Vaccine or not, COVID isn’t going away soon

Ex-CDC chief: This is a marathon, not a sprint

We’ve been living in a world with conflicting narratives about the scientific understanding of the coronavirus and what the path forward is to prevent suffering and to save lives. This confusion becomes all the more dangerous as we enter flu season and as the optimism about a vaccine might tempt the United States to let her guard down.

I was acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the dawn of the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, and we understood at the time that a full-blown pandemic as we’re experiencing today would be a marathon, not a sprint.

This moment is an opportunity for our nation to bring clarity of mission and a focus that should be apolitical. Here are five reasons why the finish line of the coronavirus pandemic is nowhere in sight, and why Americans and our government must remain vigilant:

A gold-standard vaccine isn’t a certainty. Vaccines vary in how protective they are and how much they reduce transmission. Whereas the smallpox vaccine and measles vaccine are more than 95% protective, the influenza vaccine — still the best way to reduce the risk of flu — some years reduces the risk by less than 50%. At this point, we cannot be certain that there will be a vaccine or how effective it will be.

Cold weather and low humidity are the virus’ friends. The hope that the summer heat would cause the coronavirus to wilt never came to be. We experienced the opposite, in fact, as Americans began to relax, socialize and resume pre-pandemic life. This led to spikes across the Sun Belt and other parts of the country. As we now see infection levels decline in many of those former summer hot spots, we must remember that cold weather will drive us indoors, where close proximity makes spread more likely, and the change in weather keeps viruses in the air for longer periods of time.

h Most Americans are still vulnerable to infection. Though this year might feel like a lifetime for many, the pandemic is still early in its life cycle. The deaths of 210,000 people in this country is a weighty and tragic milestone, but it is not an indication that most people have been infected. CDC Director Robert Redfield said recently that 90% of the U.S. population is still susceptible to the virus.

h America’s economic wounds will not heal soon. A public health emergency often becomes a one-two punch for the general population, with the medical concerns first and the economic fallout close behind. This pandemic illustrated that in a devastating way. And even today, the unemployment numbers show that the nation has recovered less than half of the 22 million jobs shed since spring. The disproportionate impact on people of color and low-income Americans — both in health outcomes and economic suffering — must drive any short- or longterm policy considerations.

The coronavirus rescue package signed in late March that provided everything from food assistance to housing eviction moratoriums to unemployment assistance is running on fiscal fumes, and many of the supports have already expired or will expire by year’s end. In addition, the nation still needs support and funding for testing, for personal protective equipment and for basic health care services being taxed during a pandemic.

The structural vulnerabilities that plagued too many communities before the pandemic need attention during and after it. Every person in this country should be able to follow basic CDC guidelines if they become infected.

A vaccine for kids is at least a year away. As a parent and pediatrician, I understand the importance of getting children back into school. It’s vital in so many ways. And though we’ve seen that children fare much better with COVID-19 than adults, the threat of hospitalization and unknown complications down the road is real. Kids have also been shown to contribute to the spread of the virus, yet a vaccine suitable for children might not be available until next fall at the earliest.

With millions of children who might not be inoculated in the next year, we must resist the temptation to let our guard down, in our schools, homes or communities. We must ensure that all schools have the resources to reduce the risk as much as possible for students, teachers and staff. Given that schools are largely funded by property taxes, we must allocate federal dollars so that all children have the opportunity to learn in a safe environment.

Can we get to a place of common humanity in how we view one another and how we view all people’s needs and concerns? Can we use this defining moment of the pandemic to reset our thinking and our priorities so that the most vulnerable communities — Black, Latino and Native Americans and lowincome workers — have the support they need to survive this pandemic and thrive in its wake?

We should be grateful that we live in a country in which our leaders at the highest levels of government can receive the best care in times of crisis. And we should do all we can as a nation to ensure that every person in this country has the support they need — whether they live on Pennsylvania Avenue or Main Street, USA.

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