Tom Frieden

So a long answer to a short question.

Yeah.

So it really felt like the Cassandra moment.

We couldn't convince people to invest.

We couldn't explain how bad it was.

I had gone to West Africa or was going.

And in West Africa, I had to meet with folks and say, you know, we're not going to get aid here in time.

Cases are doubling every three weeks.

And it was really the explanation that there could be a million cases within, by the end of the year, this was May, June, and by January, there would be a million cases.

What's interesting is that did galvanize action.

And Samantha Power talks about that in her book as well, this dramatic table drop in the Situation Room.

But there's more to this modeler.

Martin Meltzer had done something also very interesting.

He had shown us the route to progress.

He showed that if we got to at least 70% safe care and at least 70% safe burial,

cases would drop just as rapidly.

And so part of the C, part of the formula, C, believe, create, is to see the technically rigorous path to progress.

And some people criticized Martin's model because, you know, you probably would have changed if things had kept doubling every three weeks.

But the point was, without change, that would have happened.

But, you know, I'm just going to show, figure.