[In January 2020, Christian Happi and Pardis Sabeti presented an Audacious idea] [Sentinel: An early warning system to detect and track the next pandemic] [Here's how it would work ...]
Christian Happi: Sentinel is a proactive early warning system to preempt pandemics.
It is built on three major pillars.
Pardis Sabeti: The first pillar is Detect.
Christian and I have been studying infectious diseases together around the world for two decades.
We have been using genome sequencing.
Reading out the complete genetic information of a microbe, it allows us to identify viruses, even those we've never seen before, track them as they spread and watch for new mutations.
And now with the powerful gene-editing technology CRISPR, we can use this genetic information to rapidly design exquisitely sensitive diagnostic tests for any microbe.
CH: One of these tools is called SHERLOCK.
It can be used to test known viruses on simple paper strips.
It is very inexpensive, and frontline health workers can use SHERLOCK to detect the most common or the most threatening viruses within an hour.
PS: The other tool is CARMEN.
It requires a lab, but it can test for hundreds of viruses simultaneously.
So hospital lab staff can test patient samples for a broad range of viruses within a day.
Our second pillar is Connect.
Connect everyone and share this information across the public health community.
In most outbreaks, hospital staff share case information through paper, Excel -- heather68@example.net.
This makes tracking an outbreak through space and time and coordinating a response extremely difficult.
So we're developing a cloud-based system and mobile applications that connect community health workers, clinicians, public health teams -- everyone -- and allows them to upload data, perform analysis, share insights and coordinate a response and action plan in real time.
CH: Our third pillar is Empower.
An outbreak surveillance system can only succeed if we empower frontline health workers that are already out there taking care of communities.
It requires a lot of training.
Pardis and I are very much aware of that.
We've spent the past 10 years training hundreds of young African scientists and clinicians.
Over the next five years, we will train an additional 1,000 health workers to use Sentinel detection tools and empower them to train their colleagues.
This way, we will improve the original health care system and integrate surveillance into medical practice.
[Since presenting their Audacious plan at TED, the world has changed ...]
Briar Goldberg: So here we are.
We're recording this.
It's April 7th, 2020, and obviously, we are in the throes of this crazy global pandemic caused by this new coronavirus.
So you two have been working together forever, and you really came together pretty aggressively with the Ebola crisis back in 2014.
What does it feel like from your perspective?
CH: Pretty much six years after the Ebola outbreak, we're really facing another crisis, and we still pretty much, like, we never learned from the previous crisis.
And that, really, for me, is heartbreaking.
PS: I think that this pandemic has shown us how unprepared we are everywhere in the world.
Christian and our partners together had diagnostics at our hospital sites in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Senegal in early February.
Most states in the United States didn't have it until far later.
It tells us that we are all in this together, and we are all very much behind the curve.
BG: So, this Sentinel system is amazing, but I know that the question that's on everybody's mind is: How is that playing into the here and now?
PS: You know, we describe Sentinel as a pandemic preemption system, and here we are in a pandemic.
But what's great is that, actually, the same tools you need to preempt a pandemic are the ones that you need to respond to one.
And so all of the technologies that we have laid out -- the point-of-care testing, the multiplex testing, the discovery and tracking of the virus as it's changing, and the overlay of the mobile applications to dashboard -- are all critical.
CH: For us, it is a war.
We are basically committed for 24 hours' turnaround time in order to give results, and that requires for us to work around the clock nonstop.
So it's a pretty challenging moment.
We are away from family.
At least I have the privilege to see family today, and then I'm sure tomorrow I'm heading back in the trenches.
In my lab, we sequenced the first COVID-19 genome on the African continent, and that really was done within 48 hours.
This is revolutionary coming from Africa and then making this information available for the global health community to see what the virus within Africa looks like.
I believe that with technologies and knowledge and then sharing information, we can do better and then we can overcome.
PS: The whole idea of Sentinel is that we all stand guard over each other.
We all watch.
Each one of us is a sentinel.
Each one of us, being able to monitor what is making us sick, can share that with the rest of our community.
And I think that is what I profoundly want, is for us to all stand guard and watch over each other.
[Dr. Pardis Sabeti and Dr. Christian Happi] [Ingenious scientists.
Courageous partners.
Global heroes.]
Namaste.
Salaam.
Shalom.
Sat Sri Akal.
Greetings to all of you from Pakistan.
It is often said that we fear that which we do not know.
And Pakistan, in this particular vein, is very similar.
Because it has provoked, and does provoke, a visceral anxiety in the bellies of many a Western soul, especially when viewed through the monochromatic lens of turbulence and turmoil.
But there are many other dimensions to Pakistan.
And what follows is a stream of images, a series of images captured by some of Pakistan's most dynamic and young photographers, that aims to give you an alternative glimpse, a look inside the hearts and minds of some ordinary Pakistani citizens.
Here are some of the stories they wanted us to share with you.
My name is Abdul Khan.
I come from Peshawar.
I hope that you will be able to see not just my Taliban-like beard, but also the richness and color of my perceptions, aspirations and dreams, as rich and colorful as the satchels that I sell.
My name is Meher and this is my friend Irim.
I hope to become a vet when I grow up so that I can take care of stray cats and dogs who wander around the streets of the village that I live near Gilgit, northern Pakistan.
My name is Kailash.
And I like to enrich lives through technicolored glass.
Madame, would you like some of those orange bangles with the pink polka dots?
My name is Zamin.
And I'm an IDP, an internally displaced person, from Swat.
Do you see me on the other side of this fence?
Do I matter, or really exist for you?
My name is Iman.
I am a fashion model, an up-and-coming model from Lahore.
Do you see me simply smothered in cloth?
Or can you move beyond my veil and see me for who I truly am inside?
My name is Ahmed.
I am an Afghan refugee from the Khyber agency.
I have come from a place of intense darkness.
And that is why I want to illuminate the world.
My name is Papusay.
My heart and drum beat as one.
If religion is the opium of the masses, then for me, music is my one and only ganja.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
And the rising tide of India's spectacular economic growth has lifted over 400 million Indians into a buoyant middle class.
But there are still over 650 million Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, who remain washed up on the shores of poverty.
Therefore as India and Pakistan, as you and I, it behooves us to transcend our differences, to celebrate our diversity, to leverage our common humanity.
Our collective vision at Naya Jeevan, which for many of you, as you all recognize, means "new life" in Urdu and Hindi, is to rejuvenate the lives of millions of low income families by providing them with affordable access to catastrophic health care.
Indeed it is the emerging world's first HMO for the urban working poor.
Why should we do this as Indians and Pakistanis?
We are but two threads cut from the same cloth.
And if our fates are intertwined, then we believe that it is good karma, it is good fortune.
And for many of us, our fortunes do indeed lie at the bottom of the pyramid.
Thank you.
(Applause) Chris Anderson: Fantastic.
Just stay up here.
That was fantastic.
I found that really moving.
You know, we fought hard to get at least a small Pakistani contingent to come.
It felt like it was really important.
They went through a lot to get here.
Would the Pakistanis please just stand up please?
I just really wanted to acknowledge you.
(Applause) Thank you so much.
So a friend of mine was riding in a taxi to the airport the other day, and on the way, she was chatting with the taxi driver, and he said to her, with total sincerity, "I can tell you are a really good person."
And when she told me this story later, she said she couldn't believe how good it made her feel, that it meant a lot to her.
Now that may seem like a strong reaction from my friend to the words of a total stranger, but she's not alone.
I'm a social scientist.
I study the psychology of good people, and research in my field says many of us care deeply about feeling like a good person and being seen as a good person.
Now, your definition of "good person" and your definition of "good person" and maybe the taxi driver's definition of "good person" -- we may not all have the same definition, but within whatever our definition is, that moral identity is important to many of us.
Now, if somebody challenges it, like they question us for a joke we tell, or maybe we say our workforce is homogenous, or a slippery business expense, we go into red-zone defensiveness a lot of the time.
I mean, sometimes we call out all the ways in which we help people from marginalized groups, or we donate to charity, or the hours we volunteer to nonprofits.
We work to protect that good person identity.
It's important to many of us.
But what if I told you this?
What if I told you that our attachment to being good people is getting in the way of us being better people?
What if I told you that our definition of "good person" is so narrow, it's scientifically impossible to meet?
And what if I told you the path to being better people just begins with letting go of being a good person?
Now, let me tell you a little bit about the research about how the human mind works to explain.
The brain relies on shortcuts to do a lot of its work.
That means a lot of the time, your mental processes are taking place outside of your awareness, like in low-battery, low-power mode in the back of your mind.
That's, in fact, the premise of bounded rationality.
Bounded rationality is the Nobel Prize-winning idea that the human mind has limited storage resources, limited processing power, and as a result, it relies on shortcuts to do a lot of its work.
So for example, some scientists estimate that in any given moment ...
Better, better click, right?
There we go.
(Laughter) At any given moment, 11 million pieces of information are coming into your mind.
Eleven million.
And only 40 of them are being processed consciously.
So 11 million, 40.
I mean, has this ever happened to you?
Have you ever had a really busy day at work, and you drive home, and when you get in the door, you realize you don't even remember the drive home, like whether you had green lights or red lights.
You don't even remember.
You were on autopilot.
Or have you ever opened the fridge, looked for the butter, swore there is no butter, and then realized the butter was right in front of you the whole time?
These are the kinds of "whoops" moments that make us giggle, and this is what happens in a brain that can handle 11 million pieces of information coming in with only 40 being processed consciously.
That's the bounded part of bounded rationality.
This work on bounded rationality is what's inspired work I've done with my collaborators Max Bazerman and Mahzarin Banaji, on what we call bounded ethicality.
So it's the same premise as bounded rationality, that we have a human mind that is bounded in some sort of way and relying on shortcuts, and that those shortcuts can sometimes lead us astray.
With bounded rationality, perhaps it affects the cereal we buy in the grocery store, or the product we launch in the boardroom.
With bounded ethicality, the human mind, the same human mind, is making decisions, and here, it's about who to hire next, or what joke to tell or that slippery business decision.
So let me give you an example of bounded heather68@example.net.
Unconscious bias is one place where we see the effects of bounded ethicality.
So unconscious bias refers to associations we have in our mind, the shortcuts your brain is using to organize information, very likely outside of your awareness, not necessarily lining up with your conscious beliefs.
Researchers Nosek, Banaji and Greenwald have looked at data from millions of people, and what they've found is, for example, most white Americans can more quickly and easily associate white people and good things than black people and good things, and most men and women can more quickly and easily associate men and science than women and science.
And these associations don't necessarily line up with what people consciously think.
They may have very egalitarian views, in fact.
So sometimes, that 11 million and that 40 just don't line up.
And here's another example: conflicts of interest.
So we tend to underestimate how much a small gift -- imagine a ballpoint pen or dinner -- how much that small gift can affect our decision making.
We don't realize that our mind is unconsciously lining up evidence to support the point of view of the gift-giver, no matter how hard we're consciously trying to be objective and professional.
We also see bounded ethicality -- despite our attachment to being good people, we still make mistakes, and we make mistakes that sometimes hurt other people, that sometimes promote injustice, despite our best attempts, and we explain away our mistakes rather than learning from them.
Like, for example, when I got an email from a female student in my class saying that a reading I had assigned, a reading I had been assigning for years, was sexist.
Or when I confused two students in my class of the same race -- look nothing alike -- when I confused them for each other more than once, in front of everybody.
These kinds of mistakes send us, send me, into red-zone defensiveness.
They leave us fighting for that good person identity.
But the latest work that I've been doing on bounded ethicality with Mary Kern says that we're not only prone to mistakes -- that tendency towards mistakes depends on how close we are to that red zone.
So most of the time, nobody's challenging our good person identity, and so we're not thinking too much about the ethical implications of our decisions, and our model shows that we're then spiraling towards less and less ethical behavior most of the time.
On the other hand, somebody might challenge our identity, or, upon reflection, we may be challenging it ourselves.
So the ethical implications of our decisions become really salient, and in those cases, we spiral towards more and more good person behavior, or, to be more precise, towards more and more behavior that makes us feel like a good person, which isn't always the same, of course.
The idea with bounded ethicality is that we are perhaps overestimating the importance our inner compass is playing in our ethical decisions.
We perhaps are overestimating how much our self-interest is driving our decisions, and perhaps we don't realize how much our self-view as a good person is affecting our behavior, that in fact, we're working so hard to protect that good person identity, to keep out of that red zone, that we're not actually giving ourselves space to learn from our mistakes and actually be better people.
It's perhaps because we expect it to be easy.
We have this definition of good person that's either-or.
Either you are a good person or you're not.
Either you have integrity or you don't.
Either you are a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or you're not.
And in this either-or definition, there's no room to grow.
And by the way, this is not what we do in most parts of our lives.
Life, if you needed to learn accounting, you would take an accounting class, or if you become a parent, we pick up a book and we read about it.
We talk to experts, we learn from our mistakes, we update our knowledge, we just keep getting better.
But when it comes to being a good person, we think it's something we're just supposed to know, we're just supposed to do, without the benefit of effort or growth.
So what I've been thinking about is what if we were to just forget about being good people, just let it go, and instead, set a higher standard, a higher standard of being a good-ish person?
A good-ish person absolutely still makes mistakes.
As a good-ish person, I'm making them all the time.
But as a good-ish person, I'm trying to learn from them, own them.
I expect them and I go after them.
I understand there are costs to these mistakes.
When it comes to issues like ethics and bias and diversity and inclusion, there are real costs to real people, and I accept that.
As a good-ish person, in fact, I become better at noticing my own mistakes.
I don't wait for people to point them out.
I practice finding them, and as a result ...
Sure, sometimes it can be embarrassing, it can be uncomfortable.
We put ourselves in a vulnerable place, sometimes.
But through all that vulnerability, just like in everything else we've tried to ever get better at, we see progress.
We see growth.
We allow ourselves to get better.
Why wouldn't we give ourselves that?
In every other part of our lives, we give ourselves room to grow -- except in this one, where it matters most.
Thank you.
(Applause)