Five years ago this month I was very, very scared. My daughter was 3 months old, my son in preschool, and the world as we knew it was about to irrevocably change. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus as global pandemic and before the month ended, Montana went into lockdown. When we received the news that schools and nonessential businesses would be closed, I remember waiting until we put our kids to bed to explode into tears. My husband and I talked about our wills and called my brother, who was living in California at the time, to discuss plans about caring for our children if the worst should happen to Cole and me. We knew so little at the time, but what we did know was that people were dying across the world and hospitals were overrun with sick patients.
In the United States, more than 1.2 million people have died from Covid-19. While many people feel like lockdowns and quarantines are in the distant past, our collective response to the pandemic shouldn’t be placed in the intractable recesses of our memories. We are still dealing with the impacts of the virus—some beneficial, including the incredible scientific measures, supported by the first Trump administration to deliver a highly vaccine in record time—and horrifically troubling like a revisionist history, largely spread on social media that the pandemic was mild, perhaps it was even a hoax, that have led to an erosion of trust in public health measures. Covid-19 was one of the most lethal outbreaks in human history, and in the U.S., it also warped politics and culture, creating divisions and alternate realties we grapple with today.
During President Trump’s first term, he ushered in the world’s greatest and most successful responses to the global pandemic: Operation Warp Speed, a public-private project to tackle the response Covid-19, including enabling faster approval and production of lifesaving vaccines. The world’s greatest scientists and infectious disease specialists built upon their emerging research in viral genetic sequencing and mRNA technologies. While the project was dubiously named after a Star Trek reference, the result was a resounding success. However, Covid-19, while less deadly, the virus still remains, and in five short years after the world shut down, President Trump is making drastic changes to our pandemic preparedness, including eliminating funding from the scientific and medical organizations. The current administration seems hellbent on undermining public health measures and scientific research, continuing to sow chaos and unpredictability at levels of the federal government. Scary times, once again.
The effects of Covid-19 aren’t going anywhere. Nearly 48 million Americans suffer from symptoms of long Covid, and I have yet to meet a doctor or medical health professional who isn’t scared from the pandemic. One doctor, who worked on the frontlines at one of the nation’s top infectious disease hospitals, told me he went from being lauded as a hero to jeered and threatened in a few short months. As a father of two young children, he shared that in those early months of the pandemic, he and his fellow physicians thought they might die while treating the gravely sick. His will and advanced medical directives were on file at the hospital. Now, he can hardly speak about the pandemic, let alone about regular, routine and lifesaving vaccines without getting criticized or jeered.
We know so much more about Covid-19, including the many missteps officials made, like how to best communicate to the public about school closures or what happened during the early months of the pandemic. It wasn’t a flawless response. But to ignore the good that happened, especially led by a President who is now undoing the good that American scientific and medical communities make, is most terrifying. What will happen when the next pandemic arrives?