My Favorite TED Talk & Unit Two Project Ideas

In 2014, the world avoided an outbreak of Ebola, thanks to the care and generosity provided by thousands of health workers — not to mention sheer dumb luck, too. The following year, Bill Gates was invited to a TED Talk and emphasized our lack of preparation as the root cause of the damage. He urged us to accelerate practices like scenario planning, vaccine research, and health worker training in preparation for the next pandemic. And seven years later, we see that the COVID-19 pandemic has dawned onto the world and broken out in several deadly waves since 2019; the Trump administration’s failure to respond appropriately and promptly to the pandemic exacerbated the situation, leading to the subsequent economic crisis. I enjoyed watching this TED Talk because it’s somewhat funny to see nobody paying heed to Gates’s warnings. He did all the work and created a plan and outlined all the steps to avoid another outbreak, but nobody listened to him — and our failure to listen has landed the world in today’s current situation, where everybody still fears contracting the coronavirus even though the situation has died down.

As for my Unit Two project, I was considering talking about the evolution of the word ‘pandemic’ and if we have prepared or taken any action in fighting pandemics within the past few decades. In the past few years, has anybody ever given warnings to the entire world, in anticipation of another impending global outbreak (like Gates did in 2015)? I would use the Gale Virtual Reference Library to track the evolution of the word ‘pandemic’ and how it’s definition has changed within the past few years. Alternatively, I was considering looking into the evolution of the climate change crisis and researching what actions we have taken to combat the issue. Besides transitioning to electric vehicles, installing solar panels, and researching innovating techniques to cool the Earth, what other meaningful contributions have we made that are sometimes overlooked today? At what rate have we worsened the situation in the past few years? These are some simple questions to consider that could be a part of my research in determining the evolution of the climate change crisis.