EPIDEMICSWhat Makes a Global Killer
Larry Brilliant, doctor who helped vanquish smallpox, assesses COVID response and warns of rising threats, including lack of trust. “The first lesson is that we live in a cause-and-effect world. Truth matters and communicating that truth in as transparent and honest a way as you possibly can matters” Brilliant says.
In 1970s India, the physician and epidemiologist Larry Brilliant played an important role in efforts that eradicated smallpox caused by the deadliest form of the virus, variola major. Since then, he has continued his public health career, founding a nonprofit to fight blindness, working as a faculty member at the University of Michigan, heading Google’s nonprofit arm, and promoting public health and social justice at every stop.
Brilliant was on the Harvard University campus this week to deliver the Weatherhead Center’s Samuel L. and Elizabeth Jodidi Lecture at Memorial Church. He sat down with the Harvard Gazette’ Alvin Powell to talk about smallpox and the COVID-19 pandemic. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Alvin Powell: Were there lessons from smallpox that we didn’t learn with COVID?
Larry Brilliant:Yes. The first lesson is that we live in a cause-and-effect world. Truth matters and communicating that truth in as transparent and honest a way as you possibly can matters. And involving the community of people who are affected and listening to them — as Paul Farmer talks about in all of his books — matters. You had a president of the United States who lied about hydroxychloroquine and putting light inside the body and wanted to not disclose the number of cases. You had a premier in China — or a local administration; we don’t know — who hid the origin of the disease, who very quickly sanitized the fish market without letting anyone look and find any cases, who forbade Chinese scholars from publishing anything about the origins of COVID and penalized those who did.
You also had a great thing. Operation Warp Speed — with all of its flaws — was phenomenal. The first vaccine worked really well, but the virus has gone through hundreds of thousands of mutations and the vaccine hasn’t. We can’t keep up because you’ve got to get the variant before you can make the vaccine against it, so the variant is always going to be a step ahead of the vaccine. It’s inevitable that the virus will continue. But that doesn’t mean forever messing up the whole world, it just means the virus is still here, like tuberculosis is still here.
