The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically illustrated our collective vulnerability when we lack readily available biomedical countermeasures and interventions to control a novel threat. Our limited capacity to create these responses de novo compounds the problem. There is an urgent need to expand our knowledge about future viral threats BEFORE they directly threaten us, and to have in hand tools and capabilities to respond rapidly upon their onset. Our investments must move beyond advancing science and technology alone, but also focus on the processes and systems that link these advances to policy making. Despite extraordinary achievements over the past decades, particularly in the areas of genomics, big data and artificial intelligence, the sciences associated with pandemics and epidemics have largely remained outliers. We also lack understanding of the ecological and climate-related drivers that will contribute to future pandemics and/or epidemics. There have been few notable advances in our ability to forecast future outbreaks or reduce the likelihood of future ‘spillovers’, and early detection and rapid response remain great challenges. Globally, we still have an inadequate capabilities and capacities to generate new biomedical countermeasures and interventions that are broadly applicable across viral and bacterial populations and available prior to a pandemic and/or epidemic and readily available to support a rapid response.