Mike Leavitt Quotes

Of course when you look back from all the pandemics that have happened in the world, they were really scary.

Global pandemics---whether naturally occurring or intentionally spread---pose a greater threat than most man-made weapons of mass destruction.

After all it really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.

This syndrome, SARS, is now a worldwide health threat... The world needs to work together to find its cause, cure the sick and stop its spread.

Pandemics happen. They have happened three times in the last 100 years…. They change the politics, the culture, the society. Pandemics do that …. Pandemics reshape history …. The likelihood of a pandemic is almost certain…. The consequences are worldwide.

More people in the world have died in such a short time of plague than has been heard or seen since the beginning of time …. Whoever touched the sick and dead was immediately infected and died …. That pestilence deprived of human inhabitants villages and cities so that there was scarcely found a man to dwell therein.

This virus is an enemy that the entire country underestimated from day one and we have paid the price dearly.

Humankind is no stranger to calamitous outbreaks of diseases.

Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously, precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world.

Unfortunately, infectious diseases don’t pay much attention to budget cycles.

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

We've all learned about this disease since it was first discovered several years ago in Europe. And so I think we've learned from the European experience.

Without an adequate response, an epidemic can develop into a pandemic, which generally means it has spread to more than one continent.

When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans - an avian flu pandemic.

Infectious diseases ... have probably been the most dangerous of enemies of mankind, much more so than war and mass murder. When one studies the constant epidemics of the past and the deficiency diseases on land and at sea, one realizes that the whole of civilization could have succumbed, and one is constantly surprised that mankind has survived.

The plague swallowed up many of the good things of civilization and wiped them out. The entire world changed.

Smallpox is the only human infectious disease ever eradicated by science.

History has told us that no one can stop a pandemic. The question is: when is it going to happen? I don't think anybody has the answer to it. We have to be on the lookout for any time, any day.

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

We can't predict when infectios diseases will break out, but their breakout is inevitable. That is why we must be prepared.

I'm tired of being behind this virus. We've been behind this virus from day one. We underestimated this virus. It's more powerful, it's more dangerous than we expected.

The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.

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

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

COVID-19 is a national crisis, and we need a national response to address it.