Pandemic Preparedness Quotes

'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.

I don't think we are comforted by the fact that we were told there would never be a case of Ebola in the United States and obviously that's not correct.

Smallpox is natural; vaccine ain't.

Ebola has not yet come into contact with modern medicine in West Africa. But when protocols for the provision of high quality supportive care are followed, the case fatality rate for Ebola may be lower than 20 percent.

When [disease] can't be stopped, that's where we become lost.

While we won't be able to help the 10,000 people who died in last year's [Ebola] outbreak, we can do something to save untold numbers of lives in the future if NIH is working at full strength.

As we continue to learn how to live with COVID-19 until a vaccine is available, we'll also learn how to carefully balance not only the health of Iowans but the health of our economy.

It's a tragedy that modernity has released this Ebola beast into the world. It renders humans untouchable, and that's sickening. The international response so far has been scandalous. China has delivered f**k all.

We feel confident that there won't be an outbreak.

The response to coronavirus has shown what can be done when governments put their mind to 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.

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

First, the federal government, one of the fundamental responsibilities that it has is to protect the nation's health and wellbeing. And this [Zika virus] is a threat to public health in the United States. It is a very serious disease.

We've put huge resources into predicting tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes. HIV/AIDS is like an earthquake that's lasted 30 years and touched every country on the planet. We have such incredible capacity to think about the future, it's time we used it to predict biological threats. Otherwise we'll be blindsided again and again.

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.

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

As a nation, we are not good at long-term planning, and no wonder: Our political system insists that every president be allowed to appoint thousands of new officials, including the kinds of officials who think about pandemics. Why is that necessary?

Coronavirus has completely changed how people think about where or how you should work.

I really hate being sick. It seems inevitable that at one point, one of these predicted epidemics is going to be real. So often they come up, and there's people like me that are freaked out, and the majority of people are just like, "You're being idiots, this happens every other year."

The fact that there was no catastrophic pandemic in recent history does not mean there won't be another one. And we are certainly not prepared for the next pandemic.

I am so pro-swine flu it's - it's like ridiculous.

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.

China and other members should join efforts to combat serious infectious disease, such as bird flu. To enhance the cooperation on the prevention of bird flu is an important target of the organization, which includes Russia, China and four Central Asian states.

More than 50 million people around the world died during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. That's why we have epidemiologists all over the world tracking whether new strains of flu emerge.

The features of globalization have huge consequences on pandemics. It just connects us so much more closely... And as a consequence, every one of these viruses that passes from animals to humans has the capacity to infect all of us.