Osterholm Quotes

"This new [COVID-19] vaccine that we are talking about is going to have the old vaccine in it. Plus, it's going to have the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants in it. The data is clear and compelling that the additional doses do reduce serious illness, hospitalization, and death. So I will be very interested to see how many people actually take up these vaccines."

"If this [recently announced US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reforms] were on a scale of 1 to 10, this is about a 12."

"When Omicron first came, we had this huge peak, but once we got to the BA.4, BA.5 predominance in early summer, we've been just flat. It's like a high plateau, if you look at hospitalizations, you look at deaths, the two major data pieces we can use to try to illustrate what's going on in the community. It's amazing to see how flat it's been, a few percent up and a few percent down week from week to week."

"I commend CDC for taking this [reorganization] on. But if you could really do a wonderful job of fixing the CDC challenges, that’s only fixing a part of the problem in this country. So much of this is still at the state and local health departments."

“What we are trying to do basically is build the aircraft, including the outside, at 30,000 feet right now," on failure to conduct more research on monkeypox vaccine in endemic countries in Africa.

“The current [COVID-19] vaccines… are only preventing limited infection, and they are not stopping much of the transmission, we know that,” Osterholm said. “But at the same time, they are very effective, very effective in reducing serious illness, hospitalization, and death.”

“We don’t yet have the data to know how effectively an intradermal-administered [monkeypox] vaccination will protect immunocompromised persons," referring to the US Food and Drug Administration plan to inject one-fifth of the normal vaccine dose under the top layer of skin rather than into fatty tissue, a strategy to immunize more people against the poxvirus.

"Ninety countries right now have cases with this [monkeypox], all wanting the same vaccine that we want. And that is why as a country we have got to get together, the gay community, medical leaders, public health leaders from the local area, to decide, 'If I only have 2,000 doses of vaccine and I've got 8,000 people who need it, how are we going to get that out? Who gets prioritized?' That's going to be with us for months to come, don't expect anything to the contrary."

“Every time we’ve tried to out-guess this [COVID-19] virus, it has caused us to second-guess ourselves."

“As infectious as BA.5 is, we have to acknowledge that it’s important that you’re not in crowded conditions with limited air."

“Right now we just don’t have nearly enough [monkeypox] vaccine to even begin to have a measurable impact on widespread global transmission. There’s going to be a lot of frustrated people who want to get vaccine where it won’t be available.”

"If we chase this virus by just trying to catch up with the subvariant development and they make new vaccines, we'll always be a day late and a dollar short. The still most important thing is get the regular vaccine we have right now, knowing that it won't necessarily protect you from getting infected but it can go a long ways in protecting you from serious illness, hospitalizations, or deaths."

"By the nature of its infectiousness and ability to evade immune protection, [Omicron] has just remained the dominant variant. But, you can surely expect that Pi or Sigma will show up somewhere."

"We are still learning a lot about this virus, and it's changing so quickly. Fortunately, we're not seeing a major increase in severe illness, hospitalizations and deaths."

"This is really a hyper-transmissible virus. And if you look right now, as BA.5 is increasing, we're seeing this exposure now with the level of infections where this virus is. If you have a good elevator ride, you very well could get infected."

“These vaccines, you know, are not going to be the perfect stop-gap....They’re not going to prevent all transmission, they’re not going to prevent all illnesses, but they will do a lot to reduce serious illness in these kids.”

“There’s probably more transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the last 30 days than there had been in any 30-day period in the entire pandemic."

South Africa has "seen many breakthrough infections of people who were infected with [Omicron] BA.1 8 to 10 weeks ago and then got BA.4 and 5 just in the last 2 weeks. The good news is it's a much less serious illness, generally speaking."

"Look what happened—Delta showed up a month from now, relative to a year ago, and then Omicron. In a way, we're still in that kind of world. We don't know yet what the next variant or variants will be."

"We've never seen this subvariant activity with Alpha, Beta, or Delta, so who could have predicted 6 months ago where we'd be at? That's the challenge we have."