"I stand before you representing a company - just one CEO ... but speaking for every CEO, united against evil"

For 15 years, I have given weekly all-hands addresses at Yext. Below is the transcript of today's address.

Today is the fifth time I have addressed you since the beginning of the Covid19 crisis.

My message today is not for you, it is directed to the evil virus that presently permeates in our world.

Covid-19:

Your name is numbered, 

Your DAYS ARE NUMBERED!

The havoc you wreak shall come to an end.

You have picked a fight, you cannot win.

You dare to fight all of human civilization.

But you have awoken a sleeping giant.

You do have one positive accomplishment: You have brought the entire globe together as allies.

Never in the history of the world, has all of humanity aligned against a single foe.

Every great conflict, has had human winners and human losers.

This great conflict, when it is over, will have only human victors, and one loser: YOU.

The United States of America, Europe, and Asia are coming together to crush you.

The tide is already turning.

The awesome power of Western and Japanese governments and corporations are lining up to CRUSH YOU.

Brooks Brothers, America’s oldest retailer - a shoemaker founded in 1818 - converted its clothing factories into mask factories capable of producing a staggering 150,000 masks per day.

The GAP and Canada Goose announced that they are pivoting their resources and factories to producing hospital gowns and scrubs for hospital workers.  

3M - the company that makes Scotch Tape - has inducted surge capacity to make more than one billion masks by the end of the year.

It will take more than just clothes to defeat you, Covid19.

In the Ventilator Challenge UK, Airbus, Rolls Royce, Siemens, Mercedes and 20 other companies have formed a consortium to quickly mass produce 20,000 ventilators.

James Dyson, inventor of the Dyson Vacuum cleaner has already invented a new ventilator and will produce 15,000 per month.

And back in the United States, the Ford Motor Company announced they will build 50,000 ventilators over the next 100 days, and 30,000 per month after that. Ford’s plant will work 24 hours a day - 3 shift per day - to deliver ventilators around the clock.

But Covid19, we are not just playing defense on you.  

Global scientists are going on offense against you.

See, apparently, you don’t mutate very fast.  

That’s why conglomerate Johnson and Johnson - J&J - is jumping ahead to mass produce vast quantities - more than $1B - of a Covid19 vaccine they have developed.

This big pharma company - in partnership with the government of the United States of America - is so confident the vaccine will work, they’re already mass producing it!

Covid19, you might argue J&J’s vaccine will never succeed, since they are just a greedy corporation and will charge prices too high for anyone to afford!

NO! Says global humanity, united against your wretched evil.

Dr. Paul Stoeffels, the chief scientist of Johnson and Johnson says, and I quote ““We have from the beginning decided we are going to do this not for profit so that the vaccine becomes affordable and available on a global scale as quickly as possible”

You. Are. Fucked.

Our social distancing measures are already slowing you down.

Last week, I noted that the crisis in Italy - the world’s worst outbreak - may have peaked.

7 days later, you are slower, EVERMORE!

Your evil infected 6,557 italians on March 21, the peak. Each day since then, you’ve gone down. March 30th you were 4,000.

Sorry CoronaVirus, but I understand a couple of things about math, and a daily declining absolute number is a linear growth rate.

Unfortunately for you, you need exponential growth rate to survive.

I do not discount that you will have your impact, and it will sting.

You will hurt many millions of people and kill many thousands.

But the fact is, Covid-19, your simple RNA is simply no match for the ingenuity, resilience, and compassion of human DNA.

I have never been prouder to be a human citizen of the world, and especially never prouder to be the CEO of a company.

It is companies - with cooperation from governments and their citizens as customers - who can uniquely step in to mobilize resources and save lives and save the world.

I stand before you today representing a company - one ceo, but speaking for every CEO, united against evil - with the full conviction to commit to mobilizing the full resources of everything we have to crush you.

In life, for every man, death is a certainty.

And you … Covid-19 ... may take å few of us.

But we will take all of you.

For more than a decade, Yext has fought to do the right thing.

For as long as it takes, Yext will fight to eliminate Covid-19.

For, more than ever, the world depends on reliable facts.

For more than a decade, Yext has fought to put perfect answers everywhere.

We always have, and we always will.