Laurie Garrett Quotes (11 Quotes)

What we're watching in real time is evolution. And it's a biological process, and it is, by definition, unpredictable.

We can see hazards approaching and we have time to actually do something.

People are trying to do the right thing, but nobody knows what the right thing is. Every country feels like they have to do something, and so they order a quick technological fix.

Right now in human beings, it kills 55 percent of the people it infects. That makes it the most lethal flu we know of that has ever been on planet Earth affecting human beings.

Right now it is not highly contagious. This one has not made that mutational step. That is the shoe we hope never falls. As of right now it is very difficult for this type of transmission to happen. There are only a handful of examples.

What killed people during the outbreak in 1918 was not a weak immune system. An over-response from their own immune system known at ARDS killed them. They drowned in their own fluid.

Breeding birds pass their harmless strains to each other and the virus mutates.

Only communist China could take away civil liberties and get away with it.

If it happens, unions will refuse to fly, products will not be transferred, and we would see the global economy start to fall apart like a house of cards.

We are at a whole new scale of complexity and risk confrontation. It is a scale that requires not only a new invention of global and public health, but a new invention of global international political cooperation.

Measures we can take to handle pandemic flu if it emerges in the next six months are limited and bleak, but wise investments and strong science could well bolster the public health armamentarium considerably over the next five years.