Eric McCormack Quotes

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.

There may be a little bit of finger-pointing - there always is in a situation like this - but I think of Ebola as an act of nature. It's the biological equivalent of a tsunami, and yes, we are having trouble handling it.

We have seen SARS stopped dead in its tracks.

While Ebola's deadly reach has proven to be a complex and unique international challenge, the many uncertainties surrounding this virus continue to threaten U.S. national security.

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

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

Even though we know the origin of diseases, panic sweeps. It's one thing that frightens us, because it's your health and your body - it's more like a tangible threat; it's not like a foreign enemy you can fight. That was really what was uppermost to many of us whilst making 'Black Death.'

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

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

When World AIDS Day was first observed in 1988, there was no truly effective treatment for what was almost always a deadly disease.

We saw in 2003 the beginnings of an outbreak of an illness called SARS. SARS ended up killing 800 people which is a significant number of deaths, but nowhere near as high as it could have been.

If you find diseases before they've really emerged, you can control them early on, before you get a major epidemic.

Pandemics happen. When they do, they change the world.

Avian flu, which has already killed 50 people, is only a mutation away from being transmissible from person to person. We have no immunity, no vaccines, and no cure. It is imperative that we strengthen our domestic vaccine supply, expand legal protections, encourage collaboration between the public and private sectors, and advance research and development. These initiatives will help protect us from a deadly viral outbreak that experts warn could come to our shores any day.

People don’t take it [the Zika Virus] seriously…. They haven’t seen any babies with microcephaly, YET!

Since the first large Zika outbreak ever recognized, in 2007, the CDC has had boots on the ground responding. Our laboratories have developed a test that can confirm Zika in the first week of illness or in a sample from an affected child.

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.

I'm concerned that we're sending these military men... facing an infectious disease that could be deadly. If they go to Iraq, and they fight ISIL, and they come home, they're not bringing ISIL with them and threatening their families or platoon mates.

Malaria has long been a devastating and life-threatening global epidemic disease in human history.

When there were cases of Ebola in the States, I respected that people wanted to address concerns and take some sort of action, but the focus turned completely to the U.S. At one point, we started to wonder, Where is the Ebola epidemic happening? The States - or West Africa?

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

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

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

A severe disease that transmits easily will leave very little international surge capacity as most countries will need their own staff and resources to combat the outbreak in their territories.

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.