COVID-19 Five Years Later, How Little We've Learned & How Little We Want to Learn

It was five years ago today, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

At the time, I was living in New York City which would soon become the epicenter of COVID in the United States. 

Here are a few of my thoughts on that day:

Although the Coronavirus became a global public health concern at the end of January, it has only been over the past week or so that I every time I walk out into the streets of New York City nearly every conversation I hear is about the Coronavirus. The only other I ever experienced something like this was in the days following the September 11th attacks when I lived in Boston (no doubt those conversations in NYC were a thousand fold). The difference is that those conversations in 2001 concerned an event which had already occurred whereas with the Coronavirus conversations the discussion revolves around an event where the worst is yet to come.

And worse did it get.

Hours after I wrote those words came the news that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson had contracted COVID and that the NBA season would be shut down. The NHL and MLS would soon follow. There would be no St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York, Boston or anywhere else and the Great White Way would dim its lights too. A week later, my employer effectively shuttered their doors. Days later then NY Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a stay at home order.

At the beginning of April, I would be laid off. Days later, I would socially distance from my Dad by moving into an upstairs apartment vacated by a woman who made her way to Long Island to be with family. I lived in this apartment by myself for nearly 7 months until moving to Atlanta in late October 2020. Another 7 months later, I was back in Boston.

In the grand scheme of things, I was very fortunate. I did not get sick. As far as I am aware, I never contracted COVID and hope I never do.

Sadly, more than 1.2 million Americans weren't so lucky. 

And yet we as a country scarcely think about the fact COVID killed more than a million of us. When the death toll reached 500,000 by February 2021, it represented more deaths than WWII, Korea and Vietnam combined.

Yes, there was a time when we raised eyebrows when President Trump suggested we inject ourselves with bleach and we saw fit to rid ourselves of him. Unfortunately, a significant segment of the country was angrier at the cure than the disease with public health officials becoming pariahs. Because of this in part, we have given Trump second chance when we never should have given him any at all. Alas, in appointing anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of HHS, we have a man espousing the use of cod liver oil and Vitamin A to combat a measles outbreak in Texas.

Despite the deaths of more than 1.2 million Americans due to COVID, we haven't learned much, nor do we seem to want to learn. For some of us, it is easier to pretend that COVID was a hoax or accept some level of misinformation.

I am still reminded of the vestiges of COVID on a daily basis. There are usually a few people I see on the MBTA going to and from work or on the streets of Boston, Cambridge and Somerville who wear masks. However, I suspect that this is the exception to the rule. Had I still been living in Georgia, I suspect I would see very few masks out in public.

As for me, I rarely wear a mask, but I always keep one handy just in case. 

The COVID-19 pandemic occurred a century after the Spanish flu pandemic.

I don't think we will wait that long for the next pandemic. When it comes, we will be even less willing to deal with it than we did for COVID and a lot more people will die as a result. And we won't care.