Leavitt: We're overdue for a pandemic
The next day I witnessed a news conference where this 16-year-old girl, who the day before had been studying for her SAT exams, was facing a wall of 300 cameras asking her questions: How did you feel? She said, "I, first of all, felt pride in being able to skate in the uniform of the United States." Then she said, "Most of all, I felt gratitude for being able to skate at all. Most people don't get a chance to skate the performance of their life, and I did."
I would suggest to you that this is a moment when we need to skate the performance of our life because our lives and others could depend on it, and future generations. We have an opportunity to be the first generation who truly can have enough information that we can not change the course of the pandemic, but change its effect, because pandemics happen and we must be prepared.
Thank you. [Applause.]
ZUCKERMAN: Thank you very much. That was an extraordinary talk, and the attention of the audience and the silence of the audience I think is just a commentary on how your words struck home.
The secretary has agreed to answer a few questions. And I wonder if I could –
(Unidentified speaker) – Mort, I would just ask if everyone could please identify themselves and your affiliation, just for our viewers at C- SPAN and other media, if you would. So we can ask a few questions. Anybody here.
ZUCKERMAN: Nobody has to ask the first question. Would somebody like to ask the second question? [Laughter.]
We have here – please.
Q: Yeah, Dr. John Lowe from the University of Prague. In 1918, could you comment on the fact that the country was preparing – just going into war, and how that might have had an effect on being able to deal with the pandemic, having not had any preparedness?
LEAVITT: Historians have pointed to the interaction with war as being an important contributor. I mentioned The Great Influenza that John Barry wrote. He believes that essentially the government's unwillingness to focus on the flu so as to not distract from the war effort contributed substantially to the lack of preparation or at least the lack of awareness that was occurring.
I think that's something that we simply cannot, will not allow to occur again to the extent that it happened then.
I think it's also important to recognize that the vector, if you will, of spreading the disease was in large measure soldiers. There's no firm understanding of where the flu of 1918 started. It's widely attributed to be in an Army base in Kansas, and as soldiers were transported all over the world, it began to move. And I don't know the – I'm not in a position to evaluate the scientific basis of that, but what I think you can say is that we wouldn't need soldiers. We have a world that's much different now, where there is – where people are essentially traveling on an unlimited basis.
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