Lessons Learned from the Pandemic
By Albert B. Kelly
As we move into the fat part of summer, it feels good to
know that we’re getting back to something more like normal, although we’ll
never be the same this side of the pandemic. Given what we’ve been through, it
is useful to reflect on what we might learn from this pandemic.
My first take-away is that we have to be more resilient in terms of our preparations and our supply chains. Who knew that toilet paper and wet wipes would go first, that the microchips that run our devices would be hard to come by, that ventilators and masks would be at a premium, or that lumber and goodness knows how many other things would be so scarce and so expensive? We need our state and national leaders to focus on supply chain and stockpile resilience and plan ahead now.
The next take-away is the sense that this is just a dress rehearsal for how bad things can really get. As tough as this pandemic was and is, it could have been worse. The lag time between infection and symptoms is days and the route of infection is through the air and in close quarters and not so much through contaminated surfaces as was originally thought.
But imagine a virus with a lag time between infection and the onset of symptoms being weeks rather than days and a virus that is far easier to catch through the air (think Delta variant) and from only casual contact and only slightly contaminated surfaces. We would like to think that something like this is a once-in-a-generation occurrence, but I don’t think we have that luxury anymore.
Regardless of whether the Covid-19 virus came from an animal at a wet market or was engineered in a lab and escaped, we live in an extremely small world and despite any single countries best effort, containment was not in the cards. Borders and oceans and geography no longer allow us to put distance between us and an outbreak.
But more than living in a shrinking world, we live in an age when science can destroy us whether intentionally or by accident. Years ago, we realized the same thing when confronting nuclear weapons. What worked in our favor when it came to nukes were the huge amounts of money involved and the difficulty in building a device. It was something countries did, not lone scientists.
Yet when it comes to engineering viruses, it’s not that expensive and one person with a reasonably well-equipped lab and some knowledge could engineer a virus that could escape and overwhelm our immune systems. While the question of the origins of the Covid-19 virus gets lost in all the bickering, we still don’t know where it came from and it very well could have escaped from a Wuhan lab. If so, who can say what will escape next time. It’s why we engage with the world.
Then there are the vaccines. We are fortunate that scientists were able to come up with various vaccines to combat Covid-19 and allow us to get back to this semblance of normal. There is no guarantee that the next time science will be able to come up with a vaccine or antidote in response to the next pandemic. Even if science does deliver some will refuse, we’re in the mid-30% range on vaccinations, but that’s for another day.
My hope is that national and state governments will do far more in the way of preparedness whether investing long-term vaccine research, overhauling our Strategic National Stockpile, strengthening our supply chains, or investing in the type of broadband and internet to allow us to function remotely to name a few areas.
Beyond that, we would do well to view climate change and global warming through the lens of the pandemic. We’ve already seen the “birth pangs” of global warming in the form of incredible rainfall, prolonged heat, severe hurricanes, 100-year floods, and blizzards at times and in places they shouldn’t be. The natural order of things has been altered.
Yet, like the outbreaks in the world of medicine and viruses, these climate change signals are sounding a warning to us to prepare and be ready, but we’re in danger of ignoring the signals that are getting louder and more intense about our environment and what we may soon face. And that may be the biggest lesson from the pandemic; the question is whether we’ll learn from it.