Given my work in public health, the possibility of an outbreak like Covid-19 happening has never been far from my mind. In many ways, the pandemic was deeply predictable. We did not know when such an outbreak would occur but we could reasonably assume that one would emerge sooner or later.
In public talks on epidemiology, I have often used Ebola and SARS as examples of the interconnectedness of health, reflecting how contagion spreads in the modern world. So when the first signs of trouble emerged in Wuhan, like many in my field I watched with concern. With the rapid global spread in February 2020, it was apparent we faced a serious problem, as I wrote at the time.
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