McGill’s Joanne Liu calls for global pandemic preparedness council in Scientific American

The COVID-19 pandemic was incredibly costly, for the health of the population and the economy. But the next infectious disease pandemic could be even worse. Politicians can choose to prevent it, but they need to take action now, argues Dr. Joanne Liu (MDCM'91, IMHL'14, DSc'16) in Scientific American.  For this to happen, there needs to be a leader-level council that identifies gaps in preparedness, mobilizes finances where they are needed, and holds its stakeholders accountable. The cost estimate of real global pandemic prevention is more than $10 billion per year, but the costs of being unprepared can be orders of magnitude more than that.