"If you don't know what you're talking about, then don't talk, or at least say you don't know."
Here, Osterholm expresses the danger of people providing information when they don't know what they are talking about. Due to the new age of social media, and the ability for information to spread quickly without any evidence, it is really important that people don't create information that is false and uninformative. This is especially true amid a pandemic when people's lives are at stake.
"Each experience of encounter... has informed and shaped my thinking, each has taught be a critical lesson about how we deal with our deadliest enemy, and each has focused the lens through which I approach public health."
In the introduction to the text, Osterholm explains his experiences of pandemics in the last few decades. In this passage, he maintains the significance of learning from the past, and looking to the past for solutions. In this text, Michael will take what he has learned from previous pandemics, to suggest how we should successfully deal with one in the future.
"Infectious disease is the deadliest enemy faced by all of humankind. True, infection is far from the only type of illness that affects each of us, but it is the only type that affects us collectively, and sometimes on a mass scale. Heart disease, cancer, even Alzheimer's, can have devastating individual effects... But these diseases don't really have the potential to alter the day-to-day functioning of society, halt travel, trade, and industry, or foster political instability."
In this passage, Osterholm explains why this book is titled the "Deadliest Enemy." This is because, according to Osterholm, the threat of a pandemic is the strongest threat to the stability of humanity. He states that although each country has immediate medical issues to be dealing with, such as cancer, the possible threat of a large-scale pandemic is the biggest threat that faces humanity as a whole. He explains that a pandemic is something that can negatively impact all aspects of society, something that has unfortunately proven to be true with the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 virus.
