Michael Specter Quotes

Those people who get the flu shot not only protect themselves from getting the flu or reducing their likelihood of developing the flu, but those around them.

The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation

The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences!

My father contracted polio on a troop train in Korea.

You don't have to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the country if you have a couple of cases of smallpox cropping up.

Coughs seem very common here, especially among the children, though people look strong and healthy, but in the absence of proper statistics one cannot undertake to say whether the district is a healthy one or not.

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

This is an industry that doesn't have the common cold... It has cholera.

Most of the doctors in the Tunisian administration, especially those in country districts, contracted typhus and approximately one third of them died of it.

From a population point of view, it's actually very important that as few people as possible get the flu. People getting the flu is not a private matter. The risk for healthy people is really about your friends and neighbors and fellow travelers.

My friend told me later he got the chicken pox. I told him I caught politics and never got over it.

If smallpox were a threat just to individuals, then it could be left up to individuals to decide whether or not they want to protect themselves.

Vaccination is the single most important step people can take to protect themselves from influenza.

Our progress against malaria is impressive. But vigilance remains a critical ingredient to protect the health of all people.

Why do our kids need to be protected from flu? Isn't that something only for the cold western countries who have long, cold, below-zero winters? That's what I thought until I learnt that India's tropical weather facilitates circulation of viruses around the year, unlike the West, which sees a peak only during winter.

We live in a world at constant risk of public health emergencies. In our increasingly interconnected world, public health emergencies can affect anyone, anywhere.

I don't think people really take pneumonia seriously when they hear it. But people really die from pneumonia: kids, older people, even just regular-aged people. They just die from pneumonia.

The border patrol gave us a list of the diseases that they're concerned about, and Ebola was one of those.

Think about old people; think about young people, those with immune system problems. They can't really protect themselves well against the flu, so by you limiting the spread of the flu and getting vaccinated, you're helping protect them as well.

Our small businesses, those in healthcare and the sick should be the only priority of legislation regarding Coronavirus.

When you're in a pocket with low vaccination rates, that's when you find yourself at greater risk of getting measles.

It's now evident that public health is part of national security.

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.

I just want people to know the facts and science and the information... measles is preventable.

If you really want people to remain healthy, you can't just throw pills at people once they become sick, which I feel like I was doing as a medical doctor, so I began working on more upstream thinking.