Osterholm Quotes

"These mosquitoes have adapted very well to our throw-away society. It's not in the swamps where the mosquitoes that spread malaria live. But that discarded fast food wrapper in the ditch could be a very important source of Aedes."

"When you have no other tools to use right now, that’s about the best advice you can give."

"We are in the most tenuous situation with regard to Ebola vaccines that we've seen since we started all of this."

"We're moving mosquitoes around the world at will right now."

"They do well in human environments."

"This is why we need game-changing influenza vaccines."

"If we're going to stop the transmission of MERS virus in hospitals, we've got to stop it from getting to humans in the first instance. And the only way we're going to do that is break that interface between the camel and the human."

"We have a tarmac full of candidate game-changing flu vaccines, but no one has built the runway for any of them to take off."

"Possibly in the hundreds​ [of Boston College students who could become sick in Chipotle norovirus outbreak]. Close proximity does increase likelihood of transmission, so clearly dorm rooms and dormitories could lead to increased transmission."

"So one of the key questions is going to be for any kind of game-changing flu vaccine is how do you overcome [diminish immunity with past virus exposure]? And to the extent that that occurs, when does it jeopardize protection if, for example, you create a vaccine against the … stalk versus the head?"

“The [MERS] outbreak in Seoul was a wakeup call to a lot of people that what has happened on the Arabian Peninsula is not likely to stay there. We are going to see more Seouls happening.”

"Planes are a great respiratory virus mixing bowl. You enhance your risk [of contracting flu] there."

“The likelihood that this virus [MERS-CoV] will move around the world to another health facility is very real."

"This is a day late and a dollar short. . . . Not only have the shots already been fired, but the body is now decayed."

"This will go down in history as one of those hallmark public health efforts."

"To be able to conduct a study like this and find these results when case numbers were plummeting … I think is really a major public health achievement."

"The good news is that this is a report that can move us to the next level. But it will mean little if it does not translate into action."

"Do we need to make these buildings much more airtight and the air be filtered? That in fact could be a possibility."

"I don't understand why they have not prioritized developing a camel vaccine to stop transmission from young camels to humans."

"If MERS shows up in the inner cities of one of the developing world megacities, like Lagos or Kinshasa, we will be in real trouble. We know there will be future outbreaks if MERS isn't stopped in the Middle East, but we are not very close to doing that now."