Osterholm Quotes

"It's gratifying to see many parties now talking about the need for a game-changing influenza vaccine—we've come a long way in this discussion. [But] just $10 million here and $10 million there is not going to do it."

"It's a broken system that we have to fix and we have only had marginal improvement. We've got to stop all this happy talk. We have to illustrate the problems … instead of just congratulating ourselves for what we accomplished."

"Pandemics are worldwide epidemics, and two diseases today that have the potential to become a worldwide outbreak overnight are influenza and antimicrobial resistance — not a single big outbreak, but a growing collection of serious challenges. With antibiotic resistance growing, we are entering a post-antibiotic era."

"The public has a whole new understanding of science, data, facts, and fake news. We've surely had an anti-science movement well before the current situation, but it's never been as acute."

"The whole issue of prions and meat consumption is a new and much more serious topic we need to look at. Even though there's no evidence that there is transmission [from camels], the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

"They can do everything perfect in terms of food and safety and overall ship hygiene, but the problem is, if someone comes on board with norovirus at the beginning of the trip, it's very possible in that closed environment that there'll be transmission to other passengers as well as staff."

"This [antimicrobial resistance] isn't an acute crisis where a wave just hits you. But we see these rare cases of resistance in remote areas of the world, and within a year or two, it’s everywhere."

"[Funding for a game-changing flu vaccine] is really about national security. The infectious diseases are against all of us. And this is one where we really, as a global community, need to come together and say, what is it that we need to do that is necessary to hold off, if not get the upper hand against these microbes?"

"The ultimate goal is this game-changing flu vaccine which would make seasonal flu vaccine obsolete. There is a hell of a challenge getting people vaccinated every year. We are realizing vaccine user fatigue that comes with that. We see rates of vaccine use going down, not up."

"The principles of making horsepox virus are not different [from smallpox]. Do you want to lay out a roadmap for the bad guys? The work in Canada [by Evans] is virtually a road map. Now almost every Tom, Dick, and Harry can do it."

"We've got to do what we can with what we have. But we can't be lulled into a false sense of security that what we have is what we need."

"[The flu vaccine is] causing actually almost an erosion of confidence in vaccines as opposed to increasing confidence. … If you look at over the past five years, the number of people being vaccinated has actually leveled off or in some groups actually decreased. And that's because I think people are really confused about this vaccine and what it does."

"I don’t think we're that close at all [in developing a game-changing universal flu vaccine]. I think the kind of work that's gone on has been critical and important, but it's only the first 5 feet of what would need to be a 100-foot rope."

"Pandemic influenza is going to continue. It's one of those things that when it happens, whatever we have for tools, that's it."

"Seasonal flu is bad, but this is not that unusual. When a totally new flu strain emerges in the human population, that's when we really have a problem."

"We live in a global just-in-time economy. A pandemic could put a screeching halt to that. [Aviation] is really a very accelerated way to move the virus that's unprecedented in human history."

"It's just a matter of when and where it starts. The possibility that we could have a 1918-type pandemic again is actually very real."

"People have painted this as the worst flu in recent memory, and it's probably not good. Any death from influenza is an unfortunate tragedy, but at this point, I'm hard-pressed to say that this is a significantly elevated year for influenza. It's more of a media issue than an actual data issue."

​"If you look at the confidence intervals, they all overlap. The results are very similar. There’s nothing here that's surprising. It's very consistent with what we've been seeing."

"The strain isn't in the damn vaccine, and it's giving cross protection."