The big worry for me – I would say even a likelihood during my lifetime – is a big epidemic.

So let me ask you the reverse of it.

I'm thinking three or five years into the future beyond just a vaccine.

What are you hopeful for?

What do you hope for?

Well, I hope that this draws the world together.

I mean after World War II, we successfully avoided having another world war.

And it's a phenomenal thing.

We haven't, you know, blown off a nuclear weapon as part of a conflict.

We did that by binding ourselves together through a variety of institutions – including WHO on health.

"Churchill Roosevelt and Stalin dedicated their nations to the foundations for permanent peace through a United Nations organization."

Here – "It felt like I was working in a warzone."

"They all have Covid."

This is a tragic event.

Whatever good comes out of this will in no way make up for the problems that it causes.

The disease got into exponential growth in a lot of Europe and the United States.

And so the toll there is greater than I would have expected.

We're learning about how to do testing well.

A lot of countries got that right and did it very early on.

I think part of it is that the minor epidemics we had really didn't hit the US.

So if you look at the Asian countries that did well, places like Taiwan or South Korea.

Because they were hit with MERS or SARS, they had the playbook.

They opened the playbook, and they went through those steps.

Many of them wrote down, you know, step one, identify all PCR machines; step two, get supplies for PCR machines.

We haven't done that in a reasonable way, today.

We don't really know what's going to happen in developing countries where most of the world population lives.

But, unless there's some magical factor, the likelihood that the vast majority of the deaths will be there.

It's harder for them to socially isolate and they need to get food.

There isn't this ability to do what we've done.

"People are suffering."

"There is no income. Life is so hard."

It should say to us, "OK, this science is important. Let's use it to avoid pandemics and for other things."

The U.S. Congress that allocates resources has been the most generous on HIV funding for the entire world.

You know, it started under a Republican administration.

"And to meet a severe and urgent crisis abroad, tonight I propose the emergency plan for AIDS relief."

The U.S. government has helped the health of the entire world, been a huge part of the reduction in death.

And so I do think what you're seeing in this short term, in terms of how the U.S. is engaging—

"… to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted."

It's not where we'll end up.

I don't see a change in the U.S. Congress and saying, hey, in this case, not only is it humanitarian, it's about strategic relationships and it's about making sure the disease isn't coming back into the US as we participate in global commerce that we benefit immensely from.

Everybody brings to the epidemic their hopes that maybe they had before.

And I've always believed in global cooperation, that human ability to take a much worse situation and craft it into the institutions and the economic growth and innovation that we've had between World War II and now –

I hope that this looks like that.