dr. fauci alluded to. the most important thing is not to just understand the historical phenomenon but as an example of what could happen in the future and uses information to help us gear up for how to prepare and predict how bird viruses can adapt to humans what mutations would correlate with a high virulence and what we can do to prevent it. thanks. >> as an epidemiology spends significant effort studying how pathogens like the 1918 influenza that spread in the population. can you tell us about what the investigations have taught us about the spread of the 1918 pandemic and how was different than what we have seen in other pandemics? >> what made it unique was the data from countries around the world. some we see was unusual and epidemics running that period. it was just something really unique about the population. the other distinctive feature is the age, the fraction of mortality. we see this peak around age 28 all around the world and that's very difficult to explain. we think it's a com

dr. anthony fauci. [applause] thank you very that kind introduction. finding that encourage -- following that encouraging story from john, i'm going to tell you a little bit about the the step that i think it john was very clearly referring to about what we need to do regarding preparation. that is what i'm going to talk about. preparing for the future and pandemic influenza. the first thing i want to do is to make the point that when you look at influenza, preparation for seasonal influenza essentially should be the preparation for pandemic influenza in a perfect world. the perfect world that i hope we get to -- we are certainly trying hard -- is the development of what john alluded to, the vaccine. i am concerned about our capabilities today against any kind of influenza. i want to break it up into three quick parts. first of all, the current seasonal influenza vaccines are not consistently affected. that is a fact we have to face -- consistently effective. if you look at 2004 until the last year, when you have a bad year with a mismatch, you have a

dr. anthony fauci joined other health experts and scientists in washington last week to talk about and then make preparedness -- pandemic fairness and response. this is 2 1/2 hours.

dr. barra, tony fauci is a friend and i remember him saying at one of our conferences that if we find -- if you find -- if you're successful in finding a cure for alzheimer's, the amount of money that we gave nih in the 21st century cures act, it will pay for itself. the amount of money we spend on treating this disease. i thank you both for your work. besides being here today, i thank you both for your work. the people who will benefit once you're successful. thank you all. >> thank you, dan. >>> let me just conclude and ask you, if you could, the 2017 w.h.o. action plan. on november 13th, we know the bill and melinda gates foundation, now it's $100 million for alzheimer's research. the u.n. itself has established a global dementia observatory to co late and disseminate to support evidence-based planning and strengthen policies as well as health and social care systems. your opinion of the w.h.o. action plan and the steps -- obviously, as a whole of government approach for ourselves, are you happy with it? do you feel this is really going to be transformational? >> first of all, we were