Mike Osterholm

And what happened was, as alpha gave way to beta, beta gave way to delta and the variants, and then we got to Omicron, we saw a very different impact on kids.

But people had published these papers in the first year saying it's not a big risk for kids, that I don't get seriously ill.

And we missed totally what was changing with the epidemiology and pediatric COVID per the different variants.

And so the fact that, you know, 87% of the deaths occurred in year two and three,

We totally missed that.

We were having all the arguments about school being open or closed or what we did based on what was from year one data.

And I think this was one of the lessons that taught us is you got to constantly be evaluating the data, whether it be for transmission purposes, for disease severity, et cetera.

And I think that's one of the lessons we should learn with these variants.

These variants were really important.

And that was a newer picture issue.

So, but I think that's the case.

But in terms of your last point, unfortunately,

The only thing that's ever really going to take a pandemic off the table is having a global reach with vaccine, having access to everyone.

That's an effective vaccine.

And as you know, and I wrote in the book, I talked a lot about influenza because this is an area that I've been very involved with.

Right now, globally, we have the ability to make using chicken, egg and cell culture methods, the two we relied on for decades.

We can make enough vaccine in one year if everything goes right to cover about a quarter of the world.

It would take us three or more years to get enough vaccine for the world, which by that time, you know, the influenza pandemic could be over.

Now, where I had great hope, at least in the short term, I'd like to get that universal vaccine is mRNA technology.

Because there, it wouldn't necessarily be any better vaccine for flu, meaning in terms of we know we have challenges with waning immunity with influenza vaccines.