How much time do you spend in that lab? What is your role in that investigation?
I run the institute. I run a $ 6 billion institute.
When is your best estimate of when the vaccine will be available to us?
Probably by the end of this year, early 2021.
Do you think there will be a vaccine for everyone?
No, I think there will be multiple successful vaccine candidates. There are at least five or more that we are supporting outside the NIH, and other countries are also putting considerable effort into vaccine development. I hope there will be more than one successful vaccine, because we need vaccines not only for the United States, but also for the rest of the world.
Meanwhile, we are still trying to understand all the effects of this new virus. What do you want to learn the most about how this virus works?
Well, I think we are learning a lot about it. I think what we really want to know is what the long-term effects are in people recovering from the coronavirus. Are they really totally normal after that, or do they have long-term negative consequences of becoming infected?
This is a completely new disease. We have only experienced it for a few months. We really don’t know what it means if you really get sick and recover. How are you going to be one, two, three years from now? Only time will give us the answer to that.
As the number of cases, and especially deaths, increases, people should tend to fall asleep. How do you avoid considering that as an abstraction?
I’m not numb from this. This is a very, very serious challenge that we face. I mean, I’m an infectious disease doctor, I’ve been involved in the response, for about 40 years, 39 years ago, with HIV. And then there were the anthrax attacks. And then there are Ebola and Zika. And then there is the pandemic flu. You know, this is the kind of thing you have to keep an eye on for the ball. And you should focus on it like a laser, which is what we do.
Do you think we will have learned our lesson and that after this virus is domesticated we will spend billions every year that it costs to prepare for the next pandemic? Or will it fade from memory?
Well, I hope not, I hope it does not fade from our memory. This is a very, very important lesson that we are going through right now. This is the most formidable pandemic outbreak we have had in over a hundred years. I hope that when we recover from this, which we will do, this will end, for sure, we will remember. And that we do not have a collective memory that disappears after 10 years or so, because we will have another challenge. There will be another outbreak. Another pandemic may not be as bad as this one, or it may be worse than this. But it will happen, because emerging infections occur. They have happened forever.
One more question: are you saving notes for a book?
Yes, I keep notes, but now I’m going to focus on my work instead of a book. But I definitely keep notes, I can tell you that.
I look forward to reading that book. I think you are going to sell more than Mary Trump.
[[[[laughs]Well maybe. Maybe not. But I am not worried about that at the moment. I am focusing on my work.More great WIRED stories
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