“These bad actors משוגעים whoever they are, need to be identified so that the public knows that these people are making stuff up or lying — and they’re twisting and distorting things”
Six Lessons We’ve Learned From Covid That Will Help Us Fight the Next Pandemic
Public health experts weigh in on the steps America needs to take to stem a future outbreak
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| Residents of Washington, D.C. wait in line to get Covid-19 test kits in December of 2021. The United States lagged behind other nations in testing during the first few months of the pandemic. |
It has been three years since the first reported Covid-19 case in Wuhan, China, and more than 6.6 million people have died from this disease since. The United States has the highest number of Covid-19 deaths worldwide, with a sixth of the global toll. But despite this devastation, the U.S. may not be ready for the next pandemic: Experts say they can easily imagine a virus that is as infectious (if not more infectious) than the coronavirus but far more deadly. “If this was our test run, I think we mostly failed,” says Bob Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
So, what went wrong? No one answer can explain everything, and Amy Acton, former director of the Ohio Department of Health, thinks the U.S. needs to establish a 9/11-style commission to study the pandemic response and improve preparedness going forward. With the country seemingly ready to move on, though, nobody can say when this commission will happen, if ever.
In this absence, we reached out to public health experts to distill six lessons we’ve learned from Covid-19 that could help us fight the next pandemic.
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