29 Quotes by John M. Barry

The elderly, normally the group most susceptible to influenza, not only survived attacks of the disease but were attacked far less often. This resistance of the elderly was a worldwide phenomenon. The most likely explanation is that an earlier pandemic , so mild as to not attract attention, resembled the 1918 virus closely enough that it provided protection. (p. 408 paperback edition)

A specialty among public relations consultants has evolved in recent decades called "risk communication." I don't much care for the term. It implies managing the truth. You don't manage the truth. You tell the truth.

You don't manage the truth. You tell the truth.

Society cannot function if it is every man for himself. By definition, civilization cannot survive that. Those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one.

In China the wind was originally regarded as a demon that caused illness

In fact, biology is chaos. Biological systems are the product not of logic but of evolution, an inelegant process. Life does not choose the logically best design to meet a new situation. It adapts what already exists...The result, unlike the clean straight lines of logic, is often irregular, messy.

This disease is no joke, to be made light of, but a terrible calamity"pg 36

Man might defined as "modern" largely to the extent that he attempts to control, as opposed to adjust himself to, nature.

Nature chose to rage in 1918, and it chose the form of the influenza virus in which to do it. This meant that nature first crept upon the world in familiar, almost comic, form. It came in masquerade. Then it pulled down its mask and showed its fleshleass bone.