Osterholm Quotes

“It’s really important to understand that no one—and I mean no one—knows what H5N1 influenza virus is going to do to the human population."

"At this point, we don't have any evidence that this one [avian influenza A] case in Missouri has transmitted the virus to anyone. I'm not saying it couldn't have happened, but based on what we know so far, we've not had ongoing transmission. There's no crisis."

“I think it’s really important to emphasize that measles, which is one of the most highly infectious diseases we know of—surely as infectious, if not more infectious than even COVID—and if you are unvaccinated or unprotected from having a previous infection, if this virus is in the community, it'll eventually find you."

"We are moving toward that [a universal vaccine against flus or coronaviruses], but the investment in it is incredibly limited relative to the actual payback. There will be another influenza pandemic, and there will be another coronavirus pandemic—and the ones that come later could be much worse than anything we saw with COVID-19. This is where we really have to ask ourselves, are we being pennywise and pound foolish?"  

"We’ve already missed a big chunk of potential [H5N1 avian flu] worker infections. That’s the kind of thing we really need to get a handle on. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

"I urge people to wait [to get vaccinated against the flu] until we start seeing flu activity in the community and not just sporadic cases but sustained transmission. You don’t want to lose the protection you have from the vaccine in its earliest days after administration compared to what may be a 20% to 50% reduction over the winter season from the time you got the vaccine."

“One of the challenges of today is just that people aren't going to get vaccinated [against COVID-19]. Most people are confused. They don't really understand what's happening or what the risk to them is."

“Lewis Carroll once said something like, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.' I feel in many ways, that’s where we’re at" with the perception of COVID-19 risk.

"Get that dose of [COVID-19] vaccine. It'll take anywhere from 7 to 14 days before you really start getting the benefit of the immune response to the vaccine. And right now, we're seeing a lot of COVID. [The vaccine] won't prevent you from getting infected, but it sure can do a lot to reduce the seriousness of your illness."
 

"Now is the time to get a dose [of the anticipated updated COVID-19 vaccine] with this [viral] surge."

"One of the real challenges we have today with this issue is it has to be nuanced… no one really knows what the likelihood will be of H5N1 [avian flu] becoming a flu virus transmitted to people by people."

"The movement of milk is very, very closely monitored. It [anonymized testing of milk on farms for avian flu] could give us a sense if there are certain areas of activity."

"We don’t want to scare them [farm workers] off from continuing to work [amid the H5N1 avian flu outbreak in cattle]. We need to provide some kind of protection—both from a legal and health perspective."

"You can't count on [a pandemic being a once-in-a-century event] at all. It's random and unpredictable, and the world's conditions favoring influenza and coronavirus pandemics have only increased with time, with more opportunities for contacts with animal populations that will result in spillovers."

"What I would like to know is in terms of [H5N1 avian flu] transmission issues, is how many of these current farms that are turning up positive can trace back cattle movement to the original outbreak farms. If that can’t happen, it greatly complicates how you try to stop ongoing transmission in dairy cattle.”

“For this virus [H5N1 avian flu] to become adapted in a way that it can be transmitted by humans to humans is going to take a number of changes, and we have not seen those changes."

“Cases like this [symptomatic human H5N1 avian flu infection] are not surprising. We’ve seen that throughout the history of H5 infection that there are occasional human cases of flulike illness that occur among these people that are exposed. The real concern is when we see person-to-person transmission. And there’s no evidence here at all of that.”

“What’s happening with the bovine population [avian flu] is incredibly interesting. But I don’t think there’s any evidence here yet that H5N1 is an imminent human threat."

“Where I’d get concerned is if we see genetic changes that allow this virus [H5N1 avian flu] to [easily] attach to the respiratory tract cells of a human."

"The first thing we have to do is eliminate the sense of what I call happy talk. Estimates of [H5N1 avian flu vaccine] stockpiles that currently exist, and the potential to use them should this virus emerge into a human pathogen where it's transmitted by humans to humans, I think have been unfortunately overstated."