What’s Next With the Pandemic (with Michael Osterholm)

For reasons we still don't understand, there's kind of a modified SARS/MERS impact of this disease [COVID-19] in the sense that there is a super-shedding kind of environment ... 20% of the patients or cases account for 80% of the transmission.

I think we have a pretty good handle on the fact that the transmission with this virus [COVID-19] is primarily swapping air with someone else.

Among patients with moderate COVID-19, those randomized to a 10-day course of remdesivir did not have a statistically significant difference in clinical status compared with standard care 11 days after initiation of treatment. Patients randomized to a 5-day course of remdesivir had a statistically significant difference in clinical status compared with standard care, but the difference was of uncertain clinical importance.

This is not the last coronavirus that's going to happen. We're going to see more.

If we have an inadequately researched vaccine [and] we haven't done the data analysis because we don't have the data to analyze relative to effectiveness and safety, and public health leaders stood up and said, 'No, we can't do this right now,' that would create such a confusion in the public [and] such a backlash ... I worry desperately about that. We can't have that happen.