As a leading expert on the viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites that make us sick, Michael Osterholm knows what happens when humans underestimate infectious diseases. Osterholm, who is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, was a leading voice during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, he’s watching the dismantling of the U.S.’s public-health infrastructure with a sense of informed alarm. Osterholm’s new book, The Big One , assesses the response to COVID-19 and highlights the urgent lessons we need to, but haven’t, learned to better handle the next inevitable pandemic.

He talks to TIME about why the world, and the U.S. in particular, may be even less prepared for a pandemic now than we were before COVID-19.

This intervie

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