Can We Stop the Next Pandemic Before It Starts?
What if we could catch the next pandemic before it starts?
For most of human history, we’ve discovered outbreaks after people start getting sick. But what if we could spot a dangerous virus as it emerges, track it as it spreads and give health workers the information they need to stop it - in real time?
Meet Dr Pardis Sabeti, geneticist, disease hunter and professor at Harvard University. Pardis has spent more than two decades on the frontlines of some of the world’s deadliest outbreaks, from Lassa fever and Ebola in West Africa to COVID-19. Now, through Sentinel, she and her team are trying to build something even more ambitious: an early-warning system for infectious disease that can work anywhere - including communities across Africa where laboratory resources are limited and outbreaks can easily go undetected.
From why many “emerging” diseases may actually be diseases we simply haven’t detected to the devastating consequences of global health funding cuts - this is a conversation about how close we are to changing our relationship with infectious disease, and what it will take to stop the next outbreak before it becomes a pandemic.
In this episode:
- How Pardis and her team tracked Ebola as it spread through West Africa
- Why many “emerging” diseases may already be circulating
- How Sentinel is building an early-warning system for outbreaks
- What Rwanda got right with Marburg
- What global health funding cuts look like on the ground and in the lab
- Why stopping the next pandemic will take more than technology
- Why Pardis still believes we can build a world where outbreaks are stopped before they become pandemics
Timestamps:
00:00 The Disease Hunter
00:42 If Pandemics Keep You Up at Night
02:51 Inside the 2014 Ebola Outbreak
03:38 The More You Test, the More You Find
04:39 Building an Early-Warning System for Disease
07:05 Are Diseases Emerging - or Are We Finally Detecting Them?
08:48 How Did Pardis Know COVID Was Coming?
10:36 Is Another Pandemic Inevitable?
11:43 What Well-Timed Funding Makes Possible
13:52 Why Every Person Matters in a Pandemic
15:26 How Rwanda Stopped Marburg
16:35 Why Ebola Is So Hard to Stop in the DRC
18:26 Midpoint Reflections
19:29 What Global Health Funding Cuts Look Like on the Ground
21:39 Laying Off a Third of Her Team
23:52 “Philanthropic Survivor’s Guilt”
26:59 How Do You Take On a Trillion-Dollar Problem?
29:08 Why Technology Alone Won’t Stop the Next Pandemic
31:57 “I’m a Student of Humanity”
34:03 The Work You Don’t Get to Finish
00:00 The Disease Hunter
00:42 If Pandemics Keep You Up at Night
02:51 Inside the 2014 Ebola Outbreak
03:38 The More You Test, the More You Find
04:39 Building an Early-Warning System for Disease
07:05 Are Diseases Emerging - or Are We Finally Detecting Them?
08:48 How Did Pardis Know COVID Was Coming?
10:36 Is Another Pandemic Inevitable?
11:43 What Well-Timed Funding Makes Possible
13:52 Why Every Person Matters in a Pandemic
15:26 How Rwanda Stopped Marburg
16:35 Why Ebola Is So Hard to Stop in the DRC
18:26 Midpoint Reflections
19:29 What Global Health Funding Cuts Look Like on the Ground
21:39 Laying Off a Third of Her Team
23:52 “Philanthropic Survivor’s Guilt”
26:59 How Do You Take On a Trillion-Dollar Problem?
29:08 Why Technology Alone Won’t Stop the Next Pandemic
31:57 “I’m a Student of Humanity”
34:03 The Work You Don’t Get to Finish
Find Out More:
👉 Explore Sentinel
👉 Learn more about Pardis Sabeti and the Sabeti Lab
👉 Discover The Audacious Project at TED
👉 Read about Sentinel’s $100 million MacArthur 100&Change award
👉 Learn more about Pardis Sabeti and the Sabeti Lab
👉 Discover The Audacious Project at TED
👉 Read about Sentinel’s $100 million MacArthur 100&Change award
About Fix The News:
Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.
Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.
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Production credits:
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose
Produced by Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose
Produced by Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!
This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.
Creators and Guests
Host
Angus Hervey
Editor of Fix The News, recovering political economist, co-host of two podcasts: Fix The News + A Short History Of Saving The World. He is committed to showing that we’re making progress (even if we don't hear much about it) and that, despite the setbacks, humanity is still rising to meet many of the big challenges of our time.
Guest
Pardis Sabeti
Dr Pardis Sabeti is a geneticist, computational biologist and professor at Harvard University whose work uses genomics to track and fight infectious diseases. She co-leads Sentinel, an ambitious effort to build early-warning systems capable of detecting outbreaks before they become epidemics.
