Health committee  I think that's a fantastic question. One of the challenges with the masking was early on we knew that medical-grade masks were needed for health facilities to keep health care workers safe. We knew there were not enough of them, and we knew that masking guidance was being inter

Health committee  That is the biggest question that I think every country is facing right now. I would say a few things. First, the lifting of confinement or stay-at-home orders needs to be very cautious, very gradual and driven by data. If some measures are lifted and this does not provoke a sp

Health committee  Yes, I agree with Larry. I think partly what we're seeing here is the process of science playing out. We start with a lot of uncertainty and we make a best guess based on the closest parallels we have. There is a real challenge in public health communication in providing that in

Health committee  Absolutely, and we are struggling with the exact same problem here. One of the challenges is that for reasons we don't yet fully understand, it hits different places at different times. It's easy for the areas in the United States that locked down earlier, that locked down befor

Health committee  I have some thoughts, but if you want, you can go first.

Health committee  Yes. The mask thing, probably more than anything else, is an area where the guidance has shifted, and I think it's important to understand why. In the early phases of this virus, we knew almost nothing about it, and the public health guidance coming out at that point was based

Health committee  Can I add something quickly on that?

Health committee  I think communicating uncertainty has been a weakness of virtually all public health authorities in this response. It's a really core part of good public health communication. I think the WHO has not done well enough in proactively communicating uncertainty. With a novel virus,

Health committee  Yes, certainly. It's not to say that the $2.5 billion is not being well spent. It is going to really important work being done by large UN agencies, and some of that gets to front-line local organizations second- or third-hand. The problem is that this shouldn't be the main thing

Health committee  Maybe we could go back to the other questions you had. That's a hard question. It's a very important question for Canada and, frankly, it's an important question for the United States. It is abundantly clear that political pressure is curtailing public health advice from the U.

Health committee  I'm happy to say an initial few words on that, Larry. It's a really great question. One of the things that we have seen from many countries is an underestimation of the risk this disease poses. I wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post that was published on February 4 in

Health committee  I'm happy to take an initial attempt at it. I think that is a real risk. One of the things that has been really striking so far about this crisis, in contrast to, say, the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak, is just the lack of a sense of a common global effort. I put some of that, frankly

Health committee  Thank you so much. Just echoing what Larry said, it's a real pleasure and a privilege to be speaking with you all today. I also have ties to Canada. My mother grew up in Hamilton and I still have a lot of family there in Ontario, so it's really nice to be speaking to all of you