The end of the Covid public health emergency foreshadows a worse one

No matter how many masks, gloves and at-home tests the government stockpiles, or how intently the pharmaceutical industry works to develop vaccines that protect broadly against ever-shifting virus variants, or how much wastewater Centers for Disease Control sleuths examine for signs of community outbreaks, our response to the next pandemic will almost certainly be worse than the shambolic national response to Covid-19.

That’s because this pandemic exposed just how little the public cares about the “public” part of public health. It has shown us that millions of Americans have turned their reverence for the nation’s history of individualism into a cult of self-destructive selfishness. 

Millions refused free vaccinations, though studies clearly show that communities with higher vaccination rates had far lower death rates from Covid—about 80 percent lower.    They made ripping off masks a political statement, though consistent and widespread use of this simple tool is demonstrably effective at reducing transmission of COVID-19, when worn consistently and correctly.  A certain governor who aspires to be president memorably and publicly mocked high school students for voluntary mask-wearing, calling it “Covid theater.”  Of course, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did not know whether any of those students he bullied were immunocompromised, or lived in a household with someone who is, or possibly with a grandparent who, by virtue of age alone, is more likely to become seriously ill or die from the virus.  

As shut-downs, cancelled events and remote schooling fade into memory, the deadly consequences of the politicization of a global pandemic will not.

We will be worse off next time.

Science, in the form of vaccines and effective treatments, pulled us out of the nightmarish phase of this pandemic, yet there’s been an erosion of trust in science. Accurate, easily accessible information gave people the tools they needed to understand how to protect themselves and their communities, but there’s been a ramping up and deliberate transmission of medical disinformation. Public health officials, who worked round-the-clock to spare millions from death, face death threats.  

As Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist writes in Foreign Policy, after major public health crises, “Blame and reform co-mingle, often resulting in government or health changes that allow revenge against supposedly malevolent or incompetent individuals and institutions, but actually provide no defense against the next major infectious event.”

No defense.  

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