Osterholm Quotes

"Viruses don’t change when crossing political borders, so we can expect this one to continue behaving as it did in China. Nothing any government can do will effectively stop its spread."

"Mother Nature has the upper hand, and she is using the trappings of modern life—air travel, burgeoning population and low-income country megacities, encroachment on natural habitats, and an interconnected global just-in-time delivery system—to extend her reach."

"Elected and appointed officials will do well to follow the lead of some of the very seasoned long term federal employees who are at the table. They've been through a lot of these events like this and fortunately we have them and they really represent the best of the best."

"Every health care organization in the country should be dusting off any of their plans they’ve ever had for mass infection events like this where they need to hospitalize many more patients."

"I have no doubt [2019-nCoV] will travel across the world, including the United States. Just like with controlling the flu, it's kind of like controlling the wind. You can't."

"Viruses don't change their skin when they cross the political boundary, so what we are seeing in China [with 2019-nCoV] is absolutely going to happen around the world and what is happening in China right now is very extensive transmission."

"When this [2019-nCoV] hits us with any real punch, public health will be the fireman, the policeman, the EMS, the National Guard, all wrapped in one. And yet, when you look at what we invest in public health overall, unfortunately it is often on a shoestring budget."

"Every time we get an outbreak, there's an outpouring of voices saying we're going to have a vaccine. I wish we had these [2019-nCoV] vaccines, too, but transferring the Grand Canyon to the state of New York is probably more practical at this point."

"Don't tell the public that everything's going to be OK, but at the same time, tell the public we're going to get through this."

"The idea that we could create this seal around China is just totally unrealistic. I think at that point, you have to assume we're going to see widespread [2019-nCoV] transmission around the world."

"It wouldn't surprise me if in the next week or less there will be some further reconsideration in China of how to stop this [because the lockdown in Wuhan] is a little like shutting the barn door after the cows have escaped."

"When the president of the United States says we're ready for these coronaviruses, that answer is absolutely not true. We have such crowded emergency rooms today. We have hospitals where people have to wait hours in hallways to get seen. That's exactly how outbreaks of coronaviruses get amplified.

"The [novel] coronavirus is one that can be transferred quite readily by the respiratory tract—just breathing. So, it has the potential to spread quickly around the world. It also is one that a sizable portion of the population typically has severe illness and death."

"This is a bad disease. It makes people very sick, and it can kill you. And so I think that is an important combination. But the ultimate case fatality rate is still yet to be determined."

"Wuhan is the transportation capital of China, which connects basically Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Every company that has any manufacturing capacity in China right now better be looking very carefully at its supply chains."

"Screening individuals for their temperature at airports is really not an effective way to detect if someone has this [2019-nCoV] virus or not. I have likened it to fixing three of the five screen doors on your submarine."

"If we have one super shedder, that tells us we're going to have more super shedders. If there's one, there will be more."

"People sitting in waiting rooms, ERs, doctors' offices, waiting to be seen — this is where we really worry because we can have these super spreading events."

"The U.S. should be very concerned about it, but not because the fact that we're going to become clinically ill with it, but today many of the products and goods that we use in this country, including our medicines, medical equipment, etc. come every day from China."

"The thing we worry about as health officials is a thing called 'super spreading,' where we have certain individuals that are not just infectious but highly infectious."