Laurie Garrett
Laurie Garrett
Laurie Garrett is a Pulitzer prize-winning science journalist and writer of two bestselling books. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1996 for a series of works published in Newsday, chronicling the Ebola virus outbreak in Zaire...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
CountryUnited States of America
bad rational realistic risk
Fear's a bad way to be motivated, but a realistic sense of risk is a rational approach.
country feels knows nobody order people quick trying
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.
birds breeding harmless pass virus
Breeding birds pass their harmless strains to each other and the virus mutates.
hazards time
We can see hazards approaching and we have time to actually do something.
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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.
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Only communist China could take away civil liberties and get away with it.
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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.
drowned immune known people system weak
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.
amount awful essential looks low money per spending
It looks to me like we're spending an awful lot of money per vaccinated American and an awful low amount on your essential surveillance.
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There is no governing structure for a pandemic, and little more than vague political pressure to ensure limited access to life-sparing tools and medicines for more than half the world population.
health people public services since
Most Americans think that public health is services for poor people, and since most Americans hate poor people and want all poor people's services destroyed, they hate public health.
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What public health really is is a trust. That's why I used the term 'Betrayal of Trust' as the title of my book. It's a trust between the government and the people.
frailty perhaps
'Contagion' should serve as a wake-up call not only about the germs, but perhaps more importantly about the frailty of governance, nationally and worldwide.
biological evolution time watching
What we're watching in real time is evolution. And it's a biological process, and it is, by definition, unpredictable.