Laurie Garrett on Flu pandemics, past and future

Courtesy of TED, we have some useful media bringing typically well-informed perspectives on the flu now unfolding. Let's start of with a Q&A with Laurie Garrett, author of "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance":

TED took 20 minutes with Laurie Garrett this afternoon to follow up on her TEDTalk from 2007, posted today, about pandemic flu. Garrett is the author of The Coming Plague, and a fellow on the Council for Foreign Relations who studied global health and emerging diseases. (As you can imagine, she is very busy this week.) We asked Garrett: What has changed since the last pandemic panic, 2007's avian flu? What does she worry about now? And really, should we not wash our hands?

Read her responses on the TED website.

TED has also posted video of a lecture Garrett gave in 2007:

In 2007, as the world worried about a possible avian flu epidemic, Laurie Garrett, author of "The Coming Plague," gave this powerful talk to a small TED University audience. Her insights from past pandemics are suddenly more relevant than ever.