Why We're Still So Unprepared for Flu and Other Crises

It’s surprising how easy it is to brush off dire existential threats. We remain, for example, unprepared for the next pandemic flu, though experts warn it’s only a matter of time before a new strain capable of killing millions will emerge. As epidemiologist Michael Osterholm and writer Mark Olshaker wrote recently in the New York Times, we aren’t even prepared for this year’s seasonal flu. The outbreak has killed 37 children as of late January, according to the CDC.

Osterholm and Olshaker wrote that much more money must go into the development of a so-called universal flu vaccine -- one that would protect against any of flu’s many strains, including any new versions of the virus that might jump from animals to humans, as happened in 1918. In that pandemic flu, between 50 and 100 million people died.