You've spent a lot of time thinking about the possibility, the inevitability, really, of some kind of

pandemic hitting us all. What was going through your mind when you saw the news out of Wuhan?

Well, my first reaction was that this looked like the option that we feared the most.

A fast-moving, respiratory pathogen that we had never seen before, that was moderately lethal.

And then, as we began to learn more about its transmissibility, I began to realize that this was a

truly extraordinary threat that we faced. That's Stephen Morrison, author of a study that warned

last year of a pandemic like the coronavirus spreading to the U.S. He's talking with

frontline correspondent and producer Martin Smith. As you watch the numbers rise, the number of cases,

the number of deaths, and you see these horrendous scenes of frontline hospital workers giving their

lives, shortages of equipment, how do you feel? I feel like everyone else, I feel anguished.

There will be thousands upon thousands of people in America who will die needlessly. They will

experience preventable deaths and there will be thousands of health workers whose lives will be

imperiled and many of them will become sick and some of them will die because of our lack of

preparedness. For years, Marty's reporting for frontline has held leaders and government

finance in the military accountable. Over the past several days, he's been talking with

leading experts and insiders about early warnings and missteps related to the coronavirus outbreak.

I'm Rainy Arons and Executive Producer of Frontline and this is the Frontline Dispatch.

The Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation,

committed to excellence in journalism and by the WGBH Catalyst Fund.

I'm recording on my end.

Great.

Marty, it's great you could jump on the phone with me. Where am I talking to you from?

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