At the very beginning of the outbreak, we had many questions about how transmission of this virus occurred. And unfortunately, we saw a number of people taking very firm stances about it was happening this way or it wasn't happening this way. And as we have continued to learn how transmission occurs with this outbreak, it is clear that many of those early statements were not correct, this is time for straight talk.

Michael Osterholm

The strain isn’t in the damn vaccine, and it’s giving cross protection.

Michael Osterholm

health

So, by about 2008, we started to see the vaccine rates drop as the word got through the Somali community that autism was linked to measles vaccination, in the years since then, Andrew Wakefield has actually been brought in several times to the Somali community here in Minnesota to actually give presentations supporting this information. ... His work has been retracted.

Michael Osterholm

us-news

Measles is by far one of the most infectious of all the infectious disease agents we deal with, if you get a major outbreak started in a community, like the Somali-Americans, the sparks fly out of that fire and then start forest fires around the state, and that's what we're concerned about today.

Michael Osterholm

us-news

Between 2000 and roughly 2008, the Somali community in Minnesota actually had some of the highest vaccination rates for 2-year-olds of any population in the state.

Michael Osterholm

us-news

When cases like this occur, it's critical that there be rapid epidemiological investigations to determine the likely location where the mosquito exposure occurred, only with that can you identify the breeding sites and eliminate them.

Michael Osterholm

top-news

The path forward is not quite so simple, and many unresolved challenges and questions remain.

Michael Osterholm

health-news

These patients may require extensive medical support for months to many years to come.

Michael Osterholm

healthcare

That's like saying you don't want to call the fire department because you're afraid the trucks will create a disturbance.

Michael Osterholm

health

No one really knows what is going on here with the flu strains and the match using the current methods.

Michael Osterholm

company-news

We have to understand that we're now living with this virus, and no one has the perfect plan to get us out of it, for the past two years, if I had a nickel for every time someone said to me,' Well, if we just did it like China or we did it like Taiwan, we would control this.'.

Michael Osterholm

We know that over the next five to six weeks we're going to continue to see transmission of this virus throughout this country, much like a viral blizzard, with that, we are going to see a perfect storm in our health care settings.

Michael Osterholm

Everything we're going to do right now is imperfect. Just accept that right now, we don't know a lot of the things we wish we'd know, but what we do know and what is emerging here is that this country is going to be in the soup in just the next few weeks with so many cases and so many locations, that we're going to see critical infrastructure as well as health care challenged.

Michael Osterholm

We now have a much better understanding of why the booster is so important, it can have a major impact potentially on whether someone has a serious illness with either Delta or Omicron or a more mild illness -- so I'm convinced that this is just a matter of time before this change occurs.

Michael Osterholm

I think we're really just about to experience a viral blizzard, i think in the next three to eight weeks, we're going to see millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus, and that will be overlaid on top of Delta, and we're not yet sure exactly how that's going to work out.

Michael Osterholm

What we need to do is have a way that we can make certain when people get on a plane that causes a border, they are not infected when they get on. They should be vaccinated fully. They should be tested. Then when they arrive [that] there’s a way to test them again and to follow up with them, this is something we desperately need. I think that will replace the travel ban in short order.

Michael Osterholm

Overall, there's still a lot of human wood left for this coronavirus forest fire to burn.

Michael Osterholm

The first thing is, we need to continue our programs of vaccination, but having said that, it is absolutely critical to get people vaccinated now, because... it's very likely that we will see additional surges, whether this fall or this winter. And the way to minimize those is, in fact, get people vaccinated. So please do that.

Michael Osterholm

We are not sure how this is going to play out for the next four to six months, if... The Delta variant follows this pattern that The Delta variant's taken in other countries, we can expect to see -- particularly the Southern sunbelt states that are getting hit so hard right now -- actually show a really rapid decline in cases probably in two to three weeks. The real challenge is what's going to happen with all the other states where we're seeing increases... If they too light up, then this surge could actually go on well into mid-September or later.

Michael Osterholm

These are really about finishing a primary series. Think about childhood immunizations. We have vaccines for which we need three of four doses. What we found here is that the immune-compromised often didn't mount an adequate response at all. So we're still trying to build that. That is different than a booster dose where someone did respond and in fact over time that wanes, i think it was a great decision.

Michael Osterholm

I believe that, in some ways, we're almost in a new pandemic.

Michael Osterholm