
The ideal thing would be to have a 100 percent effective AIDS vaccine. And to have broad usage of that vaccine. That would literally break the epidemic.
We're still missing about a dozen vaccines that will make a huge difference. For adults, we've got HIV and TB are still huge; for kids malaria is still killing a half million kids a year out of that 6 million.... ...
If there was an epidemic, that definitely would make people accept vaccines. I wouldn't hope for that, of course, but if you wanted people to love vaccines, an epidemic would remind them how magical they are.
Bioterrorism is like earthquakes, you should think in order of magnitudes. If you can kill 10 people that's a one, 100 people that's a two... Bioterrorism is the thing that can give you not just sixes, but sevens, eights and... ...
This is not about trade, no one is a stronger supporter of capitalism and trade than I am. This is about sovereignty and whether a country has the right to set its own public health policies.
I believe it’s not only possible to eradicate malaria; I believe it’s necessary. Ultimately, the cost of controlling it endlessly is not sustainable. The only way to stop this disease is to end it forever.
