'The Big One' could be even worse than COVID-19. Here's what epidemiologist Michael Osterholm says we can learn from past pandemics.
'The Big One' could be even worse than COVID-19. Here's what epidemiologist Michael Osterholm says we can learn from past pandemics.
www.livescience.com
'The Big One' could be even worse than COVID-19. Here's what epidemiologist Michael Osterholm says we can learn from past pandemics.
The new book "The Big One" describes lessons learned from past pandemics and how they might be applied to mitigate the dangers of future outbreaks.
I have a copy of the book "The Coming Plague" by Laurie Garrett, published in 1994. Maybe even the book GWB read and asked his advisors if it was a valid concern, then began the development of a task force to counter pandemics (that Trump eventually killed because Obama was part of).
Needless to say, it's been a well known issue to be ready for, and we've had both good and bad results depending on how we prepared and reacted to it. Have we learned enough yet? I'm not so sure.
When covid first spread worldwide, I had hoped that it would ultimately save lives in the long run by teaching us important lessons and forcing us to take actions that would leave us better prepared for a much deadlier pandemic in the future. It never occurred to me that a significant portion of the population would look at humanity and medical science struggling against a disease and choose to side with the disease. But unfortunately, that's the stupid fucking world we live in.
So instead of coming out of the pandemic in a state of readiness for any future threats, we've seen a concerted effort to dismantle our public health systems and eliminate anything that would help us respond to the next threat. And that was before we made wormbrain the secretary of health.
Thanks to the political influence of the Nurgle evangelists, we are absolutely fucked when the next pandemic rolls around.