The next outbreak
Four years after the pandemic began, the nation is unprepared for another
Four years ago this week, the World Health Organization made its stunning announcement that a coronavirus outbreak that began only three months earlier constituted a pandemic. Years of death, sickness, hardship and uncertainty followed, though few could have accurately predicted how much our communities would suffer.
While Congress and various institutions have conducted after-action reports to study responses to the COVID-19 crisis, the nation has yet to honestly confront mistakes, reform policies or adequately prepare for the next pandemic. The absence of substantive, bipartisan action on this front is a failure of leadership and leaves the nation likely to repeat past mistakes.
As America careens toward the November presidential election, a common question, posed by both sides, is a familiar one in our national politics: Are you better off today than you were four years ago?
Setting aside all else, there’s no question that this nation is far better off than four years ago, when the frightening spread of a deadly virus plunged the country, and the world, into some of the darkest days in memory.
Most can pinpoint a moment in their lives when the danger spreading around the globe became all too real — a business
that closed to protect employees, a school that suspended in-person classes, a concert or ballgame abruptly canceled, a nursing home or hospital that no longer allowed visitors. Or worse: a positive test, a rapid decline in health, the death of a loved one.
Suffering surrounded us, wrapped in so much uncertainty as the public and private sectors raced to understand more about COVID-19. Daily press conferences offered regular updates — more about what was not known than what was known — as governments from Washington on down instituted policies that intended to protect lives and preserve health care systems fighting the virus.
In the absence of verifiable fact, misinformation proliferated. Conspiracies gained traction. Armchair virology became a cottage industry.
There was plenty that those leading the fight got right, systems and programs that worked and medical responses, such as the rapid development of the vaccines, that saved lives. There were also plenty of missteps and mistakes that, in hindsight, violated the Hippocratic oath to “First, do no harm.”
Regrettably, the response to COVID became so politicized that it impeded attempts to compile an honest, unvarnished accounting of what transpired once vaccine deployment dramatically reduced the risk of death and the country, more or less, returned to normal.
But that’s information the public should have and that officials and institutions need. The COVID pandemic was only the latest viral outbreak and it won’t be the last, so it’s critical that the country put systems and policies in place that ensure readiness for when it does and to not repeat mistakes.
A 2022 report by a House Select
Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis spoke to some of those issues. Led by Democrats, it found the Trump administration’s handling of pandemic programs lacking and was sharply critical of errors made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others.
It also pointed to the lack of adequate preparations by successive administrations prior to President Donald Trump’s election, urging a greater readiness and cooperation among public health agencies to promote a more effective response in the future.
Now controlled by Republicans, the House has more recently probed the origins of the outbreak, but it too devolved into political acrimony. In the meantime, a historically ineffective Congress has done precious little to advance reforms that would strengthen public health and ready communities for another outbreak.
Lawmakers have a duty to do better.
The United States was unprepared when COVID swept across the country four years ago and, even with the remarkable achievement of the vaccine, recorded at least 1.2 million deaths, including at least 23,000 in Virginia.
America must be able to take necessary steps, without the tint of politics, if it hopes to adequately protect its citizens when the next viral outbreak occurs.