Think how much pain, suffering, death and economic disruption we've had in getting from 5% to 15% of the population infected and hopefully protected, wake up, world. Do not believe the rhetoric that says this is going to go away. Michael Osterholm More Quotes by Michael Osterholm More Quotes From Michael Osterholm The next 14 weeks I think will be the worst of the pandemic, people don’t want to hear that, but if we look at what these variants are doing, particularly this one from the United Kingdom, and see what it did in Europe, see what it’s done in the Middle East, it’s now beginning to start that here in the U.S. We are going to see that unfold. Michael Osterholm People assume more is better. Michael Osterholm We have got a Category 10 hurricane staring at us. People don't understand that. Michael Osterholm What we can expect to see in the course of the next, I think, six to 14 weeks, is something that we haven't even come close to experiencing yet. Michael Osterholm I worry desperately in the next six to 12 weeks, we're going to see a situation with this pandemic unlike anything we've seen yet to date, that is really a challenge that I don't think most people realize yet. Michael Osterholm The difference is going to be,' Are we going to react now or later ?' do we put the brakes on after the car's wrapped around the tree, or we try to put the brakes on before we leave the intersection ? Michael Osterholm I worry desperately in the next six to 12 weeks we're going to see a situation with this pandemic unlike anything we've seen yet to date, this will happen, we are going to see a major increase in cases, the challenge is how many. Michael Osterholm We are going to see our hospitals literally on the verge of collapse. Michael Osterholm It's just that simple. Michael Osterholm I worry that the Thanksgiving Day surge will then just add into what will become the Christmas surge, which will then make this one seem as if it wasn't so bad. Michael Osterholm We have to understand we're in a very dangerous place. People have to stop swapping air, it's just that simple. Michael Osterholm It takes much more than a declaration. It really needed follow through. Michael Osterholm Long-term care is, unfortunately, an indicator of what's happening in Mark Parkinson community [ at large ] -- meaning that as much as Mark Parkinson try to bubble them from the virus in the community, it's a very vulnerable location, because Mark Parkinson have people who work there [ going in and out ], as well as family and friends of those who live there. Michael Osterholm At this point, we don't really have a national plan that really puts together what we're trying to do. We have 50 different states, the District of Columbia, the territories, all kind of with their own plan, we're at 70 % of the number of cases today that we were at the very height of the pandemic cases in early April, and yet I don't see any kind of a' This is where we need to go, this is what we need to do to get there' kind of effort, and that's one of our challenges. Michael Osterholm Understanding that the whole thesis of contact tracing may just fall on this very issue [ of super spreaders ], if you have a small number of cases, you can clearly try to contact trace all of them, and you're not wondering if they're super spreaders or not. With many thousands of cases, you're always going to be trying to determine : what are the highest priority ? If you don't have a sense of who the super spreaders are, there's no way you can [ factor ] that in. Michael Osterholm If we could identify super spreaders early that would help but at this point we don't have any reasonable way to do that, there's no big double S on their forehead that says' Super Spreader' so that we can go find them. And that's the challenge. Michael Osterholm This damn virus is going to keep going until it infects everybody it possibly can, it surely wont slow down until it hits 60 to 70%. Michael Osterholm We have to understand that we're riding this tiger, we're not directing it. Michael Osterholm This thing's not going to stop until it infects 60 to 70 % of people, the idea that this is going to be done soon defies microbiology. Michael Osterholm Singapore's approach has been by far one of the very best, what they are really showing the rest of the world is that this is just a difficult virus to beat back and keep down. Michael Osterholm
