Fareed Zakaria: Ten Lessons For A Post-Pandemic World

uh hello and welcome today's uh virtual  commonwealth club program my name is reed hoffman   partner greylock co-founder of linkedin and your  moderator for today as the as the club continues   to host virtual events they are grateful for the  continued support of their members and donors   we hope you will also consider making a  donation online or text donate to 415-329-4231   it is my great pleasure to introduce fareed  zakaria award-winning host of cnn's fareed   zakaria gps columnist for the washington post and  author of 10 lessons for a post-pandemic world   the covid19 pandemic has dramatically changed  our world in his new book fareed exploits the   devastating political social technological and  economic consequences of the pandemic and what   the future will ultimately hold just as a  reminder we will be taking your questions   so please submit those in the chat box all right  for read let's kick it off um before you before   you start read can i just thank you for doing this  i don't know if the the people who are listening   realize how rare it is to get an opportunity  to have you do something like this you are   one of the busiest people i know you are obviously  world famous for the stuff you've started you're   also one of the most thoughtful people in the in  the in the technology world in in the world and so   um this was sort of my dream choice in terms  of like if there was one person i could get   so i'm so grateful for you doing this and um i  think it it makes it a like a unique occasion   so thank you thank you well pleasure and an honor  and as you know like i'm always like any time you   call me to go on your show i say yes because i  equally love talking with you uh there's so many   different things you open my eyes to and that's  part of the reason why when you called me and   said hey we'll do this it was like five seconds  and yep i can make the calendar work let's do it   um and so let's start with i think one of  the things that your book is a great like   i think the the right philosophical way to  put it and then get into some of the details   is there's this kind of stream of american thought  that uh government should just basically get out   of the way right like it's kind of the it's  everything from small government to let private   you know enterprise do everything and it's  like this broad government get out of the way   and what happens is there's certain kinds of areas  where you suddenly go oh my god that's a terrible   idea right and people kind of say yeah sure okay  justice and police yes we shouldn't have those   should be a collective social or defense against  war but the pandemic is one more of those things   where the difference between a f government a c  government a b government a government is huge   so say a little bit about kind of what um what  your what the pandemic has uh has brought to mind   for what is intelligent government response and  what you the kind of thing that you are that is   part of driving the reason why everyone should  read your book you know it's a great it's a   great question and to me this is really kind of in  some ways a central if not the central uh lesson   because we get obsessed and this is to my mind  a kind of 20th century debate about the size   of the government about how what does this the  percentage of the state as in compared to gdp   and things like that or we get obsessed over  moral issues democracies versus dictatorships   and the interesting thing about about the  pandemic was to watch the country's responses   and you saw it didn't really align with those  issues so singapore which is technically an   authoritarian or the authoritarian state does  very well so does south korea raucous democracy   so does taiwan even more raucous democracy so  does vietnam pretty authoritarian germany you know   liberal democracy so what what the common feature  turns out not to be the size of the government   but could you could you really construct  intelligent government policy which meant did you   have technocrats did you have good institutions  that were insulated were they funded appropriately   did you have a system in place that allowed  government to function easily so for example   the taiwanese told me the biggest problem you look  at america and you say because you don't have any   kind of universal health care system of any kind  and there are 20 kinds you could have you don't   have any capacity to get centralized data you  have no capacity to figure out what's happening   with testing tracing any of that and so what you  realize is the governments that did well were the   governments that had that capacity some of them  doing it much cheaper than the united states some   of them doing it more expensively than the united  states and in our case as you say we have had this   really ever since reagan this 40-year assault on  the federal government so reagan's famous lanyard   the nine most frightening words in the english  language are i'm from the government and i'm here   to help well you know steve bannon comes to comes  in and he says trump's goal the goal of the trump   revolution is to deconstruct the administrative  state well it turns out if you have that attitude   toward government and you've been defunding the  discretionary agencies uh for 30 40 years the   same thing happened in britain it turns out you  don't have a very high functioning state and what   the pandemic did do is it required in a kind of  real stress test a very high functioning state   the us has parts of the state that are pretty  high functioning the federal reserve system   for example the cdc in general is pretty good but  the whole public health system uh is is just very   very poor and i think that what we really need  to do is to use this as a wake-up call and say   we fail a bunch of that is trump there's no  question in my mind by the way and we can get   to that but a bunch of it is this broader failure  of having starved government while playing it with   increasing mandates and unionized rule structures  so the whole thing it's almost like a you know a   collaborative enterprise from left and right to  make sure that government can't function very well   yep and one of the things that i thought was  really good in the book is to say look it isn't   just the question of autocracies which have that  central power worked because some of those work   some of this and democracies which don't don't  work because some of them work and some didn't   work just as the cases you were doing but there  are some pressure points that's interesting when   you get to democracy you get this question of you  know an intelligent response involves for example   widespread testing um uh contact tracing uh  you know a fast-moving quarantine if you get it   and and to some degree that that bureaucratic  structure to spin that up um was the thing   that it was the differential for better responses  and worse responses and one of the things that i   found is really weird when it gets to democracy  especially american one on political variables   all of a sudden those become political battles  right like it's almost like you get this absurd   thing of like you know it's my right not  to wear a mask and you're like well wait   wait like this is this is a crisis that's like  that that's akin to a war we've already we've   already lost more lives than than the the the  soldiers in the vietnam war by by a large order   of magnitude wearing a mask is a relatively  simple thing where does that kind of write so   where do you think the the question of of of kind  of awesome understanding the shifting footing of   government that in these kinds of crises it it  kind of shuffles a little on the kind of civil   liberty within democracy front such a such a great  point and the best way i can illustrate this is   uh so i talked to the vice president of taiwan  taiwan probably handled this better than anyone   24 million people in taiwan seven coveted deaths  and by the way they're right next to china they   got millions of chinese tourists all even during  the early part of the pandemic and why well what   he explained is this is what they did they never  had a lockdown in taiwan what they did was very   early on they acted early and aggressively but  most importantly intelligently exactly along the   lines you were describing so testing tracing  and then quarantine and the quarantine was   basically mandatory you know you had to quarantine  yourself for 14 days you got a phone they called   you three times a day if you didn't pick up the  phone you had broken the quarantine in total they   quarantined over the course of a few months 250  000 people that is one percent of the population   and their argument is we sacrificed the freedom of  100 of one percent of the population for 14 days   so that the other 99 of the population could go  about their lives the kids could go to school the   economy could keep humming taiwan has had the  lowest drop in gdp of any country in the world   and it highlights your point perfectly right  which is they made a very rational trade-off   between a small infringement on liberty  temporarily for a small tiny number of people   in return for the general welfare  of the whole i think our problem is   we don't even think these things through we can't  even have a rational conversation so as you said   you know the issue of the mass wearing first of  all it's not your right to infect other people   secondly when other people get infected we all  have to pay for it so it's a little bit like   we're back to that whole seatbelt discussion  you know the the the there is a sort of idea   of individual liberty at the core of some of  the opposition to this that forgets that we   are paying collectively for all the healthcare  costs associated with all this and by the way   all the healthcare costs associated with the  massive bailouts i mean we're going to spend 10   trillion dollars when this is all over right and  that's all of us paying so put on your damn mask   yes exactly it's like this isn't politics it's  just public health and an ability to get back to   work right and so uh you know this is this is uh  some of the things that what i was thinking about   because the next question i'm gonna go to is what  do you think the tech industry should be doing   you know one of the things that um i had kicked  around and there's several different versions   tech industry there's obviously social media and  what's going on with the spreading information   we'll cover that in a moment but also like i was  thinking look should we just kind of massively   spin up ppe should we give everyone like a plastic  bubble you know to kind of put on their head you   know um but i think one of the reasons why the  tech industry was in some in this vector of slower   was because um like like wanting the moral  mandate like you know you're looking for you   know this is a federal problem it's a it's  it's a it's a national disaster it needs to   be done by the fed the states can't really  do it they tried but they can't really do it   is there anything that you think the tech industry  and kind of gearing up for the next pandemic   should do now and be ready for in the next  pandemic you know it's a great question because   i thought about that at the start because there  is this weird this uh you know kind of uh this   juncture we've got the best technology in the  world we've got the best tech companies in the   world we invented all the software the phones that  everyone is using the guy who i talked about the   taiwan vice president who ran their response was  trained at johns hopkins you know it's american   ideas american technology so why are we not able  to bring that to bear and i played around and you   and i both are friends with eric schmidt and he  and i talked a lot about are there ways that you   could use the technology to help in the contact  racing the testing and i came to the conclusion   that while there could be ancillary uh benefits  the truth is this is uniquely a governmental   function so give you a sense that the singapore  guys are the most tech savvy as you know uh in the   world they they had these contact tracing apps you  could use and then they would sort of try to look   at your phone and figure out where you've been in  contact but the truth is you got to talk to people   because the phone can't figure out whether you  went to a coffee shop and had a cup of coffee you   know by yourself or alone or did you meet a friend  did you take put your mask on did you keep it off   what they found was old-fashioned detective  work was a the most crucial piece b you need   the mandate of government these are not things  even in a singapore that you can do by just   secretly ferreting out data as you know  you know people now think that phones are   just like magical super computers that can read  your mind to which i always say then how come   how come the ads i keep seeing are for stuff  that i bought two weeks ago like they're still   not that good right and they're still you're  getting their way around but more importantly   this is a governmental function it's very hard for  me to see how i mean the tech people can because   they're rich and generous they should obviously  step up to the plate in those ways but what you're   asking is is the technology going to be helpful  and i think that there are places where it can   be helpful but the core issue is do we have a  national will and does the federal government have   the energy and the determination to do this and  let me give you an example of what i mean by this   the president of the united states gets cobit  in a super spreader event is which is exactly   the kind of event that produces covet  spread as you know this is not uniformly   distributed what happens is one person gets it and  then there's a cluster and the key if you follow   the taiwan example is you get that cluster and you  isolate them so you look at all the people who got   coped at that super spreader event that amy coney  barrett was on nominated at and you look at what   the media has asked a number of those people like  chris christie the former governor in new jersey   has anyone called you to do contact racing  and the answer for every single person who   has been asked and answered the question was no  and this is the most high-profile cluster event   that has taken place in the united states  involving the president of the united states   nobody has done contact racing so if if we can't  do that you could have the best technology and   software in the world it is going to change you  know that's the pro our problem is is that we're   not willing to ask that question and to do that  process we could probably make the process great   but we can't change the fact that the federal  government isn't answering asking the question completely and actually one of the questions  that's actually already come up from the chat was   actually what i was going to ask you next so i'm  going to like the the i'm going to ask it but it's   also for um thank you from the from the chat which  is part of the thing that we've run into here   is that uh science and expert opinion has become  politicized right that we're we're in this like   like don't trust the experts don't trust the  scientists you know it's you know my gut tells   me like i i have a good feeling about this the  disease is going to pass in a month you know that   kind of stuff obviously this is just disastrously  retrograde relative to pandemics what how do we as   a country get back to appropriately appreciating  expertise and appropriately appreciating science   so as you know that i've got a whole chapter in  the book on this because i'm so worried about it   look part of the answer is we need to make people  understand how science works because otherwise   you get these absurd things that frankly the  president keeps saying fauci said mass were bad   now he's saying they're good they they didn't  say that you know they were trying to figure   out what to do when there's limited supply they  weren't sure whether they prevent self-infection   and what fauci said was look as we got better  data and better studies i changed my mind you   know you first about the lethality of the disease  that's how science works there isn't no g-whiz   answer that you have science is a mode of  inquiry where you ask questions you look at   evidence you gain you know so 35 years ago there  was a small percentage of atmospheric scientists   who believed that global warming was out real  and man-made now it's like 99.9 the reason is   they've done studies they've prose hypotheses  the data has confirmed the hypotheses and that's   how it works but there is a larger issue and we i  think people like us have to be honest about this   there is a great class resentment out there  in the country against people like us you know   highly educated credentialed who live in cities  who who do well economically and there's a feeling   that we are sort of telling everybody else how  to live their lives and i think we have not been   sensitive enough to that issue i mean that's  frankly why hillary clinton isn't president   of the united states i think class resentment  is at the heart of so much of this phenomenon   of populism and so what we have got to figure out  is how do you how do you convey this stuff without   doing it in a patronizing manner without doing it  in a way that suggests that that people out there   are deplorables or you know are there there's  something lesser about them and i do think that   that's you know and it's a it's a larger question  i have read i'm not sure how one answers it but   uh the week after trump was elected i got a  uh an email i think it was uh from somebody   who was been reading my writing and he said you  know i live in the rural areas and i didn't vote   for trump but let me tell you what life looks  like for people like me every television show i   see is set in new york or san francisco or chicago  every movie i see is set in one of those cities   every tv show is set in washington dc or every  song comes out of an urban experience everything   that is idolized in my life and celebrated  comes from cities it's like we don't exist   it's like our world doesn't exist you know so i  think part of the challenge here is what do we do   because our political divide has gotten layered  onto a cultural divide a class divide an education   divide an urban rural divide and this is one i  don't have a good answer for because it's one of   the reasons it's so hard to compromise you know  when when nancy pelosi is asked why are you not   compromising with the with the republicans what  she can't say is look my base regards it as an act   of betrayal to to to do any deal with them because  the act of doing a deal you're doing a deal with   the devil and by the way they feel exactly the  same way you know and so it becomes very hard to   find a way even on money as you know read money  is the easiest thing to compromise on very hard   to compromise on abortion gay rights money you  want to spend two and a half trillion i want to   spend one and a half trillion there's a number  in the middle and even that proved difficult   because of this class divide yeah and by the  way part of it's obviously pelosi but also part   of its you know trump insisting that he wants his  signature on it to to to use the articles of state   to get them reelected which is counter democratic  values you know small d american democracy   values and so so that's again but it but it is a  melee now i do think that one of the things that   we if we can't figure out how to like you go  back to reagan and tip o'neill and they go look   here are the things we agree on let's let's work  and build on things we grant we really need to go   back to it's not complete war that every like  we're only focusing on the disagreements you   have to get that agreement and hopefully science  and expertise applied can be the can be the right   thing um sorry you look like you're about to say  something yeah because i thought it was a very   good example i think part of the problem we had is  that our political parties used to be more diverse   you know so you had within the parties liberals  and conservatives i mean you would think about   the democratic party in the 50s right it was an  alliance between northern liberals and southern   segregationists and so you had to find some way  to make these compromises and make these deals   so it didn't it wasn't that hard to make them on  the on the other side now our parties are pure   you know they're ideologically more pure which  in a way gives the public a good choice in in   that sense it's good but it's turned out to  be very difficult for com for for governing   because the american system is not  like a european parliamentary system   it actually depends on a kind of constant  compromise among the three branches of government   and if you have a situation like we have now as  you said each side is looking at it and saying   if i give this win to them i lose and it's very  hard to get figure out how you get past that the   obvious rational answer is what you said which is  find the areas where you agree just pass that and   agree to disagree on the stuff you disagree with  you know but somehow we're not able to get there   well it's because it's too much open warfare  um and you know like you know i don't mean   warfare is actually hopefully never like real  disturbance but like just like we're enemies   and there's nothing we agree on and that's  that like to some degree both sides have to go   we have to put down those verbal  weapons we have to agree to that   and that true you know kind of trust truth  and reconciliation process it takes leadership   um so you know obviously we hope we get some  yeah but we're working on it um and so the um   anyway so so let's move to another part of  the science side because the taiwan example   which you know is is is like literally the i agree  the shining example of if you did this everyone's   lives would be a lot better the debt the loss  of millions of jobs the 200 plus thousand lives   you know all of that would have been much  much lower you know you got this other swedish   experiment you know that's kind of playing  in like herd immunity and that kind of stuff   what's your reflection on the on the swedish  experiment was it is it is it kind of like   stick your head in the sand or was there smart  things about it is hurt immunity a reasonable play   yeah i think it i think it's it's  it's gotten a bum rap in this sense   they were trying to do some things right  which is they were trying to play with   the fact that this is a this is a disease that  affects people very differentially based on age   and prior health conditions so that if you're  not old and if you don't have a prior history   of medical issues you have much different uh uh  vulnerabilities not zero by the way i mean it's   still a bad disease you do not want to get this  this is not the flu and i don't want anyone to   think that that's the argument i'm making but  i'm saying what they were trying to do is say   okay so we'll you know maybe we have some stronger  restrictions for people who are older and weaker   restrictions so their school system they actually  have handled pretty well because of that they were   able to understand that very young kids really  there's there's very low low rates of transmission   uh and they're you know by and large you can have  kindergarten you know up through 12 year olds   go to school no problem the problem they have  is twofold one they implemented it very badly   they did not really sequester the old properly  they they botched the nurturing nursing homes kind   of in the same way that new york state watched  the nursing homes they let them all be together   so the clusters became mega clusters and that  has actually affected their mortality morbidity   numbers very badly if you did if you take four big  nursing homes out of the swedish numbers they look   much better but the second is you still have to  put guidelines in place you know this is still a   easily transmissible play so i think the  swedes had done everything they had done   done better on the nursing homes and just done  the normal common sense masks no big gatherings   and they did them but they did them without  enforcement mechanisms so you know it was   like the right idea the basic idea that there is  a differential of risk for young people versus old   people uh for people with prior conditions was  the right one they implemented it badly and now   they're reaping the the many of the consequences  of that you know but all that said reid we people   forget sweden's mobility rate per capita is the  same as italy's it's a little lower than france   a little higher than francis so it's not that you  know it's not like so outlandish now their problem   was what they didn't understand is in a highly  globalized interdependent economy that europe is   their economy took the same hit that everybody  else did because if none of your neighbors are   economically open the fact that you're open  doesn't give you much of a boost yeah no exactly   well this is because that's another of the  chapters which is the fact that you know people   are tend to because of populism because of the  the the the class resentment uh and because of the   pandemic they tend to go oh is globalization over  that's another chapter in the book so why don't   you um kind of share a little bit about kind of  where do you think the future of globalization is   and why globalization's not over sure yeah this is  i think the most common thing i've heard from you   know journalists and politicians oh you know we're  we're done with globalization we're in an age of   deglobalization the era of globalization is over  and the problem is if you look i mean as you know   this read because you live it when you actually  operate big companies in the world these days   um you can't operate uh you know no no company  can be an island no no country can be an island   all of them rely on incredible interdependence of  investment of finance of manufacturing of sales   you know so if you look at the and you can see it  at every level and i was reading an article about   restaurants in paris and tokyo which are  now shutting down because they all relied on   tourists for their you know for the for where they  got people it turns out the great classical french   bistros the only people who go there are americans  you know if you want to see where the french go   to go to a mcdonald's exactly you know um and my  guess is that's very true the best sushi places in   in japan may well be it turned out you know maybe  people from china who are going there or something   so and if you can the data shows this very clearly  if you look at the data for globalization and   there's a good the peterson institute has a good  metric exports plus imports as a percentage of gdp   and it goes like this from 1945 you know straight  up and then there's been a modest you know like   it's like seven steps up one step backward so  there's definitely a phase of deglobalization   some of it is actually people feeling too  vulnerable to china which i think is a very   important distinction to make so if you want to  make sure that you are not as dependent on china   for strategic reasons which i think are perfectly  understandable you might move your manufacturing   or parts of your manufacturing or parts of your  technology supply chain to poland or to mexico or   to south korea that's not de-globalization that's  still a global economy you're just choosing to   rearrange it and partly people are doing it in any  case for labor costs for other kinds of reasons   so i think that the reality of globalization is  this we're going to see some rhetoric around it   we're going to have modest efforts at it people  are going to say oh we need to make ppe at home   but then of course nobody thinks about the fact  what is ppe you're talking about cotton swabs   you're talking about you know masks these are  consumer items and are you really saying that   you want the you want to start up and fund  industries in the united states to make what   are the equivalent of t-shirts i i propose in the  book you know much simpler solution the government   should just stockpile medical reserves we all  we need is for a couple of months after that   we've been able to manufacture everything the  private sector in america and in every country   has responded immediately there's usually a one  or two month shortage because everyone's trying to   get the same thing as long as you do that you're  going to be fine a lot of the res on sourcing will   be money wasted i mean we're we're and we're going  to fight the last war because the next crisis   might turn out to be something where you need  something completely different i mean i actually   worry a lot about factory farms as you know with  the the kind of uh diseases that come out of it i   worry a lot about forest fires i think that this  is one that is staring us in the face we have you   know we have burned in the west i mean this is you  you're living this we've burnt five million acres   of land that is the state of massachusetts has  gone up in smoke and you know five of the worst   forest fires in california all have taken place  in the last three years so we know this is coming   so now the question is the government is going  we're going to be short of a whole bunch of stuff   for the next 10 years on fire does it doesn't  mean america should manufacture all of this   stuff at home no it means we need to think  smart figure out where there will be shortages   stockpile those things for the when there are  emergencies and and you know keep going but   part of what happens here i think greed is it's  very easy to blame other people for your problems   and you know and trump has turned this into an  art form if you think about donald trump's 2016   campaign i mean if you listen to the one  hour one and a half hours of campaign talk   in these town halls the message was very  simple the chinese have taken your factories   the mexicans have taken your jobs and  the muslims are trying to kill you   you know it was just it was blame blame blame  so we we're in some sense hardwired to look out   out there but that's not the answer the answer is  we've got to actually do more global cooperation   to get this right uh we need a stronger wa show  so that it can go into the chinese and demand   information but by the way that means they've  got to be able to go into the united states   and demand information we have to be willing to  play by the rules if we want there to be rules   for other people and that's one of the hypocrisies  i talk about in the book where we are not going to   be able to run this world by saying you guys have  to all follow the international criminal court   but we don't have to you guys have to follow the  international law of the sea but we don't get we   don't have to because we're the united states  that kind of american exceptionalism is over   and so we want a true globalization which is a  little bit more democratic a little bit more uh   multi-polar in a sense you know we can get it  but we we would have to play by the rules too   well the the thing i know that you agree with is  look globalization's good but we need to bring   the country along we need to make sure that uh  that the the benefit of globalization is isn't   only hoarded by those of us who are in cities  and everything else but is actually kind of more   distributed and that will one of the things that  could help with that resentment and then obviously   on the pandemic it's the classic definition  of of we have a shared health we can't say   well we go our own way because we go our own way  in a in a good example this was sars oh my god   would this be like greatest catastrophe in human  in human history um so we were fortunate that it   was it had you know real you know not a flu it's  very serious but much less than it could have   been and that's part of the reason why i think  your book is so important because like look   like as a as a dry run of something serious pay  attention now um so so let's turn a little bit too   so i want to reinforce the point you were making  so that everybody understands the morbidity rate   in sars was about 10 times that of covid in other  words you're 10 times more likely to die but it's   equally transmissible and so um if that's the  that's the the thing you're describing that you're   worried about and you're absolutely right to worry  about it the the the real scare is a a covet-like   pandemic but with a sars-like fatality rate yes  exactly and it's completely possible we've seen it   with sars and so it's completely possible so it's  like wake up be ready for the next pandemic and   these this is not just a political thing this is  a you know protect your your loved ones lives your   children's lives your community life that's that's  how urgent this issue is so and and it gets to the   issue that you were saying which is we all have  to be protected you know the problem with the   stuff in the mass where he's like you know you're  seeing this now with these spikes in the midwest   this is going this is not going to end well  because we are not you know we don't have   internal borders in this country people from  the midwest are going to go to the northeast   they're going to go to the south they're going to  go to the west and unless we want to put in place   strong internal borders and have you know deep  enforcement of those you you need to you need   to think we're all in this together you know and  then none of us are safe if everyone isn't safe   and somehow we haven't been able in this  in these times to make those common appeals   of exactly the kind you're making greed not  exactly um and there was actually one of the   questions from the chat that is on values on  that which we'll come back to um i first wanted   to make sure that we covered a couple other  key things in your book so that people know   you know kind of what what are the things they  they why they should rush to amazon or the kind of   equivalent for it um so it's life is now digital  life right we we we have now been accelerated   into like living through this exact event we're  doing today because if it wasn't pandemic we would   be sitting in a room together with a whole  bunch of people um what parts of this shift   of digital life and digital work do you think  are temporary and which parts are persistent it's a great question so i think that the first  thing to say is it is astonishing how resilient   the technology that we have that  people like you have invented   over the last 25 years has turned out to be i  mean what a stress test right you suddenly said   instead of spending one hour on my you know  on my computer uh using broadband uh and video   which as you know is the biggest broadband  hog i'm gonna spend 12 hours doing it and   everybody is going to spell 12 hours doing it and  the system hasn't crashed and you know you have   had an extraordinary ability to literally take the  american economy and really the western economy   and the chinese economy and the japanese and  lift it and put it onto a digital platform and an   astonishing amount of it has been able to work and  so i think first one has to say boy i mean this   they like you suddenly realize the power of this  technology and the capacity it has i think that   what we have realized is that we can really do  almost anything online it doesn't mean we will   and doesn't mean we should but that we can that  the capacity exists and so you're going to start   i think have this great sort of what's going to go  online what's going to stay my guess is something   like telemedicine is a no-brainer you know people  going to their doctor's offices because they   you know they had a headache and they would go and  wait for two hours and the doctor would say take   an aspirin and come back you know call me if you  have any problems you can do that in 10 minutes   online and by the way the technology existed  the problem was human beings it was a human   obstacle and coveted eliminated that it it got the  people to be willing to go and it got the doctors   willing to to to listen because they were getting  paid that so those two obstacles got through   i would suspect that what we're going to end up  with this kind of hybrid in almost every area   nothing will go completely digital i don't think i  think that what you will end up with is like think   of work i i tend to think you know we work failed  but the wework model might succeed by which i mean   people might realize you know what you don't need  to be in the office seven six days a week or five   days a week you do need to go two or three days  because you've got meetings you've got there's   a there's a bunch of things for which you need to  be there maybe you don't need a dedicated office   because now that you have everything of your  life is on the cloud you really need a portal   into which you can plug and that can be a  rotating one and that means you use much   space much more efficiently so that's why i  say wework may have failed but the wework model   might succeed you might end up in a situation  where some people are spending more time at home   some would work to me this actually resembles in  an odd way a throwback to a pre-industrial era   you know because the the way we work is very much  a kind of 19th century factory model which is you   leave your home in this sort of madman-like world  and you leave the suburbs you go to work everybody   at work knows you but they know nothing about your  home life at home everybody knows your home life   nobody knows anything about your work life but if  you go back before that to the 18th century you   know a farmer lived on his farm and worked on his  farm a craftsman had had his store and his tools   at the back of the the house the the shopkeeper  lived above the store the lawyer often hung his   shingle on the and you know as a result your your  family your friends your co-workers life was a   lot more mixed and muddled up and maybe that's a  good thing you know maybe this weird demarcation   where you you know you go to the office and you  you know get you get drunk on martinis at lunch   and then you come home and you're the perfect  husband like we maybe your children will see   the real you and your workers will say you know  your colleagues will see the real you so i tend   to think it's going to be like that the one final  point i'll make is the one thing i don't think   we've solved and i'd like to know your thoughts  about this i don't think we have figured out a   way to build social capital on technologies  like zoom we spend social capital on it so   you and i can do this in large part and i think  if i may say so it's been like this a really fun   conversation because we already know each other we  trust each other we you know we respect each other   i think i see this with my teams working um  bringing new people in building that trust   that's all very hard you you're spending  down what you have but the bill you know   one of my team people said to me you know when you  send a harsh email now saying you don't like the   work it has a different quality than when we were  at workers we would see you and you would have had   10 pleasant conversations with you and we'd have  kid around and we and you know your your tough   email was in the context of that but if all i  get from you the only contact i have with you   that week is that one email it ruins my week  right and so that's a perfect example where   i haven't built the social capital to spend it  and so you know i'm just taking out of the bank   that's something it feels to me like  you need actual human contact for   i think you're a 100 right um social capital  is important for all kinds of things it's uh   dealing with difficult topics uh is is a classic  one innovations another one a trust to invest   in who like it's the promotion or who leads  the team or who's leading an effort all of   those things require social capital and i've been  thinking about it i actually don't think there is   i don't i don't know if obviously there's probably  some technologists who think like virtual worlds   or something else would be able to do it um and  certainly you know you get some of it and i got   shared gameplay like when people do the like  multi massive multiplayer online they get some   in that because they they share a bunch of those  experiences doing it but i actually think that if   you were if we were going to be caught in this for  years um then we'd probably have to hack it almost   like dale carnegie's style get much more explicit  about building social capital and so if it's like   hey i'm gonna you know i'm gonna spend time  deliberately doing that um which is awkward   right i mean it's it's one of the things that we  we learn to build social capital by being natural   with each other versus so free tell me about your  last you know last vacation did you have a good   time where did you you know like it's like ah  we much rather have that that that pleasant and   texture and so i think that's part of the reason  why you're seeing like you know at least in   california but a bunch of other places like people  going well i'm going out to dinner at restaurants   and so because i i i desperately need that social  capital i desperately need that connectivity um   and it's like well okay that's i get it you need  it but let's be disease intelligent um i'm gonna   start uh weaving in some of the questions uh from  the chat in the audience and so people know that   it's a live channel so if you have them bring  them one of the questions we got very early and   i think it's actually um a great channel for you  given your global perspective was that was some   of the difference an ideals uh comparison like a  values comparison between east and west right east   the collective good west the individual good  is that also one of the thing that's present in   intelligent versus uh clumsy or dumb uh responses  to the pandemic yeah it's a great question and i   do think i think there's some truth to it i would  not overplay it and i say this as somebody who   grew up in india you know it's the the east is not  full of people who are like oh so self-effacing   and we just want the collective as you well know  reid having gone there and dealt with businessmen   there they're every bit as individualistic  rapacious competitive individualistic you know but   but it is true that they do not have they have not  had this tradition particularly that you have had   in the anglo-american world in the anglo-saxon  world of liberty being produced from a struggle   with the state the sort of anti-status  tradition that america britain you know to   a certain extent northern europe has that is not  as strong in those countries so they're able to   look they're probably susceptible to  a certain degree of authoritarianism   but they're also able to construct rational policy  and to make rational trade-offs of the kind i   described with taiwan you know we take a little  bit of your freedom in return for a large kind of   public welfare but you know so i think that there  is some truth to that to that values conversation   but i do think that it's a bit of a cop-out  because look if you look at the countries that   we're talking about taiwan south korea singapore  40 years ago these were corrupt kleptocracies   that were run by authoritarian strong men they  were these were not models of good government in   any way these were societies that people thought  would never become advanced industrial societies   because they had you know bad values and they were  they were they they didn't understand capitalism   all kinds i mean max weber famously said that the  confucian ethic was antithetical to capitalism   part of this is they learned you know they  had they were they were flat on the ground   and they said to themselves how do we do the  smart how do we do better there's a great   book by mancer olsen uh who wrote a book about  why germany did so much better in the 50s 60s   than britain did and his point was that germany  hadn't been defeated in the war had the humility   to say we've got to rebuild and we've got to make  functioning institutions the british having one   felt like everything that they did was blessed  you know kind of british exceptionalism   and i think there's a lot of truth to that as much  as there is so i don't want to minimize there is   some some point to the values but there's also  something going on here where we've become smug   and arrogant and it's not you know look at who's  done badly here the united states britain brazil   another country that believes god is brazilian  you know it's these kind of the places that have   done well to your point uh reid many of them did  badly in sars and they revamped their healthcare   systems they learned from it they were like oh  my god we've got to make sure that we don't so we   should be looking at this and saying this is our  sars we screwed this up big time what should we do   what you know we need to have you know a 911 type  commission that says what did we get wrong and   what do we need to fix yep well and actually this  goes back to one of the things that when i was   kind of gesturing what the technology industry  can do is i actually think that we need to have   a technology strategy and a few an afford  on this and obviously contact tracing is one   and i agree with you about stockpiling ppe but  we don't necessarily know what we'll need so   for example we need to build manufacturing that's  very maneuver retoolable whether it's robots and   ai or something else but something where you go  okay look this is flexible manufacturing maybe a   little bit less cost efficient but can turn when  we need it um and because like for example one of   the things that i learned from this pandemic that  i didn't know is well suddenly everyone starts   going every every person for themselves you say  well we need more test kits well only after we've   done our test kits and you're like well if you  don't have a manufacturing capability for that   you're hosed right so you need to make sure that  and you know i started uh funding and and kind   of getting like i think the broad institute is  accounting for 1 14 of the testing in the u.s   right so it pivoted in order to do this which is  super important and on one hand it's an impressive   certification of the broad on the other hand it's  a disaster for our country because it's like it's   just one institution you're like it should never  be that pretty like we should have so much testing   going on that it was not there and so that kind of  technology forward strategy and how we get to it   through some combination of intelligent federal  government and industry is i think going to be   really key oh i totally agree and i think that  you you know look you hit on exactly the right   points it seems to me the testing part the tracing  part or this that's the time between the the test   and the results as you know is crucial and we've  done particularly badly at that in all those areas   you could imagine us being able to speed up and  then you're right i haven't thought enough about   it but you're absolutely right highly flexible  manufacturing so that because they're going to   be things as you say you never know what you need  but the kind of pop-up manufacturing that you said   particularly 3d printing will allow in the future  and things like that um but you know you need the   government driving it you know what i mean i think  that the price yeah i noticed you guys so that so   so many of the people i know in the tech industry  have all sort of gone petitioning we want to help   let us help and i mean there was a great article  in the times two days ago they pointed out that   the federal government does not want to ramp up  testing because it believes a that if you ramp up   testing people will get more scared because there  will be more incidents of covet they'll think it's   bad that it's better to actually minimize it two  you'll admit that you you are doing it wrong you   know if you if you if you if you turn policy now  it's an admission of failure and trump has said   i want everyone to say we are doing a great  job which means we're not changing anything   and third that his so-called covet advisor scott  atlas believes that you can get hurt immunity   at 20 to 30 percent so you just infect  the younger parts of the population   so it's like you're dealing with something  so bizarre and dysfunctional that i don't   think the best technology in the world can  solve that you know 100 and the other thing   let's just make sure i mean i think we have an  unusually you know commonwealth club i think we   have a smart uh audience here but like herd  immunity doesn't mean now everyone's immune   it just cuts the r naught down because a certain  set of people will no longer be transmitting   it doesn't mean you can't catch it right so and  and generally herd immunity is achieved basically   herd immunity is achieved through vaccination so  to give you an example where we know how to do it   we've done it well measles you have to vaccinate  95 of the population to get the herd immunity for   that other five percent there is no case that  i know of in history where 20 of the population   you know gets and by the way if 20 25 of the  population gets it lots of people are going to die   yes no no exactly so um so let's look a little one  of the questions from the audience is looking six   to 12 months ahead i think uh vaccine testing you  know uh you're in a you're in one of the expert   nodes of a lot of the the the most cutting edge  information what what does that lens ahead look   like for the pandemic especially in the u.s so  there's there is a there is an optimistic scenario   here which is which has a non-trivial likelihood  of being true which is that the first half of this   pandemic or the you know first phase that we've  gone through has been the phase where you needed   public health to work really well uh not health  care we have we have very good heroic health care   for rich people but public health for everyone and  that we've done disastrously the second phase of   this is likely to be the therapeutics and vaccine  phase where we'll be pretty good because that's   fundamentally a private sector driven enterprise  not a public sector driven enterprise and in those   areas all the federal government has to do is to  write checks and there by the way trump has done   a reasonably good job the operation warp speed  and things like that the the federal government   has done the right thing in in front loading  a lot of those payments so i have a there's a   there's a distinct possibility that what you're  going to end up with is very good therapeutics   and very good vaccines that come out of this  most of the vaccines are going ahead of schedule   uh one or two of them as you know have had a few  issues with their phase three trials which by the   way often happens in phase three trials a pause in  those trials does not mean things are going wrong   it is absolutely appropriate that if something  happens you stop you wait and make sure that   nobody's getting harmed but all that said  they all look like they're on on track   uh and i think everyone has been cautious but i  think you are likely to see something i think by   december we will begin to see the outlines of  what a vaccine strategy looks like now i think   it's very important to point out you still have  to do it there are still execution issues involved   and there are still political issues involved 50  of americans according to polls say they will not   get vaccinated there is very few medical experts  who believe you will get the hurt immunity if 50   of the population does not get vaccinated so we  may have a we we may be in the bizarre situation   where we have the best technology in the  world um we have the best vaccine in the world   but we will have the lowest effect of that vaccine  because 80 of germans will take it but if 50   of americans take it that is a problem yeah no  completely and that goes back to the that's reason   we started with the science comment because it's  like understand vaccines and by the way like if   you if you kind of look at the history of it like  part of the reason why we got the flu vaccines and   being very determined that everyone knows the  flu vaccines is you know you look at 1918 you   look at like some of these earlier pandemics were  really disastrous with the flu and i was like okay   this is really important that we do vaccines  and and covet is obviously the the same um   the same the same kind of a challenge for us  with potentially much worse if you get to sars um   do you think one of the questions that we've  we've got from the chat is do you think that um   this is going to affect because it suddenly  put all of the first responders the   nurses and doctors on the front line made put them  in the line of fire because if if we as a populist   are not taking a vaccine et cetera we continue to  endanger them as well who are trying to do that   do you think this is going to quell at all the  kind of people's desire to go into those fields no i mean i actually think that you  know for those of us who know people   who who've done this kind of thing a lot of them  do it because they like helping people they like   that physical tangible feeling uh there's an  enormous amount of reward that comes from that   you know the one the one thing i hope that comes  out of this is that two things happen one that   we realized you know there are a lot of ways to  live a fulfilled life there are a lot of different   things that give people fulfillment and you  really should go to where you you get fulfillment   for some people it's being a school teacher  for some people it's being a fireman for some   and for some people it's being a businessman  for i think we have overly venerated one set   of industries and one set of ways of thinking  about life largely business and monetary and i   think look it's amazing it's transformational it  produces incredible innovation but not everyone   can do it and not everyone derives enormous joy  from it and i think if one thing that this makes   one reminds one you know there's like an ability  of work in everything um and if you do it well and   you do it honestly and you do it with dignity  i think the society should reward it more you   should be more proud of yourself for doing it you  know we we're sort of we've gotten too caught up   in the idea that you know this part of this is  the celebrity culture where everybody is looking   at you know on instagram and everyone is looking  at everybody else's houses and things like that   and they're not asking themselves like you know  how much can i really enjoy this i mean there's a   you know i think warren buffett is particularly  weird but i don't think it's so busy you know   to understand him when he says you know he's  lived in the same house he's lived in for 45 years   because he hates the idea of moving more than he  loves the idea of having a bigger living room you   know and it's like there's some truth to that that  you actually you know i mean you know this much   better than i do you don't get that much happier  when you get that much richer i mean you get some   opportunities but so if we could somehow get a  little bit more of a balance for everybody and   i think this is this is something we all need to  think about like what's really important in life   you know at the end of the day i find that you  realize it's your close friends with your family   it's those bonds you've made that's what you're  going to be left with you know all the other stuff   it goes you know you can't take it with you  yeah well it's a really important you know   point to remember because it's it's the people  that you love and the people that that that that   you are you are in community with it's one of the  reasons why one of my favorite uh words is ubuntu   because you know i am because we are right  it's part of that kind of meaning of life   and it's like it's it's it's it's very important  so um so what do you think uh is going to be the   the necessary changes in the global world order  like one of the things that that you know you're   one of the the experts on is kind of how the globe  comes together should there be accountability   or consequences for countries or  whatever for mishandling pandemics for   not responding early not sharing information does  this need to be a new kind of like world treaty you know i mean in a sense what you're centrally  asking is how do we create a global system   in which you have some countries that really just  don't play by the rules you know and as i said i   think one of the things the united states needs to  get better at is we need to play by the rules more   but basically you know we're we're pretty good  in the sense that we've set up the system we buy   and large uh abide by it we put rules in place  that makes sense for everyone unusual for the   united states we didn't try to press our advantage  when we won world war ii we tried to help create   a stable system and the two big countries that  are out of whack right now are russia and china   russia is more of a spoiler than china but china  is much more important because it's much bigger   and much more powerful so how we handle these  two countries is going to determine the answer   to your question because everybody else to be  honest if you can get the rules put in place and   if the united states and europe and china would  agree uh the you know the other countries will   go along but how do you get china to go along how  do you get russia to go along um i think that art   you know russia is going to be a problem because  it is a spoiler state it it derives its importance   its benefit its power even from the fact that that  it can play the spoiling role otherwise it's a   you know it's a third third rate economic power  it's the economy is the size of the netherlands   and declining every year its population  is declining every year it has the nuclear   weapons the veto at the u.n you know that the  massive expanse and by the way because it's   an oil power global instability actually helps  russia every time there's global instability the   price of oil goes up which means russian coffers  go up which means mr putin's net worth goes up   china i think is the is the real complicated one  because i think if we can have a sophisticated   policy toward china that has elements of pushback  deterrence um which we absolutely need because the   chinese are you know i mean like and i don't  think that particularly i don't mean this in a   in a racially way but the chinese understand  power by the way so do we so do most countries   you you recognize hard power and you recognize you  know what you can and cannot do so there has to be   an element of our strategy with china that says  you know there are there are rules that you've   broken and we i for one think that we made a  mistake of not holding china accountable more   for banning all the technology companies uh you  know in china you know as you know american tech   companies have basically no access to china and  we kind of accepted it and yet you know they are   we let them into the wto you know and all that was  done legitimately they made the concessions they   had to make but then they added this one on and  you know we should in retrospect be thinking much   more about these kinds of issues before they come  up um right now i think our challenge is how do we   have a policy with china that is a mixture of  deterrence competition and cooperation because if   you want to solve global warming you are not going  to do it without cooperation with the chinese if   you want to have some rules of the road for cyber  make sure you do not have a world of cyber attacks   and cyber warfare you need to have some some kind  of negotiation with china a space race you know   there are a lot of very bad outcomes you could  end up with if the two most dynamic economies in   the world just go at each other the way the united  states and the soviet union did so what you really   need is a strategy that is thought through that  tries to mix these two and here i actually think   in many ways the biggest difference i think and  i hope between trump and biden will be this uh i   don't really know where biden will go but the guy  he's a serious guy he has serious people around   him they understand the nature of these these  these trade-offs with trump the whole thing is   an exercise in narcissism you know when he thought  he was going to get a deal with china he praised   xi jinping while the chinese were lying that  through their teeth about covet when the minute he   realized the kovit was going badly for him and he  needed to deflect the blame china became the great   evil empire the monster this is not a serious  policy toward china for the for the world's   biggest economy we need a serious policy and if  we can get so i guess my bottom line to you ko   rita's if i had to wave one magic wand it would  be we got to get the policy to china right we   got to deter them we got to reign them in where  we need to and we got to find a way to cooperate   it's not going to be easy it's going to be hours  and hours of the kind of boring diplomatic legwork   that trump you know disdains but that's what you  need you know that's what you need that's that's   that's the big prize internationally well it's  where you go back to expertise why foreign policy   expertise uh epidemiological and disease expertise  is important and you know look my i'll i'll   share my opinion very quickly on the trump stuff  which is like that's why you need government not   a reality television show right like living a  reality television show is exactly the kind of   disaster that's led to trillions in debt millions  of job losses hundreds of thousands of lives   right so it's like that uh completely agree so  um we have room for one or two more questions   um because we're in the last few minutes uh one of  the questions we got earlier um which i think is a   classic kind of authorial question so hopefully  it won't surprise you you had these 10 rules   what was the 11th one that was on the that  was on the that was on the cutting room   floor was there is is there something that  you would share in addition to the other 10   you know i started to write them down and i and  for some reason they gelled at 10 and then when   i when i got to them i was like that's enough  i don't i don't i don't really need to go any   further but but i mean what i would say is  the the you know if there's a there isn't it   it's sort of the first lesson but i think i  would have made it a bigger lesson which is   we need to think about uh you and i were having  this debate before with the cameras went on   um i believe i'm an optimist i think that you  know i think things things generally work out   part of it is my own life experience being overly  gloomy is not a way to live your life but we are   living as human beings in a way that is taking on  a lot of risks between climate change and fires   and droughts and hurricanes and these antibiotic  resistant viruses and factory farming which is   essentially a kind of petri dish for new viruses  we need to step back and ask ourselves you know   what are the the more sustainable models of living  so that you know so we make sure we can keep this   thing this has been a great run for human beings  on earth and we want to make sure that when we're   leaving it open for future generations and i worry  about that and i and you know i talk about that in   the book but i would have probably spun that out  a little more i'd have probably done a chapter on   climate change yeah climate change and also that  kind of notion of how do we um like how do we   think of like part of meaning of life is is what  do we give the next generation right like exactly   exactly and by the way part of the next generation  is like well are we are are we gonna like we're   gonna heat up the the the planet four degrees and  make it like intolerable to live here and like   crush society that way it's like let's let's not  do that right exactly exactly what do you think   um you know people should in we only have like 60  seconds for this but like if they were to think   about one thing to say here is where i should most  value go like as kind of a centrist or unity or   government coming together what should it be  should it be like truth seeking learning expertise   uh compassion and values for the you know  like what what would be a kind of uh some   a couple of very quick almost like like summary  lines of the government that we should hope for   look to take on the big challenges we can't take  on together climate change pandemics but the   part that i worry the most about is there's  really a part of america that is forgotten   it's the bottom 20 or 30 percent they don't write  op-eds they don't give money to politicians they   don't vote they work really hard and they still  make you know minimum wage those those people   really there is like a forgotten america here that  i feel like the pandemic has massively exacerbated   because those are the people losing their jobs  it's the dishwashers it's the bellhop said hotels   it's the guys and i just want to just remind  everybody that whatever you're going through   you're going through an inconvenience those  people are going through the great depression and   only government can help them of course you  should do what you can but most importantly   make sure the government looks after those  people because they really need your help   so fareed um clearly demonstrated why as  always i love talking with you um i have a   uh script for the uh for the for the  commonwealth club that i'm now going to go   through but i wanted to to just share that  like i i hope everyone saw why it's always a   delight a pleasure and i always learn things  so it's it's it's been awesome thank you   so our thanks uh uh to fareed zakaria author of 10  lessons for a post pandemic world we encourage you   to pick up your copy at your local bookstore or  of course amazon walmart etc uh if you if you'd   like to watch more virtual programs or support  the commonwealth club efforts please visit www.commonwealthclub.org i'm reed hoffman  thanks so much for joining us today you

Channel: Commonwealth Club of California

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Length: 67min 6sec (4026 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020