Osterholm Quotes

"The fact that we have such incomplete information a year into this is just inexcusable."

"What I do know for certain, based on these studies, that if I get vaccinated now and major flu activity is in January or February, I may have no protection left."

"We all as a global public health community have a right to know what's being done to stop these ongoing transmissions because this could be in our lap tomorrow."

“This is not based on science, and it’s dangerous . . . it’s just quackery.”

"This thing should have been solved a month ago."

“This one is very solvable. This is one of the easy ones. . . . If this same number of cases had happened in Minnesota as happened in Iowa, this would have been solved weeks ago.”

"Those of us who have spent a lifetime in public health can see when an investigation is languishing and not finding answers, and it really does potentially pose risks to the public’s health."

"There is a lot of room in between 'don't worry' and 'on the brink of disaster.' "

"[A global MERS outbreak] may never happen. [But] it could happen tomorrow. It could happen this afternoon. And I think there's clearly enough data to support that."

"You have to take the pandemic potential with a great degree of seriousness."

"There is either an animal reservoir that is widespread and we are not aware of it, or there is substantial unrecognized human-to-human transmission of this virus. Either way, this is a problem."

"The issue that we all worry about is what happens if this gets into a country that doesn’t have the same level of infection control capability in a health-care setting?"

"As long as it is around, it has every opportunity at the genetic roulette table to turn into something more dangerous."

“It’s a dot, and it takes two dots to make a line. If we keep getting more information, more dots, we can talk about a trend.”

“The world as a whole must invest in a new generation of effective influenza and coronavirus vaccines.”

“Each time one of these viruses infects a human or even another mammal, it’s one more throw at the genetic roulette table.”

"The global public health community remains woefully underprepared for an effective vaccine response to a pandemic."

“Public health has a responsibility to be very frank and honest on how well influenza vaccines are working”

“Dating back to Hippocrates, influenza has been one of the ‘lion kings’ of infectious diseases.”

"It's now abundantly clear we all need the boosters."