Margaret Chan Quotes

Tom Cotton voted against preparing America for pandemics like Ebola.

The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus.

Ebola has not yet come into contact with modern medicine in West Africa. But when protocols for the provision of high quality supportive care are followed, the case fatality rate for Ebola may be lower than 20 percent.

The fact that there was no catastrophic pandemic in recent history does not mean there won't be another one. And we are certainly not prepared for the next pandemic.

I don't think we are comforted by the fact that we were told there would never be a case of Ebola in the United States and obviously that's not correct.

Ebola has arrived in New York City. And I say, 'if it can make it there...it can make it anywhere!'

We all have a stake in the battle against Ebola.

I'm really an alarmist when it comes to epidemics. Swine flu now; when SARS was big, I was all freaked out about that, bird flu. That terrifies me.

The U.S. must immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our borders. Act fast!

The Ebola epidemic can serve as an early warning wake-up call to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic.

It's a tragedy that modernity has released this Ebola beast into the world. It renders humans untouchable, and that's sickening. The international response so far has been scandalous. China has delivered f**k all.

The Ebola epidemic is the worst health emergency there has been in modern times.

More than 50 million people around the world died during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. That's why we have epidemiologists all over the world tracking whether new strains of flu emerge.

As megacities like Mexico City and Lagos become increasingly common, we could see a rise of the urban epidemic and a new era of infectious disease threatening global health security.

The difference is that with Ebola, it is such a devastating disease, and there is still no cure. They're still working on vaccines. The fact of the matter with polio, there is a cure; there is a vaccine.

We do prioritize addressing MDR-TB. We have done that for more than 20 years; that's why we've been able to drastically reduce U.S. cases of MDR-TB.

See, Ebola, like all threats to humanity, it's fueled by mistrust and distraction and division. When we build barriers amongst ourselves, and we fight amongst ourselves, the virus thrives. But unlike all threats to humanity, Ebola is one where we're actually all the same. We're all in this fight together.

The Ebola epidemic was the most frightening outbreak I have witnessed in my lifetime, and I believe it was necessary to react globally as strongly as we did.

I think I first encountered Ebola from the movie 'Outbreak.' Then there was the book 'The Hot Zone.' It's the type of thing you either read and say, 'Oh wow, that's terrifying,' or you read it and say, 'Oh wow, I want to do that.' I read it and said, 'Oh wow, I want do that.'

I think the world should unite and focus on strong health systems to prepare the whole world to prevent epidemics - or if there is an outbreak, to manage it quickly - because viruses don't respect borders, and they don't need visas.

A respiratory pathogen may pose an asymmetric risk to America, given our culture, economy and federalist system.

In the ongoing effort to combat Ebola, more needs to be done to rewrite the public-health narrative. It must move from one that has been infused with fear to one that recognizes the hope for survival that supportive care can offer infected people.

There are several hundred people who stayed in the Ebola-affected countries and continued to do the work, put themselves at great risk because medical workers are the most likely to be infected because they're helping out when the person's health is deteriorating, including quite a bit of bleeding as they're getting very, very sick.

That's the world out there, little green apples and infectious disease.

Facebook revealed that Ebola was the most popular Facebook topic in the U.S. this year, with the World Cup coming in sixth. So welcome to America, where even Ebola is more popular than soccer.