Osterholm Quotes

"Using surgical masks, whether in public or being near a COVID-19 case, likely offers little protection against virus transmission. The size of airborne particles containing the virus and that are in the same shared air space near a case means the virus will find their way into the areas where the masks are not flush against the face."

"I don't think airport temperature checks have any major effect on stopping or even slowing down [COVID-19] transmission. We just don't have any good data to support that."

"I think companies are looking at it [COVID-19] in a way they hadn’t looked at it before because I think the disease itself is convincing people this has a potential to be around for a while."

"Governments must support private-sector manufacturers in providing N95s and other equipment to front-line health-care providers and other essential workers. In terms of minimizing illness and death, this will be more important than any border closing, airport screening or quarantine."

"It is no longer useful to debate how long and far this disease will spread. Public-health officials should stop trying to convince the public and political leaders we can contain this virus to China. One of the greatest hazards to the public in any crisis is misinformation from official sources."

"In a very real sense, what happens to our health-care workers will be the metric of how we respond to this unfolding [COVID-19] crisis. If we don’t do all we can to protect them, they will quickly transition from providers to patients, further stressing already overburdened facilities."

"Look at the accelerating number of [CWD] cases. This is out of control in the wildlife populations"

"What the hell happens when you introduce CWD into meat processing environments? If somebody's deer or elk comes through and it's contaminated, what does that mean for everything else behind it? I’ll tell you: it's not good because it's not easy to sterilize and decontaminate places and surfaces that become tainted with prions."

"What we're watching is the public health community trying to catch up to the speed of the virus."

"The [COVID-19] numbers coming out of China right now have to be viewed with some real caution. Part of the challenge we have is that there very well may be at best only 10% of cases that are actually getting counted."

"Now is the time for every local and regional healthcare system to plan for the potential wave of [2019-nCoV] patients needing hospital beds, many requiring intensive care. Emergency departments will be overrun with 'real' cases and 'worried well' who need testing."

"Would we consider going to war and then ordering aircraft carriers or other weapon systems for the fight? Yet that is how we often deal with vaccines and drug treatments for diseases of epidemic potential."

"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."