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The Very Real Lessons America Has Learned From COVID
In 2020, the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 offered the world an unwanted crash course in infectious-disease prevention. Mask up. Congregate outdoors. Test, and test again. Two and a half years later, what have people taken away from it? And how might people use that information in the future in order to stay healthy?
I set out to discuss what COVID-era lessons we should—and shouldn’t—apply to other illnesses with the professor, epidemiologist, and physician Jay K. Varma, who formerly worked for the CDC. Our conversation ended up veering toward a much more fundamental question: Have we actually learned from COVID? And does that even matter? Infectious diseases are, after all, collective-action problems. An individual can only do so much to prevent themselves from getting ill.
Varma noted that some of the good lessons that have come out of the world’s COVID experience are counterbalanced by an increase in vaccine misinformation and the undermining of the nation’s public-health entities. I asked him what he saw as the lingering weak spots on the individual level. His answer surprised me—the biggest wasn’t vaccine hesitation or being anti-mask or neglecting to use hand sanitizer. It was a lack of civic action: “I want individuals to demand that their elected officials take health security as seriously as they take physical security.”
