This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

I'm Alan Alder, and this is Clear and Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

By the time this gets aired, it will be either a terrifically exciting moment or a big failure.

We are riding on the edge close to the sun, but we are working with this amazing group in Colorado called Gary Community Investments

to think about how to bring the school system back.

So, we're going to do it, and here we're on in it to really do it right.

And so, the app will be rolled out as part of that overarching program.

And we have a dashboard that goes with it that allows principles and teachers and state superintendents to kind of see what's going on and to catch outbreaks as soon as they occur.

That's party Sabete. Like many infectious disease experts, she knew something like COVID-19 was coming one day.

But in many ways, she was already ahead of it. Her experience helping tame the Ebola outbreak of 2014 prepared her for the challenges posed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

And today, she's one of the hubs of a sprawling global network of researchers who were working to stop COVID-19 spread.

Parties, this is so great to talk to you now. There couldn't be a more timely moment to talk to you than right now.

And it's great that you could come back and be on our show a second time.

It's absolutely my pleasure. And it's been a delight to get to talk to you in the times of quiet and your voices even more needed.

In times like this. Thank you. That's great. Thank you. Well, your voice and your work couldn't be more needed now.

You're still perfectly prepared because of all the work you did on Ebola. Were you headed the curve a little on this?

Well, nothing is perfect about how we respond to COVID, including, and I can take that internally as well.

Historically, there's always been people talking about infectious diseases. And it's to me, kind of wild, that we aren't more prepared considering that if you look at the history of the human race, it's punctuated always by these massive events that decimate the human population, set back economies and civilizations.

We know this. There was nothing there's nothing prescient about me thinking that infectious diseases were important. And that's why there's a, you know, it's a too small of an army, but as such of vehement vocal army of folks who have been working in infectious disease trying to get more attention to this.

Because at the end of the day, these infectious diseases cause more deaths every year and more economic loss every year than, you know, our modern wars and pandemics have caused more deaths than even our great war.

And, but yet you see the military budget and you see the infectious disease budget and there's no comparison.

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