Osterholm has been preaching what he calls “straight talk” about the pandemic.
While much uncertainty remains over the COVID-19 pandemic, the scenario that University of Minnesota infectious disease expert Dr. Michael Osterholm would prefer to avoid is a situation in which the disease backs off over the summer, before exploding again in the fall.
“This may sound terribly insensitive and I surely don’t mean it to be, but as I have said before, I would actually be much more concerned if over the course of the next 4-6 weeks around the world we saw the virus activity begin to drop somewhat precipitously,” Osterholm said on the Osterholm Update, a podcast for the Center For Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP).
“If that’s the case, I think we have much more of a reasonable [chance] that this could be an influenza-like pandemic experience, where as we saw in the early waves and all of the other influenza pandemics in the last 250 years, sporadic activity around the world and then have the virus suddenly disappear for anywhere from 2-4 months and then come back with vengeance in a large wave. That would make me nervous.” Continue reading.