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
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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.
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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.
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Only communist China could take away civil liberties and get away with it.
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Breeding birds pass their harmless strains to each other and the virus mutates.
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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.
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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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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.
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We can see hazards approaching and we have time to actually do something.
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In all, 86 per cent of the increased life expectancy was due to decreases in infectious diseases. And the bulk of the decline in infectious disease deaths occurred prior to the age of antibiotics. Less than 4 per cent of the total improvement in life expectancy since 1700s can be credited to twentieth-century advances in medical care.
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Ebola haunted Zaire because of corruption and political repression. The virus had no secret powers, nor was it unusually contagious. For centuries Ebola had lurked in the jungles of central Africa. Its emergence into human populations required the special assistance of humanity's greatest vices : greed, corruption, arrogance, tyranny, and callousness.
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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.
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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.
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'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.
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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.