Laurie Garrett Quotes

#1. Let's pretend there's a pandemic. Let's everybody run around and play your role. Main result is that there is tremendous confusion ... Nobody knows who's in charge. Nobody knows the chain of command.

Laurie Garrett

#2. It would be easy to descend into despair, not only about the state of journalism, but the future of American democracy. But giving up is not an option. There is too much at stake.

Laurie Garrett

#3. [W]hat suffers in the atmosphere of immediacy is analysis. What suffers in this search for speed is depth. The media in the wealthy world are becoming increasingly simplistic, superficial, and celebrity-focused.

Laurie Garrett

#4. Without equity, pandemic battles will fail. Viruses will simply recirculate, and perhaps undergo mutations or changes that render vaccines useless, passing through the unprotected populations of the planet.

Laurie Garrett

#5. Only mosquito can save Nigeria. Only mosquito can save South Africa. Only mosquito can save Zimbabwe Only mosquito can save Namibia. Only mosquito can save Africa. Only malaria can save Africa. Only yellow fever can save Africa.

Laurie Garrett

#6. In 1982 President Ronald Reagan called for a war on drugs: by 1990 more men were in federal prisons on drug charges alone than had comprised the entire 1980 federal prison population for all crimes combined.

Laurie Garrett

#7. All too many journalists seem to mistake scandal mongering for tenacious investigation, and far too many aspire to make themselves the story.

Laurie Garrett

#8. All across America news organizations have been devoured by massive corporations, and allegiance to stockholders, the drive for higher share prices, and push for larger dividend returns trumps everything that the grunts in the newsrooms consider their missions.

Laurie Garrett

#9. 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.

Laurie Garrett

#10. At no time in history have we succeeded in making, in a timely fashion, a specific vaccine for more than 260 million people.

Laurie Garrett

#11. '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.

Laurie Garrett

#12. 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.

Laurie Garrett

#13. If we hadn't broken every single WHO rule many times over, we would never have defeated samllpox. Never. - Arita, leader of smallpox eradication effort

Laurie Garrett

#14. 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.

Laurie Garrett