Home > Author > Michael T. Osterholm
1 " En Monrovia, la gente llevaba a sus familiares enfermos para que los curaran en la iglesia. Hasta cuarenta pastores murieron tras contraer el virus por haber atendido a sus congregantes aquejados. "
― Michael T. Osterholm , Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs
2 " Las oportunidades para mejorar las condiciones de vida siguen ahí. Solo tenemos que identificarlas y mostrar la voluntad colectiva de actuar. "
3 " Y así como nunca eliminaremos el crimen ni la guerra, tampoco nos liberaremos jamás de la enfermedad. "
4 " Aunque es un -acto de la naturaleza-, una pandemia se asemeja más a una guerra que cualquier otro desastre natural. Como en una guerra, cada día que pasa la destrucción es mayor, sin que exista la oportunidad de recuperarse. "
5 " Irónicamente, el modo en que hemos organizado el mundo para mejorar la eficiencia, el desarrollo económico y nuestro estilo de vida - los esfuerzos generalmente útiles para transformar el planeta en una aldea global- nos ha hecho más susceptibles que en 1918 a los efectos de las enfermedades infecciosas. "
6 " Mother Nature is the greatest bioterrorist of them all, with no financial limitations or ethical compunctions. "
7 " Like Abraham Lincoln, I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts. "
8 " In any pandemic, effective leadership is critical, and the first responsibility of the president or the head of any nation is to offer accurate and up-to-date information, provided by public health experts, not agenda-oriented political operatives. "
9 " In a 2015 TED Talk, Bill Gates asserted, “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes "
10 " The thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally responsible for the death of the man who finally succumbs to infection with the penicillin-resistant organism. I hope this evil can be averted. —SIR ALEXANDER FLEMING, MD "
11 " The battle lines are well drawn: the microbes’ genetic simplicity and evolutionary swiftness against our intellect, creativity, and collective social and political will. We cannot overwhelm the pathogens, because they so vastly outnumber and outmaneuver us. Our survival depends on outsmarting them. "
12 " As another example, in many healthcare settings, up to 35 percent of nurses are the parents of school-age children, and up to 20 percent of those would have to stay home with their children because they have no childcare alternatives. So, closing schools can have the effect of losing 20 percent of our vital nursing workforce in a time of medical crisis, before we even consider those that we will lose to illness itself. "
13 " if you don’t know what you’re talking about, then don’t talk, or at least say you don’t know. "
14 " To further complicate the matter, we are altering the dynamic with pathogens simply through our encounters with them. By venturing into the microbes’ homes deep in rain forests, for logging, planting, and hunting for bushmeat; by concentrating large numbers of people together; by breeding millions and millions of pigs and poultry and keeping them in close confines; by overusing and misusing antimicrobial drugs, we humans are forcing microbes to adapt to continual stresses and giving them opportunities nature never did. "
15 " But to understand the true biologic sense of the power of microbes, we must never forget that we are the ones trying to anticipate and respond to their evolution, not the other way around. "
16 " Generally, seasonal flu is a remnant of a strain of the flu virus that once caused a pandemic. "
17 " A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. —ATTRIBUTED TO WAYNE GRETZKY "
18 " encroachment of natural habitats that have brought animal reservoirs of disease to our doorsteps, "
19 " That’s because I believe in what I call consequential epidemiology. That is, by attempting to change what could happen if we don’t act, we can positively alter the course of history, rather than merely record and explain it retrospectively. "
20 " The CDC and three other research groups submitted a paper for publication in the journal Science detailing how they had reconstructed the 1918 H1N1 influenza virus, using virus genes that had been identified in lung samples of patients who died during the 1918 pandemic. "
