Five Global Health Concerns

Have you ever imagined what it would be like if villains could email a respiratory virus to the world? Do you drift to sleep at night dreaming of the health crises to come as octogenarians steadily expand their ranks?

Laurie Garrett has and does. She’s an award-winning journalist and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and she’s made it her life’s work to uncover the world’s biggest health threats. In an interview with Atlantic senior editor Corby Kummer at The Atlantic Meets the Pacific on Friday, she calmly outlined several very real threats facing the global population. It’s fitting that she was once a plot consultant in the making for Contagion: Hollywood, pay attention.