Will there be another pandemic?

Will there be another pandemic? These experts from Fortune’s Brainstorm Health conference weighed in.

Transcript

00:00And so absolutely, of course, there's going to be another, there's going to be another pandemic.

00:03The only question is, how long does it take us?

00:05We know we're going to have another one. We just don't know what it will be.

00:08So hopefully, as a result of what we all experienced in 2020, people have a greater

00:12responsibility and a greater understanding of public health and the important work that

00:15public health workers do every day.

00:17A pandemic is always a possibility. And I think all of us have

00:21our ears up a little bit, whether it's bird flu or the next thing that could be on the horizon.

00:25But I think, you know, what the last pandemic showed quite clearly,

00:29it took every inequity in our society and threw it into a pressure cooker.

00:33And it really put into stark relief how fragile our public health system is.

00:39And my hope is that going forward, we take the lessons from that and we make sure we

00:44have better public health infrastructure in our country.

00:46Humans are inherently social creatures. We want to be around each other.

00:48We want to be breathing each other's air.

00:50We want to be sharing viruses and germs and bacteria all over the place.

00:54It's inevitable we will have another pandemic.

00:56And I think we've learned very few lessons from our time in COVID.

00:59And so the only question to me is not whether there will be another pandemic,

01:03but how long it will be until another pandemic starts.