Eric Topol
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
This led to, as you said, the fastest, but we're talking about 39 days after the very first vaccine, and it's in Ghana with COVAX.
Yeah, what we're talking about, just so everybody knows, 2 billion doses by the end of 2024, 146 countries, 2.7 million lives saved from this effort.
And as you say, 39 days to get it to India, where most of the people in the U.S.
hadn't even gotten into the vaccine startup.
And you already are expanding around the world.
This is just momentous, extraordinary acceleration.
And I think the whole idea, if I recall from the book,
about this, no one is safe until everyone is safe.
This is the vaccinate the world.
People weren't thinking about this.
And then it brings in all the obstacles because you were dealing with
the incredible obstacles of hoarding and nationalism, politics, misinformation.
Tell us about the real, these are serious obstacles.
It's actually kind of amazing how you did this, considering all the things, the forces against this whole COVAX movement.
Yeah, we're going to get into the mRNA problem that you're bringing up, which is serious with the current administration.
But before I do that, framing this, there is two levels of your visionary work here.
One was the fact that people didn't even know it was a pandemic yet.
They didn't acknowledge it.
And the other is, as you mentioned, mumps was the fastest vaccine, four years.
And the average vaccine is at least eight to 10 years.