Mike Osterholm

If a crisis begins to happen today, they might as well go out and hail down the first taxi and ask the taxi driver what the hell to do.

This is scary.

Well, let me tell you, we're down to a simple decision, a very simple decision.

Are we going to put a lot behind science, something that over the past decades have given us many, many gifts in terms of better health, longer health, et cetera?

I mean, think back to what it was before vaccines.

Think back what it was before we had clean and safe water supplies, et cetera.

And since that time, you know, we've watched life expectancy in the last century go from, you know, in the high 40s, low 50s to now in the 80s, okay?

That came largely from public health.

So you got science.

Or do you decide to go with magic, smoke, and mirrors?

And that's what the other alternative is.

It's magic, smoke, and mirrors.

And I don't know when the public is going to wake up to the fact that they've got to get their elected officials, they've got to get people to understand that.

This is not something that's just an ideological argument.

This is real people's lives.

We are going to see major increases in deaths across the board from vaccine-preventable diseases, from other diseases.

We're gutting the foodborne disease surveillance in this country.

We're gutting the whole area of arboviruses and mosquitoes in this country.

And then, of course, look what we've done globally.

In terms of USAID and all the funding, we're no longer part of WHO.