Mike Osterholm

One of the things that was very challenging is that we never spent the time afterwards, either commitment-wise or just from a time standpoint, to assess what the heck happened.

What did we go through?

We needed a 9-11-like commission without finger-pointing, not partisan, just to say what are the lessons we could have and should have learned.

And so, you know, we came up with this virus.

You know, at the time that we saw COVID take off, there were a lot of people skeptical that a coronavirus was going to do this.

As we know, SARS and MERS were both two prototype coronaviruses that, in fact, were of great concern.

But fortunately, as much as they could kill 15 to 35 percent of the people who got infected,

they weren't that infectious.

There were rare instances where we did have some super spreaders, but basically we were able to stop that transmission.

Well, the whole point came up, and of course I had the good fortune to spend some time with the real coronavirus experts, where what would happen if we had a coronavirus that had the ability to basically spread like we saw with COVID, meaning with the ACE receptor, et cetera, perfect package for spread.

also one that had the perfect package on board to cause severe illness, like we saw with MERS and SARS.

And sure enough, we've now actually found viruses like that in the wild.

And so the challenge really is right now is the fact that this isn't such a sensational potential scenario.

It's one that very realistic realistically could happen.

But regardless of what happens with the next SARS, like a pandemic or influenza, it's going to happen.

As we've talked about, the pandemic clock is ticking.

We just don't know what time it is.

And there's no guarantee because we just came through a pandemic that the next one couldn't start tomorrow.

But assuming that we may have a little bit of time, the question is, what can we do now to learn from what we went through with COVID to be much better prepared for the future?

What are the technology issues that we can use to our advantage now we didn't have five years ago?