I got to see firsthand what a nonpartisan organization [the 9/11 Commission] that was and how they worked very hard not to point fingers, but rather to point forward. How can we make sure this never happens again? This is exactly what we need with regard to COVID. At this point, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that’s going to happen. People aren’t necessarily interested in preparedness for the future. What we’re interested in doing is going back and blaming for the past.
You’re describing in the book a doomsday scenario in which, arguably, things are better than they are now because of the way that the fabric of pandemic preparedness is being torn apart. What would that scenario look like in the world we’re in now, where we’ve canceled mRNA research grants and are not participating in the World Health Organization?
Just in the last six months, in bats and caves in China, we have now found a coronavirus that likely has the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2; it has the ability to kill at probably the same rate as MERS and SARS. So the scenario we wrote about is not at all doomsday. This virus is out there…
I have always realized that a very large influenza pandemic could even potentially be worse than 1918, but we also could likely have a major positive impact on it if we could develop mRNA-like technology that could be made very quickly. We would probably have enough vaccine to cover the world in less than a year.
‘The Big One’ by Michael T. Osterholm
What do you make of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cancellation of mRNA research grants?
Will the rest of the world continue to explore the technology? Yes, they will. Does that mean that they’ll have major capacity? No. We’re already hearing that places are shutting down their operations without US support, both from a private and a government side. If we do have that influenza pandemic, mRNA technology is really critical. If it’s a coronavirus, I can say with certainty we’ll be at the end of the line.
The book chronicles the story of Dr. John Snow, a physician who, in the 1850s, correctly traced a cholera outbreak in London to a public water pump, despite the going theory, espoused by miasmists, that linked the outbreak to bad air.
I have talked to public health experts who describe Secretary Kennedy as a modern-day miasmist. I’m wondering what you think about that characterization, and what can we learn from the Dr Snow example?
It’s not that [Kennedy’s] promoting a particular point of view. He’s misrepresenting most of the view of the scientific world…. One of the things that I hold very sacred and has been a hallmark of my career: It’s all about the data. What data do you have? I’ll go wherever the scientific argument and exploration takes us, if they have the data. That’s not important to [Kennedy]. He doesn’t need data. In fact, he says things all the time that there are no data to support.
