Letter from the Treasurer & Emeritus Executive Chair

Having been privileged to serve as Secretary and Treasurer since the organization’s founding, I am incredibly honored to have been elected to serve as Executive Chairman of the Global Virus Network.  I could not be more appreciative nor more grateful for the opportunity of working closely with Dr. Gallo, Dr. Bréchot, Dr. Giroir and Dr. Vermund, the GVN team and with my distinguished colleagues on the Board of Directors to advance and further the mission and consequence of the GVN.

The COVID-19 pandemic has conclusively demonstrated the absolute and compelling need for a global and apolitical organization committed to the preparedness, defense and first research response to emerging, existing and unidentified viruses that pose a clear and present threat to public health.  The GVN was created to address that threat by coalescing eminent virologists, epidemiologists, infectious disease experts and public health specialists throughout the world, working collaboratively and accretively to advance knowledge about how to identify and diagnose pandemic viruses, mitigate and control how such viruses spread and make us sick, train the next generation of virologists, facilitate the development of drugs, vaccines and treatments to combat them as well as addressing the pervasive and often politicized public disinformation and misinformation.  The GVN can and must be the definitive go-to authority and resource to anticipate, respond and mitigate global viral threats, as well as a beacon for advocacy, education, enlightenment and insight based solely upon science.

The GVN is at a critical inflection point.  Thanks to the outstanding acumen and expertise as well as the relationships and resources of the members of the GVN’s board of directors, we are now in a position to make the critical and consequential decisions necessary to advance and further the sustainability of the GVN, both financially and operationally, to ensure the future viability of the organization and make sure that the world will never again be unprepared, untrained, ill-equipped and uninformed to deal with pandemic viruses.”