Consider this unfortunately familiar scenario.
Several months ago a highly infectious, sometimes deadly respiratory virus infected humans for the first time.
It then proliferated faster than public health measures could contain it.
Now the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a pandemic, meaning that it’s spreading worldwide.
The death toll is starting to rise and everyone is asking the same question: when will the pandemic end?
The WHO will likely declare the pandemic over once the infection is mostly contained and rates of transmission drop significantly throughout the world.
But exactly when that happens depends on what global governments choose to do next.
They have three main options: Race through it, Delay and Vaccinate, or Coordinate and Crush.
One is widely considered best, and it may not be the one you think.
In the first, governments and communities do nothing to halt the spread and instead allow people to be exposed as quickly as possible.
Without time to study the virus, doctors know little about how to save their patients, and hospitals reach peak capacity almost immediately.
Somewhere in the range of millions to hundreds of millions of people die, either from the virus or the collapse of health care systems.
Soon the majority of people have been infected and either perished or survived by building up their immune responses.
Around this point herd immunity kicks in, where the virus can no longer find new hosts.
So the pandemic fizzles out a short time after it began.
But there’s another way to create herd immunity without such a high cost of life.
Let’s reset the clock to the moment the WHO declared the pandemic.
This time, governments and communities around the world slow the spread of the virus to give research facilities time to produce a vaccine.
They buy this crucial time through tactics that may include widespread testing to identify carriers, quarantining the infected and people they’ve interacted with, and physical distancing.
Even with these measures in place, the virus slowly spreads, causing up to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Some cities get the outbreak under control and go back to business as usual, only to have a resurgence and return to physical distancing when a new case passes through.
Within the next several years, one or possibly several vaccines become widely, and hopefully freely, available thanks to a worldwide effort.
Once 40-90% of the population has received it— the precise amount varying based on the virus— herd immunity kicks in, and the pandemic fizzles out.
Let’s rewind the clock one more time, to consider the final strategy: Coordinate and Crush.
The idea here is to simultaneously starve the virus, everywhere, through a combination of quarantine, social distancing, and restricting travel.
The critical factor is to synchronize responses.
In a typical pandemic, when one country is peaking, another may be getting its first cases.
Instead of every leader responding to what’s happening in their jurisdiction, here everyone must treat the world as the giant interconnected system it is.
If coordinated properly, this could end a pandemic in just a few months, with low loss of life.
But unless the virus is completely eradicated— which is highly unlikely— there will be risks of it escalating to pandemic levels once again.
And factors like animals carrying and transmitting the virus might undermine our best efforts altogether.
So which strategy is best for this deadly, infectious respiratory virus?
Racing through it is a quick fix, but would be a global catastrophe, and may not work at all if people can be reinfected.
Crushing the virus through Coordination alone is also enticing for its speed, but only reliable with true and nearly impossible global cooperation.
That’s why vaccination, assisted by as much global coordination as possible, is generally considered to be the winner; it’s the slow, steady, and proven option in the race.
Even if the pandemic officially ends before a vaccine is ready, the virus may reappear seasonally, so vaccines will continue to protect people.
And although it may take years to create, disruptions to most people’s lives won’t necessarily last the full duration.
Breakthroughs in treatment and prevention of symptoms can make viruses much less dangerous, and therefore require less extreme containment measures.
Take heart: the pandemic will end.
Its legacy will be long-lasting, but not all bad; the breakthroughs, social services, and systems we develop can be used to the betterment of everyone.
And if we take inspiration from the successes and lessons from the failures, we can keep the next potential pandemic so contained that our children’s children won’t even know its name.
Colfax Avenue, here in Denver, Colorado, was once called the longest, wickedest street in America.
My office is there in the same place -- it's a medical desert.
There are government clinics and hospitals nearby, but they're not enough to handle the poor who live in the area.
By poor, I mean those who are on Medicaid.
Not just for the homeless; 20 percent of this country is on Medicaid.
If your neighbors have a family of four and make less than $33,000 a year, then they can get Medicaid.
But they can't find a doctor to see them.
A study by Merritt Hawkins found that only 20 percent of the family doctors in Denver take any Medicaid patients.
And of those 20 percent, some have caps, like five Medicaid patients a month.
Others make Medicaid patients wait months to be seen, but will see you today, if you have Blue Cross.
This form of classist discrimination is legal and is not just a problem in Denver.
Almost half the family doctors in the country refuse to see Medicaid patients.
Why?
Well, because Medicaid pays less than private insurance and because Medicaid patients are seen as more challenging.
Some show up late for appointments, some don't speak English and some have trouble following instructions.
I thought about this while in medical school.
If I could design a practice that caters to low-income folks instead of avoiding them, then I would have guaranteed customers and very little competition.
(Laughter) So after residency, I opened up shop, doing underserved medicine.
Not as a nonprofit, but as a private practice.
A small business seeing only resettled refugees.
That was six years ago, and since then, we've served 50,000 refugee medical visits.
(Applause) Ninety percent of our patients have Medicaid, and most of the rest, we see for free.
Most doctors say you can't make money on Medicaid, but we're doing it just fine.
How?
Well, if this were real capitalism, then I wouldn't tell you, because you'd become my competition.
(Laughter) But I call this "bleeding-heart" capitalism.
(Laughter) And we need more people doing this, not less, so here's how.
We break down the walls of our medical maze by taking the challenges of Medicaid patients, turning them into opportunities, and pocketing the difference.
The nuts and bolts may seem simple, but they add up.
For example, we have no appointments.
We're walk-in only.
Of course, that's how it works at the emergency room, at urgent cares and at Taco Bell.
(Laughter) But not usually at family doctor's offices.
Why do we do it?
Because Nasra can't call for an appointment.
She has a phone, but she doesn't have phone minutes.
She can't speak English, and she can't navigate a phone tree.
And she can't show up on time for an appointment because she doesn't have a car, she takes the bus, and she takes care of three kids plus her disabled father.
So we have no appointments; she shows up when she wants, but usually waits less than 15 minutes to be seen.
She then spends as much time with us as she needs.
Sometimes that's 40 minutes, usually it's less than five.
She loves this flexibility.
It's how she saw doctors in Somalia.
And I love it, because I don't pay staff to do scheduling, and we have a zero no-show rate and a zero late-show rate.
(Laughter) (Applause) It makes business sense.
Another difference is our office layout.
Our exam rooms open right to the waiting room, our medical providers room their own patients, and our providers stay in one room instead of alternating between rooms.
Cutting steps cuts costs and increases customer satisfaction.
We also hand out free medicines, right from our exam room: over-the-counter ones and some prescription ones, too.
If Nasra's baby is sick, we put a bottle of children's Tylenol or amoxicillin right in her hand.
She can take that baby straight back home instead of stopping at the pharmacy.
I don't know about you, but I get sick just looking at all those choices.
Nasra doesn't stand a chance in there.
We also text patients.
We're open evenings and weekends.
We do home visits.
We've jumped dead car batteries.
(Laughter) With customer satisfaction so high, we've never had to advertise, yet are growing at 25 percent a year.
And we've become real good at working with Medicaid, since it's pretty much the only insurance company we deal with.
Other doctor's offices chase 10 insurance companies just to make ends meet.
That's just draining.
A single-payer system is like monogamy: it just works better.
(Laughter) (Applause) Of course, Medicaid is funded by tax payers like you, so you might be wondering, "How much does this cost the system?"
Well, we're cheaper than the alternatives.
Some of our patients might go to the emergency room, which can cost thousands, just for a simple cold.
Some may stay home and let their problems get worse.
But most would try to make an appointment at a clinic that's part of the system called the Federally Qualified Health Centers.
This is a nationwide network of safety-net clinics that receive twice as much government funding per visit than private doctors like me.
Not only they get more money, but by law, there can only be one in each area.
That means they have a monopoly on special funding for the poor.
And like any monopoly, there's a tendency for cost to go up and quality to go down.
I'm not a government entity; I'm not a nonprofit.
I'm a private practice.
I have a capitalist drive to innovate.
I have to be fast and friendly.
I have to be cost-effective and culturally sensitive.
I have to be tall, dark and handsome.
(Laughter) (Applause) And if I'm not, I'm going out of business.
I can innovate faster than a nonprofit, because I don't need a meeting to move a stapler.
(Applause) Really, none of our innovations are new or unique -- we just put them together in a unique way to help low-income folks while making money.
And then, instead of taking that money home, I put it back into the refugee community as a business expense.
This is Mango House.
My version of a medical home.
In it, we have programs to feed and clothe the poor, an after-school program, English classes, churches, dentist, legal help, mental health and the scout groups.
These programs are run by tenant organizations and amazing staff, but all receive some amount of funding form profits from my clinic.
Some call this social entrepreneurship.
I call it social-service arbitrage.
Exploiting inefficiencies in our health care system to serve the poor.
We're serving 15,000 refugees a year at less cost than where else they would be going.
Of course, there's downsides to doing this as a private business, rather than as a nonprofit or a government entity.
There's taxes and legal exposures.
There's changing Medicaid rates and specialists who don't take Medicaid.
And there's bomb threats.
Notice there's no apostrophes, it's like, "We were going to blow up all you refugees!"
(Laughter) "We were going to blow up all you refugees, but then we went to your English class, instead."
(Laughter) (Applause) Now, you might be thinking, "This guy's a bit different."
(Laughter) Uncommon.
(Laughter) A communal narcissist?
(Laughter) A unicorn, maybe, because if this was so easy, then other doctors would be doing it.
Well, based on Medicaid rates, you can do this in most of the country.
You can be your own boss, help the poor and make good money doing it.
Medical folks, you wrote on your school application essays that you wanted to help those less fortunate.
But then you had your idealism beaten out of you in training.
Your creativity bred out of you.
It doesn't have to be that way.
You can choose underserved medicine as a lifestyle specialty.
Or you can be a specialist who cuts cost in order to see low-income folks.
And for the rest of you, who don't work in health care, what did you write on your applications?
Most of us wanted to save the world, to make a difference.
Maybe you've been successful in your career but are now looking for that meaning?
How can you get there?
I don't just mean giving a few dollars or a few hours; I mean how can you use your expertise to innovate new ways of serving others.
It might be easier than you think.
The only way we're going to bridge the underserved medicine gap is by seeing it as a business opportunity.
The only way we're going to bridge the inequality gap is by recognizing our privileges and using them to help others.
(Applause)