"Mother Nature is the greatest bioterrorist of them all, with no financial limitations or ethical compunctions."
For the interested reader but if you believe in the tooth fairy or Trump, please ignore, as you will be really really confused.
'*DEADLIEST ENEMY' p 291,292 Published March 2017
"When we asked about an influenza pandemic sometime in the indeterminate future, and how well prepared we are, he replied, "We know that influenza can cause a catastrophe. We know it because it has happened, and will happen again: that which is not prohibited is compulsory." This is a playoff a famous quote from T. H. White's The Once and Future King, and to me it means that if something is possible, in our kind of planning, it is inevitable.
"It's not a low probability," Simonson continued.
It is a high-probability, low-frequency threat. So it will happen; that is a given. The variables are when and how severe; and, of course, how prepared mankind will be to respond. As you know, Mother Nature is the greatest bioterrorist of them all, with no financial limitations or ethical compunctions-at least that we understand-and no limit on the level of effort expended. Our most dangerous adversary will not originate in the tribal areas of Afghanistan or some other remote place. It is everywhere man and animal live in close proximity. Just ask the chickens. As we used to say at HHS: If you're a chicken, it's already a pandemic.
And for something like this, you can't turn on a dime. You have to have a ten-year runway. The problem is, with any of these threats, Congress gets worried, they appropriate a lot of money. What isn't obligated gets taken and put into the next threat, and the next."
There can be no greater bang for the buck than investing in what I call a game-changing influenza vaccine. In any given year, or even in any given decade, the probability of a major influenza pandemic is low. As a possibility for some unknown point in the future, it is virtually a dead certainty."
'Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs'
by Michael T. Osterholm, Mark Olshaker
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30841977-deadliest-enemy