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Marin County resident Dr. Larry Brilliant is a top epidemiologist who helped eradicate small pox while working for the World Health Organization in the 1970s. As COVID-19 spreads around the globe, he's been highlighted for a 2006 Ted Talk forecasting a worldwide pandemic that would infect 1 billion people and cause an economic crisis.

Brilliant was a guest on KQED Radio's "Forum" Monday and touched on the situation in the Bay Area; he believes officials' efforts should focus not only on mitigation but also active containment because the region still has a relatively small number of cases.

"California has 388 cases per capita [per million] whereas New York has 6,600 [per million]. New Jersey 4,100,” he said. “We have such a small number of cases per capita… With that low number, I believe we should not be just doing merely mitigation and stay at home. If you’ve only got a few cases, like in Marin County I think there’s 70 or 80 active cases, 120 total so far, I think we ought to go and visit everyone of those cases in a Hazmat suit. We ought to identify all the contacts. We ought to find all the contacts and then quarantine all of them."

Brilliant went on: "This is a lot more active measures. Where you can still do active case-finding and active quarantining in just the cases and their immediate environment that holds open the possibility that later on you might be able to open up the economy. If continue to do only do mitigation you run that risk of coming to that 'flattening of the curve,' and then we’re going to have to do the mitigation for months."

"I don’t think we should give up on containment," he concluded. "My experience in the small pox program, which is a very different virus and we had a vaccine and all that, the moment we let up for a moment the virus came back."

Brilliant referred to the phrase "flatten the curve" that experts frequently use when talking about the coronavirus crisis gripping the globe. The "curve" in question is the bell curve of the epidemic, and as the virus infects more people, the graph starts to climb. In a worst-case scenario, it's an exponential climb, infecting a significant portion of the population. By limiting exposure to others — a practice known as "social distancing" — epidemiologists believe the curve could be meaningfully flattened.

Many experts believe the Bay Area's early action and social distancing flattened the curve. "Forum" host Michael Krasny noted in yesterday's show that this has been a "bright spot" in the pandemic in the Bay Area.

Brilliant agreed this may appear to be the case, but said the region needs to avoid what he refers to as a "saddle back," where the curve goes down but then back up.

"What we say in epidemiology, it's not a very nice thing...when the virus is in decline, you have to put your foot on the neck. That's not a nice way to describe it, but it's true."

Listen to the full interview with Larry Brilliant on "Forum" at KQED.org.

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Amy Graff is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: agraff@sfgate.com.