Osterholm Quotes

"We know that people are being exposed through consumption with [chronic wasting disease] prions. What we don't yet understand is what would it take for that prion to actually infect that human with ingestion." 

"Trying to restrict infectious disease research right now would be like saying we’re only going to invest in safety for highways that run north and south, but forgetting all the ones that run east and west."

"I’ve been sleeping with one eye open about this virus [H5N1 avian influenza] for many years."

"The pandemic clock is ticking. We just don’t know what time it is."

"I think we have to be careful about interpreting these [influenza-like symptoms in people who drank raw milk] as we go forward."

"He [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] is a voice machine that continues to put out dis- and mis-information in such a way that it sounds believable to the public."

"What Mr. [Robert F.] Kennedy adds to this mix is really only more confusion and disinformation about what vaccines can do, what they don't do, how safe they are, how well they work."

"From a respiratory virus standpoint, this is probably the lowest we've been in terms of risk in the community for any serious illnesses since the beginning of the pandemic. It's quiet start, but a quiet start does not predict for you it'll be a quiet ending."

"These are good [COVID-19] vaccines, not great vaccines. If you listened to us in the first days after approval, it came across that these are great vaccines—we can take our masks off now and everything will be fine. And we just lost a lot of credibility there."

“It’s really important to understand that no one—and I mean no one—knows what H5N1 influenza virus is going to do to the human population."

"At this point, we don't have any evidence that this one [avian influenza A] case in Missouri has transmitted the virus to anyone. I'm not saying it couldn't have happened, but based on what we know so far, we've not had ongoing transmission. There's no crisis."

“I think it’s really important to emphasize that measles, which is one of the most highly infectious diseases we know of—surely as infectious, if not more infectious than even COVID—and if you are unvaccinated or unprotected from having a previous infection, if this virus is in the community, it'll eventually find you."

"We are moving toward that [a universal vaccine against flus or coronaviruses], but the investment in it is incredibly limited relative to the actual payback. There will be another influenza pandemic, and there will be another coronavirus pandemic—and the ones that come later could be much worse than anything we saw with COVID-19. This is where we really have to ask ourselves, are we being pennywise and pound foolish?"  

"We’ve already missed a big chunk of potential [H5N1 avian flu] worker infections. That’s the kind of thing we really need to get a handle on. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

"I urge people to wait [to get vaccinated against the flu] until we start seeing flu activity in the community and not just sporadic cases but sustained transmission. You don’t want to lose the protection you have from the vaccine in its earliest days after administration compared to what may be a 20% to 50% reduction over the winter season from the time you got the vaccine."

“One of the challenges of today is just that people aren't going to get vaccinated [against COVID-19]. Most people are confused. They don't really understand what's happening or what the risk to them is."

“Lewis Carroll once said something like, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.' I feel in many ways, that’s where we’re at" with the perception of COVID-19 risk.

"Get that dose of [COVID-19] vaccine. It'll take anywhere from 7 to 14 days before you really start getting the benefit of the immune response to the vaccine. And right now, we're seeing a lot of COVID. [The vaccine] won't prevent you from getting infected, but it sure can do a lot to reduce the seriousness of your illness."
 

"Now is the time to get a dose [of the anticipated updated COVID-19 vaccine] with this [viral] surge."

"One of the real challenges we have today with this issue is it has to be nuanced… no one really knows what the likelihood will be of H5N1 [avian flu] becoming a flu virus transmitted to people by people."