Hi, I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. In this virtual interview from

TED 2020, the prequel, head of Ted, Chris Anderson, talks with Larry Brilliant. Larry is an epidemiologist

and a TED Prize winner who's about to put into context the severity of our current global

pandemic, but also a way forward.

You'll find out why when it comes to conquering the coronavirus, he says, of course we can do this.

So Chris, who's up first? Well, we have a man who's worried about pandemics, pretty much his whole life.

He played an absolutely key role more than 40 years ago in helping the world get rid of the scourge of small parks.

And in 2006, he came to TED to warn the world of the dire risk of a global pandemic and what we might do about it. So please welcome

me here. Dr. Larry, brilliant. Larry, thank you. So good to see you. Thank you. Nice to see you.

Larry, in that talk, you showed a video clip that was a simulation of what a pandemic might look like.

I would like to play it. This gave me chills.

Let's assume, for example, if the first case occurs in South Asia, it initially goes quite slowly.

You get two or three discrete locations.

Then there'll be secondary outbreaks.

And the disease will spread from country to country so fast that you won't know what hit you.

Within three weeks, it will be everywhere in the world. Now, if we had an undo button and we could go back and isolate it

and grab it when it first started, if we could find it early and we had early detection and early

response, and we could put each one of those viruses in jail, that's the only way to deal

with something like a pandemic.

I mean, Larry, that phrase you mentioned there, early detection, early response, that was a key

theme of that talk. You made us all repeat it several times. Is that still the key to

preventing a pandemic?

...