For now we have experienced rare bird to human zoonotic transmission of flu strains primarily adapted to birds (colloquially “bird flu”) without any significant or sustainable human to human spread. So what’s the concern? As was originally raised by in the 90s, the concern is that every time a virus jumps from an animal reservoir to a human there is the potential that it will either mutate or will combine with another virus to cause a new strain that is highly contagious to humans. It happens, as we are now experiencing with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. So what do we do about it? The world is freshly confronting this question with the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s pretty clear that our global response to this virus was not optimal, to say the least. It is also clear this is not the last pandemic we will face. If anything pandemics will likely be coming more often than has historically been the case. Some viruses will be less severe than SARS-CoV-2, but others might be worse. There are several big-picture steps we can take to minimize the probability of new pandemics and their impact.