I helped advise the US government on the next likely pandemic. What I learned is alarming

Four years on from the first Covid lockdown, life feels to be largely back to normal, although legacies of the pandemic remain. Collective amnesia seems to have set in. Politicians seem eager to move forward and not relive the decisions, delays and deaths that characterised public policy and press briefings. Yet we can’t forget such a brutal event, when Covid is estimated to have killed nearly 16 million people worldwide in 2020 and 2021, and caused life expectancy to decline in 84% of countries, including Britain. Pandemics aren’t a one-off event. There’s...