Eric Topol

And it's about a virus that gets wings.

and circles around the world in hours, I guess starting in Somalia and then getting into your neck of the woods in Minneapolis.

And it's obviously something that you imagined, but it's maybe not so far off from what could happen.

So take us through the SARS-3 scenario that you envisioned.

Well, you've been doing that quite a while.

This is a culmination of that work.

But, you know, one of the many, many quotes that are in the book that really hit me

is the one from Joshua Lederberg.

The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus, the virus.

And you, of course, know this perhaps better than anyone about what a virus is capable of doing.

And as you outlined, you know, what if you had the combination of a MERS virus

and an Omicron that could spread like wildfire, but also wasn't just as, at times for younger, healthier people, you know, relatively, not relatively innocuous.

Of course, it could still cause long COVID in those people, but now we have potential, it could be something much worse.

And some people would say it's just a matter of time, but I want to go now to the, well, that term that you can, you coined so many microbial 911, you know, at,

That's right there.

When you get to SARS-2, our current pandemic, endemic, whatever you want to call it,

There's many things.

You said there were eight major mistakes, right?

And right at the top of the list was the whole denial of airborne transmission with this thing about fixation.

Oh, it's the liquid droplets.