After Covid-19, we are not better prepared for the next epidemic

As a prominent expert in viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites that make us patient, Michael Ostohm knows what happens when humans reduce infectious diseases. Ostohm, director of the CIDRAP Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, was a pioneering voice during the Covid-19.

Now, the dismantling of the public health infrastructure in the United States with a feeling of enlightened warning. The new Austholem book, GreatThe response to Covid-19 and highlights the urgent lessons we need, but we did not learn, to deal better with the following epidemic.

He talks to the time why the world is, and the United States in particular, is less prepared to the epidemic now than we were before Covid-19.

This interview has been intensified and edited for clarity.

I have written other books on the risks of infectious diseases. Why did you feel the need to write this about Covid-19?

We have never done a hot washing of any kind on what happened with Covid-19, and we miss me a great opportunity to find out what happened correctly and what happened, in a non-partisan way, without finger. What can we do better for the next epidemic?

Now everything is about stepping. We learned about what is the source of Covid-19- leakage in the laboratory or indirect? We will never know the answer. We will never know that.

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Since I had the opportunity to participate strongly in the response of Covid-19-I was not just a distant spectator-I tried to summarize the lessons that we should have learned and did not do.

What are the lessons that we did not learn?

Looking at what is happening in the current administration with vaccines, I think we are in free fall. We are in worse now than we were literally before the roaming epidemic. No one at the White House is responsible for leading the country through the next blow from a Mandacked agent, which could be more deadly than if someone fired a material war against us on our beaches.

You have some specific proposals for how to avoid things such as a global lock, border closure, mask authorities-which, in the past, were not very effective in controlling Covid-19. What are some of these strategies?

The first way to save lives if we do not have a vaccine is to ensure that our health care system does not exceed. When hospitals work with a capacity of 130 %, some people will not get care, and those who do not get enough care to save their lives.

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This is where the snow days come. Imagine if we created a system where you knew hospitals for hospitals every day. Once you reach this capacity, let’s say, 85 % or 95 %, then the community can take measures and say we need to close for a few days here and change what we do to reduce the number of infections, and the number of people who are likely to need hospital care. All this knows that people will remain injured, but some will be injured in the first six months, others in the second six months, others in the third six months. If the infections are sufficiently spaced, you can mainly maintain a health care system.

Societies will have to make a decision that their hospitals be overcome at the present time, so they need to decline. During these snow days, do not close the entire system, but some people may take an additional few days of work, work may be canceled from home, or schools may be canceled for a few days. These are all things that can overcome the virus and put a health care system in the best place to help people.

You also propose a more comprehensive monitoring system, including medical identifiers, to track infectious diseases.

It will take a federal effort. The idea of ​​a medical identity is to help track your information so that health officials can know the location of the population with infection. It will be useful to know this, so officials know that they need to retreat to what people do every day to reduce the number of new infections, and thus gives hospitals an opportunity to catch up with.

There is a lot of opposition from people who automatically say they do not want the government to have more information about them, but they do not realize that the government has already a lot of information about us, including through social security and medical care numbers.

Government health agencies now have different vaccine recommendations from some professional medical groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). How should the public understand the conflicting advice?

I was asked how to explain AAP not to follow the ACIP recommendations [the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)]. I say you are asking the wrong question. The question is, how did ACIP reach the point in which it is scientifically inconsistent with the rest of the scientific world? The question should be, “What happened to ACIP?” Not “What happened to AAP?”

Who can trust the audience when it comes to health information now?

The bottom line is that we cannot trust the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services (HHS) and CDC now. It is very difficult for me to say. Disease Control Center is a very important sound. There are still very talented professionals and high training trained at the Center for Disease Control, but what is happening for leadership – specifically, Secretary of Minister Kennedy and his colleagues – to the point that cannot be trusted.

What does this mean for the health of Americans?

I have never seen it before [so many] Dangerous and possibly catastrophic decisions made by HHS as they did in the past ten weeks. We need our influenza vaccine technology for any hope to provide enough vaccines for the first year to a year and a half from the next possible influenza. Now, we can make a sufficient vaccine for a quarter of the world’s population during the first 15 to 18 months of the epidemic, with the egg chicken culture that we use today. This is an example of a very dangerous situation that we can mainly take off if we have research and development of investors in the technology of the Merseuled Rana.

My point is that we cannot stop a pandemic. Once the virus is released, nothing can be done. When indirectly occurs from animals to humans in any part of the world, when people travel, this virus can spread quickly. For this reason, we must prepare for this and reduce the effect of this spread with the vaccines that we develop as quickly as possible for this specific virus. We need to make a lot of it and take it out, and MRNA is an important part of the ability to do so.

During and after the epidemic, there was a lot of criticism of the World Health Organization (WHO) and how he responded. How can organizations respond like those who are improved?

Who is very important, and it is very important that we have a strong of these types of events. The challenge is that during Covid-19, the World Health Organization was one of the real obstacles to obtaining good recommendations for the public on respiratory protection. For me, this says that just because there is official government health bodies, this does not mean that they are pouring properly.

To address this, we need discussions about the response. Whoever used to do a hot washing machine from its response. Why did it take nearly two months to announce a pandemic? I put a document through CIDRAP on January 20, saying that this is a pandemic situation, and the world needs to deal with it. Why were they very slow of the mass?

We all have done good things, and we all did some difficult things. The important thing now is to ask, “What happened?” And use this information to improve in the future.

What are some of the largest lessons learned from Covid-19 and the procedures that should not be repeated in the following epidemic?

We need the gathering, not the finger point. We do not have to agree on what happened in Wuhan … but what we have to do is to prevent something similar from occurring in the future. If that happens, how do we respond? In answering these questions, none of them should be a party. Everything should be about what science tells us.

We need to stop closing the border. They are useless. We do not have any evidence that the closure of the borders materially affects any emerging pathogens that appear, but often people think it should be done. And their opposition makes it look as if we do not care, and this is not true at all.

What we have to do [a better job of] In public health, we understand that we are not the only answer that will be on the table. There will also be social and political issues that must be taken into account.