The threat is very serious and will only increase as the days go by without the waters receding.

I think the overall response was deplorable in terms of the timing and there's plenty of blame go around, but I think the overall public health response was heroic.

What often happens in a situation like this is people latch onto very concrete things, like buying vaccine. That's not readiness. That's stockpiling. We have got to have first responders who know what their role is, people who can get shots into people's arms quickly, and hospitals who can handle patients.

If we do all this work, and there's no pandemic, you still have 36,000 people die every year of seasonal flu, and you could make a big dent in that. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

A lot of the problems occur when people think everything's back to normal when in fact it isn't.

People are eating out of (non-working) refrigerators. They think it's good because it's still a little cool.