Lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic

One year after the first case of Covid-19 was reported in China, what have we learned from the pandemic?

Trying to answer that question in 600 words would be like drawing an apeirogon made of an infinite and ever-expanding number of images. I shall therefore leave the recounting of stories of sacrifice, resilience, and complex human emotions to writers, poets and artists. The lessons I am sharing here are rather dry and non-sentimental – focusing on the role of public health in our lives.

To begin, let’s examine why some countries – like S Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Viet Nam and New Zealand, are coping much better than most industrialized countries of the Western hemisphere, thus cutting a path to fewer humanitarian challenges and economic problems. These countries all have universal healthcare coverage, and primed by experience with SARS1 virus two decades ago, have maintained a vigorous public health system. They readily contained isolated cases and small outbreaks before they got out of hand, using the classic combination of testing, contact tracing and quarantine, social distancing and temporary lockdowns when feasible, pairing temporary laws with social awareness and health education (handwashing and face masks) to maintain public trust. Second wave outbreaks are also quickly dealt with the same rigor.

Here, more than just exposing the inequalities and dysfunction of our healthcare system, the pandemic has shed light on non-medical determinants of health: outcomes are strongly correlated with differences in social class and wealth, living environment, education and work conditions, and access to healthcare. It also exposed the fragility of employer-based insurance and many issues in our workforce.  These topics, albeit important, are beyond the scope of this essay.

What started as localized, uncontained outbreaks are now a devastating tragedy, leaving an uneven toll of economic, medical and psychological scarring across our land. We have world class scientists and epidemiologists, the best medical technology, yet so far have failed miserably. So, what went wrong? Instead of being proactive in implementing early comprehensive and preventive measures, our mitigating actions continue to be reactive, too little, too late, and too often fractured by political chauvinism contradicting scientific recommendations, generating confusion and loss of public trust.

This loss of confidence in public institutions has deeper roots – a general suspicion against official authorities in general and against academic and scientific figures in particular, seen as elitists. Conspiracy theories, riding on the fears and prejudices that living with uncertainty and anger brings, only magnify the problem. 

But lessons from this pandemic don’t need to be just gloom and doom. Out of challenges and necessities, new ways of thinking and problem-solving will emerge. Pandemics come and go, and I am confident that science and technology can control the Covid virus. But we should remember that infectious agents thrive by exploiting our human vulnerabilities. For some, it may be the weakness in our immune system caused by age or underlying medical conditions. But as a nation, our vulnerability comes from self-inflicted wounds – the social rifts and fractures that are more difficult to bridge and heal. 

Too often laws are crafted to favor special interests, but public health laws are created to make all of us safe by improving human behavior, asking of us self-discipline and social responsibility. They are the most equitable, the easiest to comply with, and the most cost-effective laws – just think how many lives and societal costs are saved by laws requiring car-seat belts, bike helmets, and immunizations. But laws and institutions only work if the public is engaged and committed. All of us should give public health, and ourselves, another chance to succeed in stopping the pandemic.

(Submitted to the Gazette-Times of Corvallis, OR, on Dec 10; published on Dec 18, 2020)