Understanding the causal nature of an epidemic is essential for developing effective therapies.

“I'm always uh you know I always think that it's very foolhardy to work on a problem an epidemic without understanding the causal nature of the epidemic yeah right like it's you know I use the example of like heart therapy yeah right like change the face of HIV forever so success like one of the greatest success stories of of infectious disease medicine — but it was all predicated on understanding what the cause was like if you didn't understand that HIV was destroying CD4 cells yeah you didn't have a prayer of developing that therapy”