“If we did some basic preparation for a major outbreak,” Sabeti said recently, “we could actually make it not such a huge, dramatic, crazy thing.” Sabeti refers to a Level 4 pandemic as a bananas event. “Why should we be waiting for something that’s truly bananas to break out before we start planning for it?” she asked. “There’s not a lot of value in preparing for a war, because what happens in a war is unpredictable. But there is a lot of value in preparing for an outbreak, because what happens in an outbreak is predictable. Let’s be prepared, not scared.”
