Osterholm Quotes

"What role the Wuhan lab may have played, it doesn’t matter. [The issue is] needing to beef up lab-based safety for future potential agents that might escape."

"There are issues around participant safety that haven't been fully addressed [at the upcoming Tokyo Olympics]. You're only as strong as your weakest link."

"You know, I gave up my eyeballs and my fingerprints to Clear so I could get on and off an airplane sooner. Will people do that so that you can feel confident that the person you’re sitting next to without a mask is, in fact, vaccinated?"

"I for one don't ever believe we'll reach herd immunity. ... What we will do [with COVID vaccinations] is dramatically decrease transmission; we'll make it very different than it has been."

“For [COVID] vaccinated individuals, in a private home or wherever, party hard. Enjoy it. You’ve earned it. You can feel safe in doing that, and that’s what we need to help people understand; [vaccinations are] what's going to make a real difference in getting our communities back to this new normal.”

"What we’re going to see are more of these localized [COVID-19] outbreaks that are going to require a response from governors and mayors."

"We are seeing vaccines fall precipitously in terms of new vaccines. During the last 4 or 5 days, we’ve had more people in this country vaccinated just for the second dose rather than the first, which indicates that the numbers are going down."

"We had many more arms that wanted [the COVID-19] vaccine than the vaccine was available. Now, it's no longer the last mile. It is solely down to the last inch, getting the needles in people's arms."

"Just remind ourselves that it took nine months from the beginning of the pandemic to accumulate those first 1 million cases. It took four additional months to accumulate the next 1 million cases. And it only took three months for the third million. That should give one a sense also of what's happening globally today."

"If there is any sense that something is being hidden [about the COVID-19 vaccines], I think that will create irreparable harm from a credibility standpoint to our ability to continue to pursue these vaccine programs."

"Michigan and Minnesota have among some of the highest [COVID] vaccination levels in the country. We've also been hit with previous waves and yet look what's happening. We don't have adequate vaccination levels in this country along with previous infections to prevent a surge from occurring."

“Anybody who will tell you exactly what the level of herd immunity is [for COVID-19], is also likely to want to sell you a bridge.”

"Please understand, this B.1.1.7 variant is a brand new ball game....[Before] we didn't see children under 8th grade get infected often or they were not frequently very ill, they didn't transmit to the rest of the community."

"Ten countries have received about 80% of the [COVID] vaccine....If we continue to see this virus spread throughout the low and middle-income countries unfettered, they're going to spit out variants over the course of the next years that, in each and every instance, could challenge our vaccines."

"We're seeing the increase in [COVID] transmission in young kids, primarily in the upper Midwest, in the Northeast right now. But that's just a matter of time before we see it go throughout the entire United States....We are almost at the finish line, but we're not there."

“There’s no other country that I’m aware of that’s seeing major B.1.1.7 activity that’s opening up everything rather than locking it down."

"This isn't a pandemic of just a virus. This is a pandemic of emotion. This is a pandemic of pain and suffering that has to do with lost jobs and lost persons.…This is not just a public health journey. This is really a personal journey for all of us."

"Even if we are able to reduce the number of [COVID-19] cases in the older age population of serious disease, we will pick up more in younger populations, which is exactly what we've seen in Europe."

"When bars are crowded the noise level goes up and then people talk more loudly and talking loudly projects the virus father into the air if you’re infected."

"It's all going to be about the [COVID-19] variants and the vaccine, and that will determine where we're going to be next year, the year after, and the year after that.