Leavitt: We're overdue for a pandemic
The president has asked the Congress for $7.1 billion. We have not had a science initiative like this, or a preparation initiative like this since the Manhattan Project in this country, because we're investing substantial portions of that to invent new technologies that will provide vaccines, that will provide new antivirals, new diagnostics. We're mobilizing as a country to prepare. We're also developing check lists that will inform our collective thinking, and we're working to practice and to exercise our plans. Plans and check lists have the effect of – well, they reveal our weaknesses, but it is our weaknesses we seek, because until we know our weaknesses, we cannot improve.
A prepared nation will be a nation where every community, every business, every tribe, every community organization, every hospital, every clinic, every school, every college, every day- care center, every ambulance service, every household and family has a plan.
Now, I suspect that every one of you are asking the same question I think that we all ask ourselves. Is this Y2K? Is this something we're going to get all worked up over and then it won't happen? Let's hope so. There are some things we prepare for because we know they will happen. There are other things we prepare for because if they happened and we weren't prepared, they could change the nature of our society in ways that we could not respond to adequately. A pandemic is both. We need to prepare. But even if a pandemic does not happen soon, we'll be a stronger and a healthier nation because the pandemic preparation is the same preparation that we would make for a bioterrorism event. It's the same preparation that we would make for a medical disaster brought on by a natural consequence, like a hurricane or a tornado. It's the same kind of preparation we would make if we were to have a bioterrorism – or a nuclear event. Pandemic preparedness will make us a safer and a healthier nation. May I suggest that this is a time for real focus and one that will require our best efforts.
It was mentioned in the introduction that I was governor of my state prior to serving in this role and others. I'll tell you, one of the great things about being governor is I got terrific seats at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. [Laughter.] I often think of a moment that – at the games; there was a young skater by the name of Sarah Hughes who skated out onto the ice on the final night in fourth place. No one really expected, I think, she would win. There were great skaters in front of her. She was young, inexperienced, not well known. She started to skate. Something magical happened. There were 25,000 people in this arena watching her, a billion people around the world. There was a harmony about the way she skated that soon the audience began to feel it. She stopped, the music was done, her arms went out, her head went back. You could tell she had done exactly what she had hoped to.
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