Who is larry brilliant

So, too, are his insights into where the world might be heading. The first years of this century have brought increasing shocks — technological, political, economic, and climatic. Now we are facing mounting concerns about a possible biological crisis: an avian flu pandemic. But what is its probability? What steps can we take to prepare? And what are the broader implications for business and society? Seva Foundation. Skoll Foundation. Close Search.

He also cofounded the Seva Foundation , an NGO whose programs have given sight back to more than five million blind people in two dozen countries. He also cofounded The Well, a progenitor of today's social media platforms.

Earlier in his career, Brilliant was a professor of epidemiology and international health planning at the University of Michigan. More recently, he was chairman of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Committee, which was created by presidential directive of President George W.

He heads a team whose mission is to confront global threats imperiling humanity such as: pandemics, climate change, water, nuclear proliferation and the Middle East conflict. Larry is board certified in preventive medicine and public health and was the founder of The Seva Foundation, an international NGO whose programs have given back sight to more than 3 million blind people in 20 countries. That's an overreaction.

I'm saying that, because it's a probability that we will never reach herd immunity, there will be places in the world and in the animal population that could produce variants that could continually reinfect us. Let's plan for it and put aside enough vaccine, and enough money, so that we can find outbreaks quickly, respond to them just in time with the right vaccine, and keep outbreaks contained.

I'm very optimistic about that. In the Cares Act, there's money to pay people to be vaccinated, to be isolated, to give them food and to give them shelter. I think you'll be able to go to a Broadway show. And I think baseball will happen again, not so much because people are vaccinated, although that's critically important. Point-of-care diagnostics is also part of that.

We've been hearing about those tests for a year now. Where are they? We will have it within a year. You want a positive prediction? That's my prediction. We're going to be testing, tracing, and isolating. I look at these digital notification systems, and I'm optimistic.

I was not a fan of them in the beginning, I thought they were elitist, but now I understand their value. The biggest problem in contact tracing is finding the asymptomatic cases. These systems will find the asymptomatic cases. Most of the data is anonymized. Maybe you're one or two degrees away from somebody who's just tested positive.

It will allow us to find cases that we haven't found. If the system comes into effect, you might get a notice that you have been exposed to a new variant. It will tell you which vaccines clobber the variant and give you an appointment to get vaccinated.

It's so important that you vaccinate the person who is next to get the disease. How realistic is your plan? At the moment, infection numbers are going up, even as states race against each other to open up more quickly. As I read your plan, I ask, what country are you talking about? At least you didn't say, What planet? Other countries have done it. Listen, the whole point of introducing both just-in-time vaccination and digital disease detection is that we don't need much support from politicians to get the disease-detection part.

More than 20 states have already accepted the exposure-notification systems that Apple and Google have created. And we will be able to deliver specialized versions of the vaccine optimized to fight specific strains?