Preparing for Future Pandemics

If you were to ask most people in the U.S., they’d probably say that just one pandemic in a lifetime is more than enough. The thought of facing another one isn’t very appealing.

But for Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), the missteps taken during the COVID-19 pandemic should prompt discussions about how we could handle an even deadlier virus in the future. He believes that there are valuable lessons to draw from this experience.

In his book, The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics, Osterholm and his co-author Mark Olshaker intertwine two main themes. One focuses on analyzing the U.S. government’s handling of the pandemic, as well as the responses from health organizations like the CDC and WHO.

Osterholm describes it as a project that originated early in the pandemic, during which he and Olshaker noted numerous errors and expressed their critiques through various op-eds regarding the federal response.

He mentions in an upcoming episode of the Osterholm Update podcast, “We knew we had to write a book once this pandemic ended, discussing the lessons learned.”

Throughout the book, they tackle many ongoing controversies surrounding the pandemic, from lockdowns and school closures to the challenges in communication and the debates over masking and vaccine mandates. The goal wasn’t merely to point fingers but rather to extract insights that could be useful for future outbreaks.

“Some of the issues we all faced were structural and complex, not something that could be fixed quickly,” write Osterholm and Olshaker. “However, addressing them is crucial if we are to succeed in future battles against microbes.”

Exploring a Potential Future Pandemic

The second key element elaborates on a “what if” scenario regarding a future pandemic, imagining a virus that starts in Somalia, spreads rapidly to a refugee camp in Kenya, and then around the world. This theoretical virus, dubbed SARS-CoV-3, combines the transmissibility of COVID with the severity of earlier viruses like SARS and MERS.

“What if a virus could spread easily like COVID, but was as deadly as MERS or SARS?” Osterholm asks. He notes that scientists have actually discovered such viruses in bats in caves in China, making this scenario less fiction and more of a warning.

The narrative not only depicts the havoc wrought by the virus globally but also covers the responses from officials, the public’s reactions, and media involvement. For many, it could evoke memories of the chaotic early days of 2020.

Olshaker shares that they aimed to design a “nightmare scenario” that felt authentic, scientifically sound, and engaging, likening it to the true crime narrative style used in his co-authored books.

He states, “What we’ve created here is a compelling mystery, which mirrors the essence of public health, along with a dramatic technological backdrop.”

The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics is available now. For further insights from Osterholm and Olshaker, catch the August 4 episode of the Osterholm Update on the CIDRAP website.