Quotes About Pandemic

Here is the frightening aspect of the global supply chain," said Joe. "When there is a surge in demand, inventory goes to zero. Just-in-time manufacturing. Great concept! Horrible in a pandemic.

earlier the restrictions imposed in any given outbreak, the fewer the deaths.

The absence of pandemic prevention was another example of a deficiency in the system.

It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control," said President Trump. "It's going to be just fine.

John Barry's The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

There was the CDC way of doing things," she said. "It was vaccinate and isolate. And this wasn't that.

when each infected person infected more than three others, or when the society's rate of compliance fell below 30 percent.

Nineteen eighteen, said Carter. What happened then? asked Obama. Thirty percent of the population was infected, and two percent died

I couldn't design a system better for transmitting disease than our school system," he said after his visit.

United States, with a bit more than 4 percent of the world's population, had a bit more than 20 percent of its COVID-19 deaths.

The computer model gave the governor little choice but to shut down the entire state, and take responsibility for what should have been a national decision, because neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the president of the United States had the nerve to make it.

Lawler discovered—and could not quite believe—that the CDC didn't plan to test any of the new arrivals unless they had a fever.

Flu strains mutate all the time," she'd written on them. "What would we do if we didn't have the right vaccine in time?

Cities that intervened immediately after the arrival of the virus experienced far less disease and death.

The Great Influenza, a book by the historian John Barry about the 1918 flu pandemic.

American society had no ability to deal with what she felt was coming. "The United States doesn't really have a public-health system," she said. "It has five thousand dots, and each one of those dots serves at the will of an elected official.

After Sencer—or after Foege—the CDC's relationship to disease control had changed in ways that eliminated its need for bravery. It had begun a descent. It had replaced the flowers on its porch with fake ones and hoped no one would notice. But people did notice, at least those who came close to the porch. Rajeev Venkayya had seen things that caused him to exclude the CDC from playing a role in the invention of pandemic planning.

They decided that their hides would be saved by the countries that had bungled their pandemic response. They'd be able to point to them and say, "Look! That's what would have happened to us!" They never imagined that other countries would use the United States to demonstrate their own counterfactual. "We are the bad example for the rest of the world," said Carter. "That's what is so embarrassing.

The Mexicans, interestingly, had taken the new pandemic strategy of the United States and run with it. They'd closed schools, and socially distanced the population in other ways that, studies would later show, shut down disease transmission.

new strategy. It had three parts to it: to detect outbreaks overseas so they might remain there; to stockpile vaccines and antiviral drugs; and, finally, to "be ready to respond at the federal, state and local levels in the event that a pandemic reaches our shores.

Maybe disease outbreaks need a warning like the one on your car mirror—things are much larger than they appear.

journalist asked her about it. "What scares me most and what I think about most," said Charity, "is our ability to respond to a new pathogen, maybe one we've never seen before, or an old pathogen, like influenza that's just mutated. The H1N1 pandemic of 1918 was over 100 years ago now. The world is overdue for a pandemic like that, whether it's influenza or something else. And in public health, we know that we have to be prepared for that.

What scares me most and what I think about most," said Charity, "is our ability to respond to a new pathogen, maybe one we've never seen before, or an old pathogen, like influenza that's just mutated. The H1N1 pandemic of 1918 was over 100 years ago now. The world is overdue for a pandemic like that, whether it's influenza or something else. And in public health, we know that we have to be prepared for that.

I'm seeing comments from people asking why WHO and CDC seem to be downplaying this," wrote Carter. "I'm certainly no public health expert . . . but no matter how I look at this, it looks bad." On January