Public Health Prophet

Mike Osterholm, PhD, MPH by Stuart Isett for Fortune Brainstorm Health

Like many of you, I’ve spent the past week or so reflecting on how our world shifted this year, and what that may predict about our future. 

Unlike many of you, I have known epidemiologist Mike Osterholm, PhD, MPH for nearly 20 years, so I should have been more prepared for all that unfolded this year.

Mike Osterholm returned to the University of Minnesota to start his latest gig at the beginning of September, 2001. It was before the world shifted and our perspective of risk shattered eleven days later.  

When he arrived, he brought with him his reputation as a solid public health professional with just a bit of flair for the dramatic. Even twenty years ago, he predicted a coming flu pandemic that would change our way of life with the ominous line, “I’m not here to scare you out of your wits, but into your wits.”

His office was just down the hall from our public affairs team and we were quite aware that his presence would require our attention and care. Among the first tasks was helping him nail down the name of his new center. He needed a logo and a website, and oh so many other ideas bubbled forth. 

And then planes hit buildings and everything changed.

We all remember what we were doing the morning of the 11th of September. My sharpest memory was Mike in our offices with three pagers going off, monitoring unbelievable media images as they played out on screen.  

He was hearing reports that the Mall of America would be next as a symbol of our materialism.  

Then it was the IDS tower as the tallest building between Chicago and the West Coast.

And then I asked him to move into my office so that his predictions would stop causing more stress for those in his earshot.

That was my first exposure to Mike Osterholm’s remarkable ability to project the possible, if not always the probable. The paperback version of his first New York Times bestseller, Living Terrors: What America Needs to Know to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe, came out in September, 2001 and provided a horrifying laundry list of other ways to disrupt life as we know it.

So, the anthrax mailings that quickly followed 9/11 made perfect sense. Mike was convinced he was a target when a package arrived in a University mailroom leaking a dusty, powdery substance from its brown paper wrapping addressed to him.

We called a hazard squad to come figure out what was in the package. Their arrival, with sirens blaring and personnel in full hazmat suit attire, attracted media interest which was slightly embarrassing when the package turned out to be a batch of cookies that had crumbled in the mail.

Mike has always had a fertile imagination for what could possibly happen when it involves catastrophe and its public health consequences. He’s brilliant that way – taking the possible into the realm of probable human outcomes. And then you realize that of course it all makes sense.

As the state’s epidemiologist, his dogged approach and ability to imagine the possible quickly tracked down the source of foodborne outbreaks, as well as the connection between tampons and toxic shock syndrome. 

As his Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy gained well-earned attention, Mike was frequently invited to speak on the range of public health topics that have emerged in the past twenty years. We learned early on that it was best to have Mike do a presentation following the lunch or dinner hour as he was fond of speaking on food safety issues, frequently noting that lettuce is “nature’s toilet paper.”

His writing and his books are always provocative. So, I wasn’t surprised at all when his next best seller arrived in 2017 and read like a compelling screenplay.  Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs predicts the impact of a highly contagious coronavirus with a degree of accuracy that foretells our next year or so.

It’s not easy being a prophet. During the twenty or so years I’ve known him well, his frightening predictions earned him the moniker of Dr. Doom, as he told us exactly what a viral pandemic could do to our way of life.

He was right and we need more people like him who aren’t afraid to speak their science, based on research, facts, and yes, critical imagination.