topic Re: Laurie Garrett in Community Chat

Laurie Garrett

SeaMaiden — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:00:29 GMT

Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was prescient not only about the impact of H.I.V. but also about the emergence and global spread of more contagious pathogens.

Laurie Garrett, the prophet of this pandemic, expects years of death and “collective rage.”

This is an excerpt from a New York Times article May 2, 2020.

She saw it coming. Steady yourself. Her crystal ball is dark.

“We need either a cure or a vaccine.”

But she can’t envision that vaccine anytime in the next year, while Covid-19 will remain a crisis much longer than that.

“I’ve been telling everybody that my event horizon is about 36 months, and that’s my best-case scenario,” she said.

“I’m quite certain that this is going to go in waves,” she added. “It won’t be a tsunami that comes across America all at once and then retreats all at once. It will be micro-waves that shoot up in Des Moines and then in New Orleans and then in Houston and so on, and it’s going to affect how people think about all kinds of things.”

They’ll re-evaluate the importance of travel. They’ll reassess their use of mass transit. They’ll revisit the need for face-to-face business meetings. They’ll reappraise having their kids go to college out of state

So, I asked, is “back to normal,” a phrase that so many people cling to, a fantasy?

“This is history right in front of us,” Garrett said. “Did we go ‘back to normal’ after 9/11? No. We created a whole new normal. We securitized the United States. We turned into an antiterror state. And it affected everything. We couldn’t go into a building without showing ID and walking through a metal detector, and couldn’t get on airplanes the same way ever again. That’s what’s going to happen with this.”

Not the metal detectors, but a seismic shift in what we expect, in what we endure, in how we adapt.Maybe in political engagement, too, Garrett said.

If America enters the next wave of coronavirus infections “with the wealthy having gotten somehow wealthier off this pandemic by hedging, by shorting, by doing all the nasty things that they do, and we come out of our rabbit holes and realize, ‘Oh, my God, it’s not just that everyone I love is unemployed or underemployed and can’t make their maintenance or their mortgage payments or their rent payments, but now all of a sudden those jerks that were flying around in private helicopters are now flying on private personal jets and they own an island that they go to and they don’t care whether or not our streets are safe,’ then I think we could have massive political disruption.”

“Just as we come out of our holes and see what 25 percent unemployment looks like,” she said, “we may also see what collective rage looks

Re: Laurie Garrett

rms1954 — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:02:13 GMT

Shouldn't be spreading "prophet" stuff.

Re: Laurie Garrett

Boomernichols — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:03:46 GMT

@SeaMaiden Laurie speaks the truth, regardless of how dark and sinister it my appear. I also heard that Suze Orman says we all need to rethink our spending and have an eight month cushion?????????

Re: Laurie Garrett

Kachina624 — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:04:22 GMT

I don't know when this woman made her prediction but a global pandemic has been predicted for years and years. It's unlikely she was the first.

Re: Laurie Garrett

SeaMaiden — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:04:29 GMT

@rms1954 wrote:
Shouldn't be spreading "prophet" stuff.

@rms1954 She is speaking TRUTH....hard to find when other officials speak of only miracles

Re: Laurie Garrett

mom2four0418 — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:09:44 GMT

@Kachina624 wrote:
I don't know when this woman made her prediction but a global pandemic has been predicted for years and years. It's unlikely she was the first.

1994

Re: Laurie Garrett

SeaMaiden — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:10:22 GMT

@Boomernichols wrote:
@SeaMaiden Laurie speaks the truth, regardless of how dark and sinister it my appear. I also heard that Suze Orman says we all need to rethink our spending and have an eight month cushion?????????

Yes, Lauri says what we do not want to hear....what our officials do not tell us....THE TRUTH.

Everyone should have at least 6 months worth of salary put aside for an emergency. Most people do not...that is reality. That is the truth.

Re: Laurie Garrett

Porcelain — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:10:36 GMT

I think one thing that is really going to get folks here mad is that we are making ourselves an international pariah. Other countries are well on their way back to normality because they've taken the situation seriously at the national level. They are going to be fine because of that. We haven't. In fact some Americans seem to be intentionally spreading the virus to others by going out and not respecting guidelines.

While their countries get back to normal, they are going to ban Americans from visiting. They are going to stop coming here on vacation. They are going to want nothing to do with us. And they are going to get on with their lives and with rebuilding their own economies while ours just gets worse.

But I don't think a fix has to wait three years. We can take many steps to get back on track far sooner than that. And I believe a majority of us will.

Re: Laurie Garrett

Mom2Dogs — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:16:30 GMT

@SeaMaiden With out hope we have nothing.

Re: Laurie Garrett

SuhseK — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:19:08 GMT

She speaks her truth!

Is there good on focusing, on the darkest of possible scenarios?

Hole up In our corners and dwell on worst case scenarios?

I don't see it!

Re: Laurie Garrett

SeaMaiden — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:19:59 GMT

@Mom2Dogs wrote:
@SeaMaiden With out hope we have nothing.

@Mom2Dogs Hope is good....but Truth is better

Re: Laurie Garrett

jeanlake — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:23:21 GMT

Hard to refute the article. We really don't know. Stay informed, stay safe and hope for the best. The civil rage is most concerning. I'm staying in my lane.

Re: Laurie Garrett

QueenDanceALot — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:27:06 GMT

I want to read her book. I've been very impressed with the interviews I've seen.

Re: Laurie Garrett

QueenDanceALot — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:28:11 GMT

Her book, published in 1994, is titled "The Coming Plague"

Re: Laurie Garrett

Free2be — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:43:34 GMT

She knows what she's talking about. She's one of the few on TV that I'll stop what I'm doing and turn the mute off and listen.

Re: Laurie Garrett

deepwaterdotter — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:46:58 GMT

Wouldn't mass civil unrest lead to a lack of social distancing, which would result in more Covid infection and death? Where is the benefit from such actions?

Re: Laurie Garrett

SusieQ_2 — Mon, 11 May 2020 21:08:18 GMT

@deepwaterdotter wrote:
Wouldn't mass civil unrest lead to a lack of social distancing, which would result in more Covid infection and death? Where is the benefit from such actions?

Someone should take a clipboard out to the next rally and pose that question to the protesters. I'd volunteer but I'm pretty sure I already have plans for that day.

Re: Laurie Garrett

suzyQ3 — Mon, 11 May 2020 21:11:43 GMT

I have read about Garrett and find her creds exceptionally worthy.

Re: Laurie Garrett

suzyQ3 — Mon, 11 May 2020 21:16:48 GMT

Laurie Garrett (born 1951) is an American science journalist and author. 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.

Laurie Garrett was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1951.[2] She graduated from San Marino High School in 1969.[3] She then graduated with honors from Merrill College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she received a B.S. in biology in 1975.[3][4] She attended graduate school in the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at University of California, Berkeley and did research at Stanford University with Leonard Herzenberg.

During her PhD studies, Garrett started reporting on science news for radio station KPFA. The hobby soon became far more interesting than graduate school and she took a leave of absence to explore journalism. Garrett never completed her PhD. At KPFA Garrett worked in management, in news, and in radio documentary production. A documentary series she co-produced with Adi Gevins won the 1977 Peabody Award in Broadcasting, and other KPFA production efforts by Garrett won the Edwin Howard Armstrong award.

Garrett won a George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting in 1997 for "Crumbled Empire, Shattered Health" in Newsday, "a series of 25 articles on the public health crisis in the former Soviet Union".[5] She won another Polk award in 2000 for her book Betrayal of Trust, "a meticulously researched account of health catastrophes occurring in different places simultaneously and amounting to a disaster of global proportions".[6]

In 2004, Garrett joined the Council on Foreign Relations as the Senior Fellow of the Global Health Program. She has worked on a broad variety of public health issues including SARS, avian flu, tuberculosis, malaria, shipping container clinics, and the intersection of HIV/AIDS and national security. Garrett lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York City.[7]

Source: Wiki

Re: Laurie Garrett

SunSprite — Mon, 11 May 2020 21:22:57 GMT

A vaccine, and a healthy dose of self awareness, is what we need.

(the self awareness as a country, and as individuals)