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CORVALLIS, Ore. – The science, politics and future of pandemics will be the topic of the Oct. 12 Oregon State University Science Pub.

The virtual event, a joint effort of Oregon State University in Corvallis and OSU-Cascades in Bend, will feature a talk by Chunhuei Chi, a professor in OSU’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences and director of the Center for Global Health.

The COVID-19 pandemic caught most nations off guard and countries responded with a range of policies and attitudes, resulting in different outcomes. In Chi’s presentation, “The Pandemic That We Were Not Prepared for: The Science, Politics and the Future of Pandemics and Our Life,” he will analyze how different countries responded and the consequences of those responses.

He will provide a brief introduction of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and talk about how it spread from China to the world. He will review effective pandemic control policies that some nations have successfully implemented.

He will also analyze key social-political factors that help explain the variations in national responses. Finally, he will talk about how we can control this pandemic effectively, what a post-COVID-19 world may look like and how we can prepare for it or shape it.

The Science Pub will run from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 12 and can be viewed for free. The event will be broadcast on Facebook Live and YouTube Live. Registration is require and can be completed at https://beav.es/oPW.

Sponsors of the OSU Science Pub include the Office of Research, OSU-Cascades in Bend and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Connect Central Oregon, a collaborative program with the OSU-Cascades Innovation Co-Lab, will produce the event with their student interns.