NEW YORK – In 2006, the idea that a virus would spill out of an animal and into a human seemed distant to many people. But Ali S. Khan, of the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases, was tasked with dreaming that nightmare by daylight.

Many of the viruses that Khan ended up examining were zoonotic in nature, the West Nile virus, Ebola, and others. They emerge unexpectedly and are very difficult to treat.

SARS was most interesting according to Khan, despite only infecting around 8,000 people. Khan stated that “Because it was so contagious and so lethal,” we were very lucky to stop it.

Khan is now the dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, in Omaha. He went to Omaha in 2014, leaving the directorship of the C.D.C.’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, which included overseeing the Strategic National Stockpile of emergency medical supplies, supervising eight hundred employees, helping assemble a national biodefense strategy against pandemic threats, and much else.

Khan stated that the poor response to COVID-19 is about “lack of imagination.” There were warnings of the virus, including Khan’s favorite, SARS. MERS was also a warning. Superspreading events also drove that outbreak. Khan stated that the COVID-19 response is partly due to “failure to appreciate the sars and mers warnings, both delivered by other coronaviruses; and loss of capacity at high government levels, within recent years, to understand the gravity and immediacy of pandemic threats.” Khan said that “The time has come for us to move beyond seeing public health as the ax in the display case, where the sign says in case of emergency, break glass.”

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