No one was prepared for COVID-19. No one but a handful of epidemiologists and visionaries — including, most famously, Bill Gates in his now-viral TED talk — had an inkling that the next global pandemic was a matter of when and not if.

In retrospect, our unpreparedness is embarrassing and almost inexcusable. All the more so considering everything we know about HIV, SARS, MERS, and, most recently, the Ebola and Zika epidemics.