Thomas R. Frieden Quotes

I think we didn't recognize how hard it would be to care for someone with Ebola who was desperately ill in the U.S., and how much hands-on nursing care there would be, and we didn't expect two nurses to get infected.

Some of the most vulnerable people to getting the SARS virus are health care providers. The general public, walking in the street, there is really not that much risk at all. It's a very, very low risk - a very, very low risk.

It affected even our neurosurgical department in a way where our neurosurgical floor has now been transformed into a COVID-19 patient-only floor.

Experiments suggest that if one particle of Ebola enters a person's bloodstream, it can cause a fatal infection. This may explain why many of the medical workers who came down with Ebola couldn't remember making any mistakes that might have exposed them.

Ebola isn't a respiratory virus. It doesn't spread through the airborne route. So it's not likely to spread like wildfire around the world and kill tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. That's what I think of as the next big one.

If a vaccine works, then the vaccinators might conceivably set up what's known as ring vaccinations around Ebola hot spots. In this technique, medical workers simply vaccinate everybody in a ring, miles deep, around a focus of a virus.

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

We've had risk assessments performed by Harvard University, which said that even if we did have a small number of cases in this country that the likelihood of it spreading or getting into any kind of human health problem is very, very small.

The launch of phase 1 Ebola vaccine studies is a first step in developing a vaccine that could be licensed and used in the field to protect not only the front line health care workers but also those living in areas where Ebola virus exists.

I believe we have to nip Ebola in the bud before it spreads through Africa and to other countries.

What the experts are telling me is that there's very little chance that Ebola is going to mutate into something that could spread directly through the air. The real concern is not whether Ebola could go airborne, but whether it could spread faster.

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.

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

Some hospitals screen all ICU patients and isolate those with MRSA, a process that can be challenging for both caregivers and patients.

The CDC and the federal government have already admitted that they have failed to get ahead of the spread of Ebola in Texas, and we aren't going to let that happen in Florida.

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 don't want to be in the clubhouse, if I have the coronavirus or something like that, coming into the clubhouse and spread to everybody, that's not good, right?

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

Covid spreads too easily to think it can be confined to the young.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is matter of common knowledge that an epidemic of alarming proportions is prevailing throughout the country. Out of an abundant precaution the Senate has ordered the galleries closed, which action, I understand, meets with the approval of the medical authorities, and so I ask unanimous consent that the Speaker be instructed to close the galleries of this House until further action shall be taken by the House.

The plague is upon us. One cannot well study plagues until after they have run their course.

Like SARS or Ebola, COVID-19 seems to be another disease that has jumped from the animal kingdom to the human and then traveled quickly because of trains, cars, airplanes, and people clustering in public places.

There comes a point in every story where you have got a reservoir of knowledge, and you are then really just adding the substantial new facts to your understanding of it. That is the easiest situation, because you can call on that reservoir, but when you get a sudden story out of nowhere, like ebola, you don't have a reservoir of knowledge.

Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection.