Osterholm Quotes

"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."

"I have been pushing USDA [US Department of Agriculture] and the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] over the course of the past few weeks. We've got to do much more [H5N1 avian flu] sampling in swine. That is the gateway to human infection."

"This [H5N1 avian flu] virus has largely saturated dairy cattle throughout the country."

“I wouldn’t have any problem drinking milk tonight from an [H5N1] influenza standpoint at all. My grandchildren could drink the milk tonight.”

"That [transparency and clear communication] to me is being missed here [in US Department of Agriculture communication on H1N1 avian flu in cattle]. And I can’t for the life of me understand why. This is a serious public health challenge, but it shouldn’t be a media challenge. And they’re turning it into one."

"They [US Department of Agriculture officials] are creating the perception that something [H1N1 avian flu spread to atypical hosts] is happening or not happening that would not meet with the public’s approval. And this is really unfortunate. There’s no evidence here that there’s some kind of a smoking gun, that somebody did something wrong. Just tell us what you’re doing.”