October 24, 2024 • 28 mins
What did the 2014 Ebola outbreak teach us about preventing future pandemics? Our guests this week, Christian Happi and Pardis Sabeti, are world experts on disease surveillance, and have worked together fighting infectious disease in Africa for over a decade. Happi shares a gripping account of how he courageously helped stop Ebola from spreading in Nigeria during the 2014 West Africa outbreak. Then Sabeti explains how a new era of surveillance may help prevent future pandemics.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
In twenty fourteen, a cluster of Ebola cases emerged in
Guinea in West Africa. It was the start of what
would become the largest Ebola outbreak on record. Ebola is
one of the most deadly pathogens on Earth, and it
started to move through densely populated cities at the time.
Two scientists, Christian Happy and Party Sabbetti, were already fighting
(00:27):
other infectious diseases in West Africa, and when Ebola hit,
they threw everything they had at containing the outbreak, even
if it meant putting themselves in danger.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I might get Itbora, but my thinking is is better
for me and a few orders to die and saved
millions of people than be selfish and lefty. Disease spread
and eventually paid a high price by seeing menials of
people dying around me.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Today, on the show the twenty fourteen Ebola Outbreak and
how the lessons we learned from that moment may help
us prevent future pandemics. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is Incubation,
a show about viruses. First today is my conversation with
(01:16):
Christian Happy. I talked with him about his work hunting viruses,
and in particular about his role in fighting the twenty
fourteen Ebola outbreak. Christian grew up in Cameroon and he
decided at an early age to become a scientist. He
was inspired by malaria.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I grew up in the rainforest area and there was
a lot of malaria there. I grew up knowing that
my mother has lost two of my siblings to malaria.
I think the day I met up my mind to
become a scientist was when I was about eight nine
years and I got one of the worst part of
maya that I could ever remember, and my mom took
(01:57):
me to the hospital. I got treated by nouns and
then on the way back, she stopped under a tree
and I was lying against a tree, and I do
remember asking my mom, why was that sick?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Why is it that there's no.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Treatment or cure or anything to prevent this disease from
hitting me this hard? And our response was I have
no idea, And that day I remember telling her and
when I grew up, I will find a cure.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Christian Happy did in fact grow up to study malaria
and other infectious diseases that are common in West Africa.
He got a PhD in molecular parasitology, and then he
did a postdoc at Harvard. He was at Harvard when
he met Pardis Sabbetti, the other scientist will hear from
on today's show. In two thousand and eight, Christian started
(02:52):
working on a disease called loss of fever. That experience
laid the groundwork for the work he would do when
the Ebola outbreak came. Loss of fever, though not as
well known as Ebola, is deadly and it's endemic in
West Africa.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
We find ourselves in a place where whole families have
been wiped out by these virus. I realized that at
that point that hospital is a nogal area. I'm being
told that the place is called like a burier ground.
When you go there, you get infected by this mysterious disease.
There's no care for, it's almost impossible to diagnose, and
then you die. And the first thing I did when
I get to that place is to ask a lot
(03:27):
of questions, and I realized, one, they don't have diagnostics.
Two they need to be trained, and then thirdly we
need to actually make sure that we provide them with
the necessary drugs and medicine in order to actually help
stop this while we're doing the research and guess what,
I leave the place and then come back to Boston,
have a discussion with by this and we started guarding
(03:47):
the resources to go there. And then within a few
months we set up the first molecular diagnostics for last
of fever lab. Molecular diagnostics Labs for lasta fever in Nigeria.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Okay, you and parties, you set up this a lab
at a hospital. It lets the people at the hospital
diagnose loss of fever in patients there. What happens next.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
We cut down the test fatality rate in the hospital
from ninety percent to about twenty three point eight percent.
Why because when they used to have disease outbreak, people
will come from Germany or a team of researcher will
come from Germany, take the sample to Germany and then
they will have the result only about a month three
weeks to a month after.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So there were people who had this potentially fatal disease
in a hospital in rural Nigeria and in order to
test for the disease, people had to take a sample
from the patients from rural Nigeria to Germany and do
the test.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yes to Germany, Yes, and if you take about a
month for them to have the result.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
And would the person be dead by then.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
By the time they get the result, ninety percent of
those people were dead. But the introduction we brought the
diagnostics by the patient bedside, that's really what our very
first huge impact.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And so that's the just a simple, simple idea, which
is like, if somebody might have a deadly disease, let's
figure it out right here, rather than sending a simple
to Germany.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
That's the whole idea, normal senning simple to Germany, doing
it within Africa, using the data within Africa to inform
policy makers in real time so that they can use
the data to respond faster.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So now let's jump forward to twenty fourteen and we
have what's gonna become the biggest recorded ebola outbreak in history.
Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
The Ebola outbreak start in the remote part of Guinea
and at that time, the world is looking away. The
disease is crawling and the disease is killing people. And
the first thing we did at the time is sit
down and think about what we can do to support
the response. Can we activate this This is so system
(06:00):
that we were setting up through this epidemic, and we
identify diagnostics as the weakest link of all of the
things of the chain.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
And the reason is being simple.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
If you cannot diagnose a disease, it's going to be
very difficult for you to contain it because you need
to know what you're trying to contain.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
You need to know who's got the infectious disease, and.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
You need to go who has infection.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And we decided then to start training people in Syralllion
because Syrillleon was neighbor to Guinea, and we train people
in Nigeria because Nigeria being the most popular country in
West Africa. But then the second thing is also the
fact that we were already working in Syraleion on last fear.
So those two countries where we're working, we prepare the
(06:43):
ground by training people on how to diagnose a bowler.
We also go quickly to develop a molecular diagnostics test
for a bowler. We test and do the validation in
the lab. Around May twenty twenty fourteen, we confirmed the
first case.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Of boler in Seria leone spreading out of Guinea.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So the disease is spreading. It has started in Guinea.
Now you've identified it in Sierra Leone, but it hasn't
yet reached Nigeria. Yes, you are in Nigeria. Yeah, and
a passenger arrives at Legos Airport with a suspected case
of ebola, first suspected case in the country. You're there, Yes,
(07:24):
what do you do at that moment? That day?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
On that day, I got a call, a very strange
call around eight four pm and that call is coming
from one of the foremost virologists in Africa. He calls
me and he says there is a suspectic case of
a boler in Legos. There's a lot of argument about
(07:48):
whether it is or it is not. But I've told
the public health authority is that the only person that
will give me a result, and I believe is Christian
because I know his ability.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
They're saying like we were one person in this country
to do the test, and that person is.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
You, right, I mean, the stexts are very high. And
he tells me what do we do? And I told
him that evening, I am driving from a house to
the lab that they should send the sample. We'll meet
in my lab and I'll collect the sample and then
do the testing that night.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And what are you thinking. What do you think when
you get this call?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Of course, it sends you chills in your vertebrate because
this is a suspected case in a country of two
hundred and thirty million people. So if this spread, the
consequences are going to be very disastrous, not only for Nigeria,
for Africa and then the rest of the world.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And this patient collapsed at the airport. The nightmare scenario.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
He collapsed at the airport, He's taken into a hospital,
He's probably been handled by people with are suspicion, and
I am to face it. I was going to deal
with the beasts, which means I may not come back
home alive because we don't have a BIS facility, be.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
A self force like the super safe High Security facility.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
The super safe HAST best safety level.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Four and you don't have that. So you mean by
going to do this test, you might get a bolder.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I might get a border.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
But my thinking is it's better for me and a
few orders to die and save millions of people. If
it is confirmed, then be selfish and left the disease
spread and eventually paid a high price by seeing millions
of people dying around me. So I turn to my
wife and I tell hell, this is a situation. I
want to go do this. If I don't make it
(09:39):
back home, take care of the children, it to be okay.
And she said, I'll pray for you. You'll be back.
I know this is what you've always wanted to do.
You always want to work for the people. You always
want to save lives. I left home with a back,
with a change of clothes and I drive on that
road is a lonely road in Nigeria at time, one
(10:00):
of the most dangerous ord in Nigeria. But I drave
alone in the night and I go to the lab
and then the ambulance come from Legos and meet me.
And I went into the place. We have a bs
A level too. It's a laminar. I mean'd be very
low level of contentment and we prepared zero point five
percent bleach and I will all put up our ppees
(10:21):
and we're in a very tiny small room without air conditioners.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
I'm sweating like a pig into the ppe.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
My eyes and fast side is fuggy because you know
of the heat.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Your safety goggles are fugging.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I'm wearing the safety goggle and that is fugging up
and then I'm really looking through that and then working
in the night very carefully.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
And it's what, you have a blood simple I got
a blood sample, yeah, okay, and ran the first test
and then the first test turned out to be positive.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
That really sends chills in my spine.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I mean, this disease is transmitted through blood, and you're
sitting there working with the blood.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
But my mind is like started running through the number
of people that came across this guy. How many people
are being exposed? You asked yourself many questions. I repeated
the test just for confirmation purpose, and then that test
actually the result is consistent, and were repeated it the
tod time and then in the morning around like six
o'clock the result turns out to be positive.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Then I know that while we got a problem in
the country.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I do court the then Minister of Health and I
told him that, sir, we have a baller in the country.
I remember for about a minute when I told him this,
the line was quiet. And then the question was how
do we organize ourselves the reality that at that time
were really not organized.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
What do you and your colleagues do over the coming days.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
We start saying Okay, when I know that this case
is confirmed, we start thinking about who are the people
that came in contact with this case.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
So people are like going door to door, who are
doing knocking on doors saying you need to come with me.
You were exposed to a bowler.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Basically, that is exactly what im because we form immediately
form an emergency operation center. Were actually create a group
that is tracking down with these individuals, and that group
is led by a general and we're getting people out
of their homes. Once we tuck you down, you know
we're in contact. We're taking them to a solution center.
And this is how we're actually picking the cases much
(12:18):
more earlier before the cases become serious and we start
managing them.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
So this is at this moment when there is this
large outbreak in several countries near Nigeria. You have this
first case in Nigeria. You're trying to do testing and
tracing really aggressively in Nigeria. Does it work?
Speaker 3 (12:39):
It works?
Speaker 1 (12:41):
It works.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
It works because we're able to issolate as many cases
as possible. We're basically also providing the results the test
result in the E real time and sharing these with
public health authorities and guess what Nigeria comes out of
it with only twenty cases and AED debt and in
the country of two and tenty million, that is unprecedented.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
It's unbelievable. But then it shows that it works.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
We showed in the context of our program that you
need two major things to contain an epidemic.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
One is speed, that is.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Your speed of execution, your speed of response, your speed
of characterizing the virus.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
And then secondly is accuracy.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
If you do this with accuracy, you should be able
to contain any epidemic.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Christian Happy is the director of the African Center of
Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemers University in Ede, Nigeria.
So for the next part of the show, we're going
(13:53):
to talk to parties, yep. And I'm just curious to
hear you talk about your friendship with her, your work
with her.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I do call parties my academic betaph I will say
it is a friendship that is transcending, you know, the
RUSSA that we're doing, it will become family.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
For the second half of today's show, I talked with
Pardise Sabbetti. Partise is a computational geneticist. She has an
MD from Harvard and a doctorate from Oxford and she
runs a lab at the Broad Institute. And she says
she and Christian have been through a lot together.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Well, Christian is like, you know, we call each other
our academic better haves. That's what he always says. And
I always calling my writer Di because we've been in
situations where it's like, what are we even in? You know,
We've been in some really banana situations together.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Parties and Christian's work on malaria and loss of fever
and ebola has made them really world experts on how
to prevent outbreaks. Later in the show, I'll talk to
Parties about her book on culture and Epidemics, but we
started by discussing this outbreak surveillance system that she and
Christian have developed to reduce the risk of future pandemics.
(15:05):
It's called Sentinel, and it grew out of the work
that Christian and Parties did on loss of virus and
in bola. Sentinel was created to solve a couple of
deceptively simple problems, including getting fast, accurate tests to the
places where people are getting.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Sick we need detection of pathogens wherever they're occurring, because
these pathogens all look the same and we don't know,
you know, like what's brewing inside of us until it's
pretty late. It's no coincidence that every time we identified
a virus in the world it was when somebody had
access to testing, right, Like, for most of these viruses,
(15:41):
we don't see them, and so LASA viruses won't the
one we started looking at, and everywhere we looked we
found it. Like in twenty twelve, we were saying, we
think Ebola and Lasa are circulating undetected in West Africa,
and if we just set up the capability to test
for it, we'd find it. And we are already doing that.
When Abola appeared in West Africa, it appeared in neighboring
So what exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Were you setting up just just before that twenty fourteen
Ebola outbreak.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
We essentially set up the capacity to train individuals on
the continent to do diagnostic testing and the tools to
share that information and track pathogens. So it was basically
a training program as well as the tools and technology
to detect pathogens around West Africa at the time.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And then how did that play out as the Ebola
outbreak emerged.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Honestly, our timing is kind of wild in that we were,
you know, working and working and working to get the grant.
We got the grant in like December of twenty thirteen,
and we launched the program in March of twenty fourteen.
And right at that moment, like literally the program launched,
we're like meeting with the World Bank leadership, you know there,
(16:48):
and that was when they identified Ebola and Guinea. We're
like just hearing Ebolas here and we're there. The frustration
is deep. It's exciting because at least we're there, but
we haven't even set up anything yet. But we were
able to move so we were able to set up
diagnostics March twenty fourteen. You know, the cases were detected
in Guinea, We had working diagnostics within a matter of
(17:10):
a week or two from there.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
So what did you learn from that experience that led
to this kind of next generation surveillance system that you
are working with.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
So, I mean the idea of Sentinel it is predicated
on having these different technologies. So there's three kinds, Like
there are these point of need tests, things that could
be as sensitive as PC are tests that you know,
you could run in villages at home that could pick
up the pathogen everyone's worried about circulating or ones that
are known to circulate. These other kinds of tests that
(17:45):
you could do a lot more of, and you could
test a lot of different pathogens and a lot of
people and just be like picking up what's making people
sit coming into the hospitals.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
And as I understand it, some of these tests are
using using a technology related to crisper to the genie
editing tool. Tell me about that.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Sure people know about crisper as the technology to edit
genes and how it might be changing gene therapy and
designer babies and all that stuff, But what is crisper.
It was actually originally discovered in nature as a bacteria's
immune system to viruses. It was designed in nature to
detect and to destroy viruses. So that's what it's good at.
(18:22):
It's good at detecting viruses. And there's certain classes of
crisper that have properties that make them really good for
just detection. You could engineer that detection signal to like
light up when something is found in a sample, and
that could be used as a diagnostic. So it's very
very sensitive, very very specific. It makes really good point
(18:43):
of need tests, and it's also so sensitive specific you
could combine it in a multiplex test and do a
lot of testing simultaneously.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Okay, so those are the point of need tests. And
then there's this other category, which is the genetic sequencing
machines that you were able to get into hospitals in
West Africa. What do those allow you to do.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
In the clinics when people come into the clinics or hospitals.
You want to be able to test for like a
patient comes in and you test for twenty things right
at the same time, because it could be any of
those things.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
We don't know a lot of times.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Like in that instance, are you just like what are
all the pathogens in this person's body right now?
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Is that what you're doing in that Yes, that is
the goal of it.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
We're not there like we know everything, but we but
it's getting close to that.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I mean, that's like the dream right then you can
just say, like tell me everything that's there, Like that's
the one that I thought you couldn't do.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, And you're saying you're getting there.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
Well, you were getting there, yeah exactly.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Right now, It's like expensive and time consuming, but like yes,
that would be the kind of holy grail, right, And
so we've been building these like really super exciting tools
that allow people to really in a very user friendly way,
see you know what, all the different pathogens that they're detecting,
where they're occurring, and start to really kind of make
sense of all of that data.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
And has there been an instance more recently when you
were able to use this set of tools to you know,
stam an outbreak?
Speaker 5 (20:10):
Definitely?
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Well, yeah, I mean the funny thing about the kind
of work we do is like when we're successful, you
don't know about it, right, yes, right, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I don't know all of the pandemics. We didn't, Yeah,
because of that's it.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Well, and so we we have lots of great successes.
The fact that when COVID hit, we had working COVID
diagnostics in serri Leone, Senegal and Nigeria our main sentinel
sites before any US hospital, like any that's sort of
like what you don't hear about.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So okay, so that's your work on this, you know,
very small scale, right, genetic screening looking for molecules in patients.
I want to sort of go up many many orders
of magnitude here make a big turn and talk about
your work on thinking about outbreaks at the scale of society,
(20:58):
at the scale of country in the world. You actually
co wrote a book about this side of things. It
came out before the COVID pandemic in twenty eighteen. It
was called Outbreak Culture. Tell me about that.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Yeah, So Outbreak Culture was kind of born from conversations
I had with a journalist, Laras LAHI just kind of
processing what we were in.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
Like, I think I said that, you know, the bowl
outbreak was really like a lot. I mean a lot.
You know.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Obviously now people know the kind of a lot that
pandemics can be from COVID, but it was different because
it was like it was extreme and nobody else seemed
to know about it, about us, but there was this
group of people that were like just deep in it,
and we just saw a societal breakdown, you know. So
I often say that viruses expose and exploit the cracks
in our society. They prey upon us and the division
(21:56):
between us. And at the end of the day, it's
like outbreaks are crucible, right there is this It's just
like something that's insidious. It spreads without you knowing that
weaponizes your neighbor, that suddenly makes your neighbor like a
dangerous threat. And so it's kind of everything is so
much going on, you know, and the lockdowns and all
of it. So it essentially was this realization I was
(22:18):
trying to like process what was going on and why
was this so insane? And one of Nathan Yosback, who
was my team, he had great insights always and he
basically when he was in first came back to Sierra Leone,
he had said something like, it's funny thing is nobody
seems to even care about the virus.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
The virus is like the backdrop, you know, it's what
does that mean? It's so proper between people.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
It's a political battle, you know, and the virus is
the thing around it, but it's actually about who's in charge.
You know.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
There's so much politics, and I think ultimately the most that.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Is wild foreshadowing, right, And like, yeah, I mean you
you wrote about this and the book came out in
what twenty eighteen or something, and like when you talk
about that, when you say, what everybody starts talking about
is politics, like that's like, you know, chills down my spine.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
Yeah, right, I had a lot of people who were like,
thank goodness you wrote this book, because then I just
knew what was happening during COVID.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
There's a really deep human nature thing that happens, right.
I mean, that's the interesting piece of the book. In
a certain way. It's like it's not because some particular
politician is craven or something right as you describe it.
It's just like, this fundamental thing that.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Happened doesn't have to happen by the way. It doesn't.
I thought out the places where people were doing it
the right way. Early in the outbreak. I was like
advising everybody in their mother and you know, kind of
just around talking to people, and I stumbled upon this
like really just interesting place at Colorado Mesa University in
Grand Junction, Colorado.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
They had, you know, a.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Community that was very diverse politically, ideologically, ethnically, and they
were trying to figure out how to work through it.
And they didn't have money. They couldn't just throw money
the problem and test everybody, so they had to figure
out how to be creative. And that's where we brought
our data analytics system to them, and we brought some
of our support to help them be like smart about it.
(24:14):
And the things that they did that were different from
all the other places in the United States was they
tested smartly. They supported testing in the community, not just
like testing themselves. I would always basically liken it to
being in a place where there's wildfires and a shortage
of fire alarms, and you went and you bought like
a thousand of them and putting them in your own
(24:34):
home and nobody around you has one, Like you will
pick up a fire when it gets to your house,
but at that point it's burning to the ground. Wouldn't
it be smarter to set up, you know, put fire
alarms in every one of your neighbor's homes so when
they get it, you get the signal. Right, And that's
basically what we proved in using like an epidemiological model
that yes, actually even randomly testing your neighbors will be
(24:56):
better than testing yourself. That's like one example, right, And
they were thinking that way. We were being creative and
we weren't just in this like isolated box of protect myself,
protect myself.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
So we are at this place now where the whole
idea of pandemics and epidemiology is is weirdly politicized, and
it seems like we would be screwed essentially socially politically
if there were to be another outbreak. What do we
do about that?
Speaker 4 (25:26):
I think that we need to be way less toxic
in the way we talk about it. You know, we
have to basically decharge how we think about these things together,
and we have to use every like mini event as
an opportunity of like building better systems. When RSV is
going through the schools, we can help parents think about
basically just really think about what are the parents' incentives, right,
(25:47):
Parents who don't want their kids vaccinated, they're just scared parents.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
At the end of the day.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
We need to tell them about how to keep their
kids safe. And that's what's important, you know. And we
should be showing value at every point and respecting autonomy
where we can and trying to you know, support that conversations.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Is there anything we didn't talk about, anything else you
want to talk about?
Speaker 4 (26:06):
I guess the thing I just don't express to you
is the joy that we have in Sentinel. You know,
when I think about Sentinel, why it matters to me,
right is as somebody who's a nerd at the heart,
you know, I love math, and I love computer science,
and I love building things, and I love it. But
I also just want to say it's joyous and the
joy that is important responding to outbreaks, Like you will
(26:28):
not respond to an outbreak by walking around with your
head down. You're going to respond to this kind of
existential threat by pure joy. And so I love our
training programs because they are fire. The students are that
we like, you know, would go canoeing on the Charles
River altogether, Like we're creating a network of people who
are friends with each other. So to me, I think
that's like the most powerful part. And what I'm really
(26:50):
proud of is that we're bringing the best technology, but
we're bringing it with like extreme joy and communication and friendship.
That's how we will overcome the next pandemic, you know,
by doing it together.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Thank you for your time. It was great to talk
with you, Kate, to talk with you too. Partis Sabetti
is a professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious
Disease at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is
also an Institute member at the Broad Institute of MIT
and Harvard. Thanks to both my guests today, Christian, Happy
and partis Sabbetti. Next week on the show, Epstein Barr
(27:29):
the first cell for Christ's say Somebody's on his side,
I'll tell You. Incubation is a co production of Pushkin
Industries and Ruby Studio at iHeartMedia. It's produced by Kate
Ferby and Brittany Croman. The show is edited by Lacey Roberts.
It's mastered by Sarah Bruguerer, fact checking by Joseph Friedman.
Our executive producers are Lacey Roberts and Matt Romano. I'm
(27:52):
Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Thanks for listening.
In twenty fourteen, a cluster of Ebola cases emerged in
Guinea in West Africa. It was the start of what
would become the largest Ebola outbreak on record. Ebola is
one of the most deadly pathogens on Earth, and it
started to move through densely populated cities at the time.
Two scientists, Christian Happy and Party Sabbetti, were already fighting
(00:27):
other infectious diseases in West Africa, and when Ebola hit,
they threw everything they had at containing the outbreak, even
if it meant putting themselves in danger.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I might get Itbora, but my thinking is is better
for me and a few orders to die and saved
millions of people than be selfish and lefty. Disease spread
and eventually paid a high price by seeing menials of
people dying around me.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Today, on the show the twenty fourteen Ebola Outbreak and
how the lessons we learned from that moment may help
us prevent future pandemics. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is Incubation,
a show about viruses. First today is my conversation with
(01:16):
Christian Happy. I talked with him about his work hunting viruses,
and in particular about his role in fighting the twenty
fourteen Ebola outbreak. Christian grew up in Cameroon and he
decided at an early age to become a scientist. He
was inspired by malaria.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I grew up in the rainforest area and there was
a lot of malaria there. I grew up knowing that
my mother has lost two of my siblings to malaria.
I think the day I met up my mind to
become a scientist was when I was about eight nine
years and I got one of the worst part of
maya that I could ever remember, and my mom took
(01:57):
me to the hospital. I got treated by nouns and
then on the way back, she stopped under a tree
and I was lying against a tree, and I do
remember asking my mom, why was that sick?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Why is it that there's no.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Treatment or cure or anything to prevent this disease from
hitting me this hard? And our response was I have
no idea, And that day I remember telling her and
when I grew up, I will find a cure.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Christian Happy did in fact grow up to study malaria
and other infectious diseases that are common in West Africa.
He got a PhD in molecular parasitology, and then he
did a postdoc at Harvard. He was at Harvard when
he met Pardis Sabbetti, the other scientist will hear from
on today's show. In two thousand and eight, Christian started
(02:52):
working on a disease called loss of fever. That experience
laid the groundwork for the work he would do when
the Ebola outbreak came. Loss of fever, though not as
well known as Ebola, is deadly and it's endemic in
West Africa.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
We find ourselves in a place where whole families have
been wiped out by these virus. I realized that at
that point that hospital is a nogal area. I'm being
told that the place is called like a burier ground.
When you go there, you get infected by this mysterious disease.
There's no care for, it's almost impossible to diagnose, and
then you die. And the first thing I did when
I get to that place is to ask a lot
(03:27):
of questions, and I realized, one, they don't have diagnostics.
Two they need to be trained, and then thirdly we
need to actually make sure that we provide them with
the necessary drugs and medicine in order to actually help
stop this while we're doing the research and guess what,
I leave the place and then come back to Boston,
have a discussion with by this and we started guarding
(03:47):
the resources to go there. And then within a few
months we set up the first molecular diagnostics for last
of fever lab. Molecular diagnostics Labs for lasta fever in Nigeria.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Okay, you and parties, you set up this a lab
at a hospital. It lets the people at the hospital
diagnose loss of fever in patients there. What happens next.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
We cut down the test fatality rate in the hospital
from ninety percent to about twenty three point eight percent.
Why because when they used to have disease outbreak, people
will come from Germany or a team of researcher will
come from Germany, take the sample to Germany and then
they will have the result only about a month three
weeks to a month after.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So there were people who had this potentially fatal disease
in a hospital in rural Nigeria and in order to
test for the disease, people had to take a sample
from the patients from rural Nigeria to Germany and do
the test.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yes to Germany, Yes, and if you take about a
month for them to have the result.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
And would the person be dead by then.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
By the time they get the result, ninety percent of
those people were dead. But the introduction we brought the
diagnostics by the patient bedside, that's really what our very
first huge impact.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And so that's the just a simple, simple idea, which
is like, if somebody might have a deadly disease, let's
figure it out right here, rather than sending a simple
to Germany.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
That's the whole idea, normal senning simple to Germany, doing
it within Africa, using the data within Africa to inform
policy makers in real time so that they can use
the data to respond faster.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So now let's jump forward to twenty fourteen and we
have what's gonna become the biggest recorded ebola outbreak in history.
Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
The Ebola outbreak start in the remote part of Guinea
and at that time, the world is looking away. The
disease is crawling and the disease is killing people. And
the first thing we did at the time is sit
down and think about what we can do to support
the response. Can we activate this This is so system
(06:00):
that we were setting up through this epidemic, and we
identify diagnostics as the weakest link of all of the
things of the chain.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
And the reason is being simple.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
If you cannot diagnose a disease, it's going to be
very difficult for you to contain it because you need
to know what you're trying to contain.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
You need to know who's got the infectious disease, and.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
You need to go who has infection.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And we decided then to start training people in Syralllion
because Syrillleon was neighbor to Guinea, and we train people
in Nigeria because Nigeria being the most popular country in
West Africa. But then the second thing is also the
fact that we were already working in Syraleion on last fear.
So those two countries where we're working, we prepare the
(06:43):
ground by training people on how to diagnose a bowler.
We also go quickly to develop a molecular diagnostics test
for a bowler. We test and do the validation in
the lab. Around May twenty twenty fourteen, we confirmed the
first case.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Of boler in Seria leone spreading out of Guinea.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So the disease is spreading. It has started in Guinea.
Now you've identified it in Sierra Leone, but it hasn't
yet reached Nigeria. Yes, you are in Nigeria. Yeah, and
a passenger arrives at Legos Airport with a suspected case
of ebola, first suspected case in the country. You're there, Yes,
(07:24):
what do you do at that moment? That day?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
On that day, I got a call, a very strange
call around eight four pm and that call is coming
from one of the foremost virologists in Africa. He calls
me and he says there is a suspectic case of
a boler in Legos. There's a lot of argument about
(07:48):
whether it is or it is not. But I've told
the public health authority is that the only person that
will give me a result, and I believe is Christian
because I know his ability.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
They're saying like we were one person in this country
to do the test, and that person is.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
You, right, I mean, the stexts are very high. And
he tells me what do we do? And I told
him that evening, I am driving from a house to
the lab that they should send the sample. We'll meet
in my lab and I'll collect the sample and then
do the testing that night.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And what are you thinking. What do you think when
you get this call?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Of course, it sends you chills in your vertebrate because
this is a suspected case in a country of two
hundred and thirty million people. So if this spread, the
consequences are going to be very disastrous, not only for Nigeria,
for Africa and then the rest of the world.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And this patient collapsed at the airport. The nightmare scenario.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
He collapsed at the airport, He's taken into a hospital,
He's probably been handled by people with are suspicion, and
I am to face it. I was going to deal
with the beasts, which means I may not come back
home alive because we don't have a BIS facility, be.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
A self force like the super safe High Security facility.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
The super safe HAST best safety level.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Four and you don't have that. So you mean by
going to do this test, you might get a bolder.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I might get a border.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
But my thinking is it's better for me and a
few orders to die and save millions of people. If
it is confirmed, then be selfish and left the disease
spread and eventually paid a high price by seeing millions
of people dying around me. So I turn to my
wife and I tell hell, this is a situation. I
want to go do this. If I don't make it
(09:39):
back home, take care of the children, it to be okay.
And she said, I'll pray for you. You'll be back.
I know this is what you've always wanted to do.
You always want to work for the people. You always
want to save lives. I left home with a back,
with a change of clothes and I drive on that
road is a lonely road in Nigeria at time, one
(10:00):
of the most dangerous ord in Nigeria. But I drave
alone in the night and I go to the lab
and then the ambulance come from Legos and meet me.
And I went into the place. We have a bs
A level too. It's a laminar. I mean'd be very
low level of contentment and we prepared zero point five
percent bleach and I will all put up our ppees
(10:21):
and we're in a very tiny small room without air conditioners.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
I'm sweating like a pig into the ppe.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
My eyes and fast side is fuggy because you know
of the heat.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Your safety goggles are fugging.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I'm wearing the safety goggle and that is fugging up
and then I'm really looking through that and then working
in the night very carefully.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
And it's what, you have a blood simple I got
a blood sample, yeah, okay, and ran the first test
and then the first test turned out to be positive.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
That really sends chills in my spine.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I mean, this disease is transmitted through blood, and you're
sitting there working with the blood.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
But my mind is like started running through the number
of people that came across this guy. How many people
are being exposed? You asked yourself many questions. I repeated
the test just for confirmation purpose, and then that test
actually the result is consistent, and were repeated it the
tod time and then in the morning around like six
o'clock the result turns out to be positive.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Then I know that while we got a problem in
the country.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I do court the then Minister of Health and I
told him that, sir, we have a baller in the country.
I remember for about a minute when I told him this,
the line was quiet. And then the question was how
do we organize ourselves the reality that at that time
were really not organized.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
What do you and your colleagues do over the coming days.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
We start saying Okay, when I know that this case
is confirmed, we start thinking about who are the people
that came in contact with this case.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
So people are like going door to door, who are
doing knocking on doors saying you need to come with me.
You were exposed to a bowler.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Basically, that is exactly what im because we form immediately
form an emergency operation center. Were actually create a group
that is tracking down with these individuals, and that group
is led by a general and we're getting people out
of their homes. Once we tuck you down, you know
we're in contact. We're taking them to a solution center.
And this is how we're actually picking the cases much
(12:18):
more earlier before the cases become serious and we start
managing them.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
So this is at this moment when there is this
large outbreak in several countries near Nigeria. You have this
first case in Nigeria. You're trying to do testing and
tracing really aggressively in Nigeria. Does it work?
Speaker 3 (12:39):
It works?
Speaker 1 (12:41):
It works.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
It works because we're able to issolate as many cases
as possible. We're basically also providing the results the test
result in the E real time and sharing these with
public health authorities and guess what Nigeria comes out of
it with only twenty cases and AED debt and in
the country of two and tenty million, that is unprecedented.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
It's unbelievable. But then it shows that it works.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
We showed in the context of our program that you
need two major things to contain an epidemic.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
One is speed, that is.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Your speed of execution, your speed of response, your speed
of characterizing the virus.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
And then secondly is accuracy.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
If you do this with accuracy, you should be able
to contain any epidemic.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Christian Happy is the director of the African Center of
Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemers University in Ede, Nigeria.
So for the next part of the show, we're going
(13:53):
to talk to parties, yep. And I'm just curious to
hear you talk about your friendship with her, your work
with her.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I do call parties my academic betaph I will say
it is a friendship that is transcending, you know, the
RUSSA that we're doing, it will become family.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
For the second half of today's show, I talked with
Pardise Sabbetti. Partise is a computational geneticist. She has an
MD from Harvard and a doctorate from Oxford and she
runs a lab at the Broad Institute. And she says
she and Christian have been through a lot together.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Well, Christian is like, you know, we call each other
our academic better haves. That's what he always says. And
I always calling my writer Di because we've been in
situations where it's like, what are we even in? You know,
We've been in some really banana situations together.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Parties and Christian's work on malaria and loss of fever
and ebola has made them really world experts on how
to prevent outbreaks. Later in the show, I'll talk to
Parties about her book on culture and Epidemics, but we
started by discussing this outbreak surveillance system that she and
Christian have developed to reduce the risk of future pandemics.
(15:05):
It's called Sentinel, and it grew out of the work
that Christian and Parties did on loss of virus and
in bola. Sentinel was created to solve a couple of
deceptively simple problems, including getting fast, accurate tests to the
places where people are getting.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Sick we need detection of pathogens wherever they're occurring, because
these pathogens all look the same and we don't know,
you know, like what's brewing inside of us until it's
pretty late. It's no coincidence that every time we identified
a virus in the world it was when somebody had
access to testing, right, Like, for most of these viruses,
(15:41):
we don't see them, and so LASA viruses won't the
one we started looking at, and everywhere we looked we
found it. Like in twenty twelve, we were saying, we
think Ebola and Lasa are circulating undetected in West Africa,
and if we just set up the capability to test
for it, we'd find it. And we are already doing that.
When Abola appeared in West Africa, it appeared in neighboring
So what exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Were you setting up just just before that twenty fourteen
Ebola outbreak.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
We essentially set up the capacity to train individuals on
the continent to do diagnostic testing and the tools to
share that information and track pathogens. So it was basically
a training program as well as the tools and technology
to detect pathogens around West Africa at the time.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And then how did that play out as the Ebola
outbreak emerged.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Honestly, our timing is kind of wild in that we were,
you know, working and working and working to get the grant.
We got the grant in like December of twenty thirteen,
and we launched the program in March of twenty fourteen.
And right at that moment, like literally the program launched,
we're like meeting with the World Bank leadership, you know there,
(16:48):
and that was when they identified Ebola and Guinea. We're
like just hearing Ebolas here and we're there. The frustration
is deep. It's exciting because at least we're there, but
we haven't even set up anything yet. But we were
able to move so we were able to set up
diagnostics March twenty fourteen. You know, the cases were detected
in Guinea, We had working diagnostics within a matter of
(17:10):
a week or two from there.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
So what did you learn from that experience that led
to this kind of next generation surveillance system that you
are working with.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
So, I mean the idea of Sentinel it is predicated
on having these different technologies. So there's three kinds, Like
there are these point of need tests, things that could
be as sensitive as PC are tests that you know,
you could run in villages at home that could pick
up the pathogen everyone's worried about circulating or ones that
are known to circulate. These other kinds of tests that
(17:45):
you could do a lot more of, and you could
test a lot of different pathogens and a lot of
people and just be like picking up what's making people
sit coming into the hospitals.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
And as I understand it, some of these tests are
using using a technology related to crisper to the genie
editing tool. Tell me about that.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Sure people know about crisper as the technology to edit
genes and how it might be changing gene therapy and
designer babies and all that stuff, But what is crisper.
It was actually originally discovered in nature as a bacteria's
immune system to viruses. It was designed in nature to
detect and to destroy viruses. So that's what it's good at.
(18:22):
It's good at detecting viruses. And there's certain classes of
crisper that have properties that make them really good for
just detection. You could engineer that detection signal to like
light up when something is found in a sample, and
that could be used as a diagnostic. So it's very
very sensitive, very very specific. It makes really good point
(18:43):
of need tests, and it's also so sensitive specific you
could combine it in a multiplex test and do a
lot of testing simultaneously.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Okay, so those are the point of need tests. And
then there's this other category, which is the genetic sequencing
machines that you were able to get into hospitals in
West Africa. What do those allow you to do.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
In the clinics when people come into the clinics or hospitals.
You want to be able to test for like a
patient comes in and you test for twenty things right
at the same time, because it could be any of
those things.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
We don't know a lot of times.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Like in that instance, are you just like what are
all the pathogens in this person's body right now?
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Is that what you're doing in that Yes, that is
the goal of it.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
We're not there like we know everything, but we but
it's getting close to that.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I mean, that's like the dream right then you can
just say, like tell me everything that's there, Like that's
the one that I thought you couldn't do.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, And you're saying you're getting there.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
Well, you were getting there, yeah exactly.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Right now, It's like expensive and time consuming, but like yes,
that would be the kind of holy grail, right, And
so we've been building these like really super exciting tools
that allow people to really in a very user friendly way,
see you know what, all the different pathogens that they're detecting,
where they're occurring, and start to really kind of make
sense of all of that data.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
And has there been an instance more recently when you
were able to use this set of tools to you know,
stam an outbreak?
Speaker 5 (20:10):
Definitely?
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Well, yeah, I mean the funny thing about the kind
of work we do is like when we're successful, you
don't know about it, right, yes, right, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I don't know all of the pandemics. We didn't, Yeah,
because of that's it.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Well, and so we we have lots of great successes.
The fact that when COVID hit, we had working COVID
diagnostics in serri Leone, Senegal and Nigeria our main sentinel
sites before any US hospital, like any that's sort of
like what you don't hear about.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So okay, so that's your work on this, you know,
very small scale, right, genetic screening looking for molecules in patients.
I want to sort of go up many many orders
of magnitude here make a big turn and talk about
your work on thinking about outbreaks at the scale of society,
(20:58):
at the scale of country in the world. You actually
co wrote a book about this side of things. It
came out before the COVID pandemic in twenty eighteen. It
was called Outbreak Culture. Tell me about that.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Yeah, So Outbreak Culture was kind of born from conversations
I had with a journalist, Laras LAHI just kind of
processing what we were in.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
Like, I think I said that, you know, the bowl
outbreak was really like a lot. I mean a lot.
You know.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Obviously now people know the kind of a lot that
pandemics can be from COVID, but it was different because
it was like it was extreme and nobody else seemed
to know about it, about us, but there was this
group of people that were like just deep in it,
and we just saw a societal breakdown, you know. So
I often say that viruses expose and exploit the cracks
in our society. They prey upon us and the division
(21:56):
between us. And at the end of the day, it's
like outbreaks are crucible, right there is this It's just
like something that's insidious. It spreads without you knowing that
weaponizes your neighbor, that suddenly makes your neighbor like a
dangerous threat. And so it's kind of everything is so
much going on, you know, and the lockdowns and all
of it. So it essentially was this realization I was
(22:18):
trying to like process what was going on and why
was this so insane? And one of Nathan Yosback, who
was my team, he had great insights always and he
basically when he was in first came back to Sierra Leone,
he had said something like, it's funny thing is nobody
seems to even care about the virus.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
The virus is like the backdrop, you know, it's what
does that mean? It's so proper between people.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
It's a political battle, you know, and the virus is
the thing around it, but it's actually about who's in charge.
You know.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
There's so much politics, and I think ultimately the most that.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Is wild foreshadowing, right, And like, yeah, I mean you
you wrote about this and the book came out in
what twenty eighteen or something, and like when you talk
about that, when you say, what everybody starts talking about
is politics, like that's like, you know, chills down my spine.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
Yeah, right, I had a lot of people who were like,
thank goodness you wrote this book, because then I just
knew what was happening during COVID.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
There's a really deep human nature thing that happens, right.
I mean, that's the interesting piece of the book. In
a certain way. It's like it's not because some particular
politician is craven or something right as you describe it.
It's just like, this fundamental thing that.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Happened doesn't have to happen by the way. It doesn't.
I thought out the places where people were doing it
the right way. Early in the outbreak. I was like
advising everybody in their mother and you know, kind of
just around talking to people, and I stumbled upon this
like really just interesting place at Colorado Mesa University in
Grand Junction, Colorado.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
They had, you know, a.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Community that was very diverse politically, ideologically, ethnically, and they
were trying to figure out how to work through it.
And they didn't have money. They couldn't just throw money
the problem and test everybody, so they had to figure
out how to be creative. And that's where we brought
our data analytics system to them, and we brought some
of our support to help them be like smart about it.
(24:14):
And the things that they did that were different from
all the other places in the United States was they
tested smartly. They supported testing in the community, not just
like testing themselves. I would always basically liken it to
being in a place where there's wildfires and a shortage
of fire alarms, and you went and you bought like
a thousand of them and putting them in your own
(24:34):
home and nobody around you has one, Like you will
pick up a fire when it gets to your house,
but at that point it's burning to the ground. Wouldn't
it be smarter to set up, you know, put fire
alarms in every one of your neighbor's homes so when
they get it, you get the signal. Right, And that's
basically what we proved in using like an epidemiological model
that yes, actually even randomly testing your neighbors will be
(24:56):
better than testing yourself. That's like one example, right, And
they were thinking that way. We were being creative and
we weren't just in this like isolated box of protect myself,
protect myself.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
So we are at this place now where the whole
idea of pandemics and epidemiology is is weirdly politicized, and
it seems like we would be screwed essentially socially politically
if there were to be another outbreak. What do we
do about that?
Speaker 4 (25:26):
I think that we need to be way less toxic
in the way we talk about it. You know, we
have to basically decharge how we think about these things together,
and we have to use every like mini event as
an opportunity of like building better systems. When RSV is
going through the schools, we can help parents think about
basically just really think about what are the parents' incentives, right,
(25:47):
Parents who don't want their kids vaccinated, they're just scared parents.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
At the end of the day.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
We need to tell them about how to keep their
kids safe. And that's what's important, you know. And we
should be showing value at every point and respecting autonomy
where we can and trying to you know, support that conversations.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Is there anything we didn't talk about, anything else you
want to talk about?
Speaker 4 (26:06):
I guess the thing I just don't express to you
is the joy that we have in Sentinel. You know,
when I think about Sentinel, why it matters to me,
right is as somebody who's a nerd at the heart,
you know, I love math, and I love computer science,
and I love building things, and I love it. But
I also just want to say it's joyous and the
joy that is important responding to outbreaks, Like you will
(26:28):
not respond to an outbreak by walking around with your
head down. You're going to respond to this kind of
existential threat by pure joy. And so I love our
training programs because they are fire. The students are that
we like, you know, would go canoeing on the Charles
River altogether, Like we're creating a network of people who
are friends with each other. So to me, I think
that's like the most powerful part. And what I'm really
(26:50):
proud of is that we're bringing the best technology, but
we're bringing it with like extreme joy and communication and friendship.
That's how we will overcome the next pandemic, you know,
by doing it together.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Thank you for your time. It was great to talk
with you, Kate, to talk with you too. Partis Sabetti
is a professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious
Disease at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is
also an Institute member at the Broad Institute of MIT
and Harvard. Thanks to both my guests today, Christian, Happy
and partis Sabbetti. Next week on the show, Epstein Barr
(27:29):
the first cell for Christ's say Somebody's on his side,
I'll tell You. Incubation is a co production of Pushkin
Industries and Ruby Studio at iHeartMedia. It's produced by Kate
Ferby and Brittany Croman. The show is edited by Lacey Roberts.
It's mastered by Sarah Bruguerer, fact checking by Joseph Friedman.
Our executive producers are Lacey Roberts and Matt Romano. I'm
(27:52):
Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.