Laurie Garrett Quotes

We live in a world fraught with risk from new pandemics. Fortunately, we also now live in an era with the tools to build a global immune system.

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.

There is a cost for investing in pandemic preparedness, but a much bigger cost for not investing in it.

Yellow fever outbreaks are not uncommon. But, as with other infectious diseases, when they occur in urban areas, they can play out very differently - not least in terms of the speed and scale at which they can spread.

Contagion has become very much a phenomenon, and it's a phenomenon of globalization.

When there is an influenza threat, drop everything and focus on risks from influenza pandemics. When SARS spreads, focus on unknown respiratory diseases. This approach helps to quell public concern, but it's a hugely inefficient way to deal with future risks.

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

As a species, I think we have no choice but to try and forecast pandemics.

Technologies will reach the developed world first, but the rest of the world will benefit in turn. And it will behoove the rich countries to hasten the spread of its innovations. In an era when new diseases can circle the globe in hours, it’s in everyone’s interest to stop the next pandemic before it happens.

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.

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.

New vaccines are being developed all the time, which could save many more lives and dramatically improve people's health. And this goes beyond the traditional burden of childhood infectious diseases.

SARS was a very important event... And many countries have learned from SARS... The SARS event sort of gave them additional impetus and the sense of urgency for them to really revise the International Health Regulations.

Pandemic influenza is by nature an international issue; it requires an international solution.

To be able to detect the outbreak of avian flu anywhere in the world is going to require a partnership of several countries that will share information and samples, but it is important to remember a threat anywhere is a threat everywhere.

A more effective international disease surveillance system is essential for global security both against a bioterrorist attack or a naturally occurring disease.

The long, cold Minnesota winters instilled in me a fascination for exotic far off places; I aspired toward a career in tropical diseases and world health problems.

New and emerging infections keep coming back and the world needs a collective defense system, and that requires international cooperation and collaboration, in the name of global solidarity.

The reality is: By the time swine flu got on the radar screen of global public health, it had already spread. It was already in the States, it was in Mexico, it was in New Zealand. By the time it reaches that point, you've lost the ability to contain it.

If we can provide even a few months of early warning for just one pandemic, the benefits will outweigh all the time and energy we're devoting. Imagine preventing health crises, not just responding to them.

In today's world, it is shortsighted to think that infectious diseases cannot cross borders. By allowing developing countries access to generic drugs, we not only help improve health in those nations, we also help ourselves control these debilitating and often deadly diseases.

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

Microbial foes have the advantage of an extraordinary capacity to rapidly reproduce and adapt, thereby propagating themselves even in the face of impressive advances in public health and the availability of countermeasures such as diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. This inherent adaptability of microbes can only be matched with the continual application of wit and technological capability. The best defense for the human species against elimination by the ever-evolving waves of microbial pathogens are public health measures coordinated with biomedical research that will continue to provide innovative tools to counterbalance these endless microbial challenges. Ultimately, if medical science continues to fight the microbial foes to a draw, as has occurred for much of the past century, humanity will have won.

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.

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.