Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam On Ending COVID, Vaccine Complacency And Business Responsibility

This episode is supported by private equity platform Moonfare.

In this show, I talk with Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam. He is the founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute and the founder of EndCoronavirus. He received his SB and PhD in physics from MIT in 1978 and 1984 respectively. Since the late 1980s he has contributed to founding the field of complex systems science, introducing fundamental mathematical rigor and real world application, ranging from the global financial crisis to stopping the 2014 Ebola outbreak. He has advised the CDC, the Chairman’s Action Group at the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the National Counter Terrorism Council, and other government organizations, NGOs, and corporations. In this podcast we discuss:

1. Yaneer’s January paper with Nassim Taleb and Joseph Norman on the coming COVID crisis
2. Using complexity science to understand pandemics
3. The importance of restricting travel and bringing cases to zero
4. The mistake of countries that lift restrictions before zero cases
5. Why the West managed COVID poorly compared to Asia and Africa
6. The poor comparison to seasonal flu
7. The economic benefits of aggressive action vs cost of soft lockdowns
8. Why the vaccine doesn’t mean countries should lift restrictions
9. How investors and the business community can help end the COVID crisis