Read on—and to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss these Sure Signs You've Already Had COVID.

"So we don't just go on when we get this under control, forgetting how we have to do better in both the scientific preparedness, the public health preparedness and the public health response.

If it were not to the decades of investment in basic and clinical research that antidated this pandemic, we would never have been able to hit the ground running and we such a very short period of time get a highly effective and safe vaccine that goes into the arms of individuals 11 months after the virus was first identified and put on the public database.".

"When you talk about pandemic preparedness, for a certain aspects of pandemic preparedness, one is scientific and one is public health…..The public health preparedness that links up very closely to the scientificness of getting better platforms, better immunogen design, the ability to get production, literally within a very fraction of the amount of time that it takes to go from the recognition of a new pathogen to the ability to get vaccine.

And one of the things … is to get a global production capacity so that you don't have to wait until hundreds of thousands if not millions of people die before you can get vaccines out.

"I think we should have had a much more coordinated global response that I said so many times—a global pandemic requires a global response, and we have to keep in mind the issue of equity all the time, because you can't have a situation where you have virus circulating freely in one part of the world, because we have a I think almost a moral obligation for the lower and middle income countries to make sure that doesn't happen, but also it's for one's own self-interest because as long as you have a virus anywhere circulating freely, you're gonna get virus that will ultimately impact all of us

Follow the public health fundamentals and help end this pandemic, no matter where you live—get vaccinated or boosted ASAP; if you live in an area with low vaccination rates, wear an N95 face mask, don't travel, social distance, avoid large crowds, don't go indoors with people you're not sheltering with (especially in bars), practice good hand hygiene, and to protect your life and the lives of others, don't visit any of these 35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID