From then on, a discursive strategy in the media invoked a coming crisis: 'We have had three pandemic outbreaks of influenza, in 1918, 1957 and 1968 , killing some 100 million civilians. We can be sure a new pandemic will arrive, and unless we take appropriate measures, hundreds of thousands will die'. Although the pandemic warning was a policy lubricant (Parool 26 April 2001) , Osterhaus believed in the reality of this message and he says it was a plain technical assessment (Osterhaus 6 March 2008). His colleagues, however, believed the message to be an overstatement, bordering on lobbying for research funds (Coutinho 13 May 2008; Goudsmit 2 April 2008 , 19 May 2008 Van der Noordaa 7 May 2008) . They also say that Osterhaus' tone has tempered over the years, perhaps because the discursive strategy has had its desired effects, perhaps because the scientific reality has changed. 13 This tension between his own scientific gut feeling and the scepticism of his critics is a dilemma he dubbed the 'cry wolf dilemma'. This 'visionary virologist' had to perform a balancing act between two extremes: on the one hand the credible but reticent academic, on the other hand the 'incredible fool' (Osterhaus 6 March 2008); and the longer it took for a pandemic to strike, the more his credibility would be at stake.