Lessons to learn from COVID-19

As the number of infections soar and deaths rise it’s clear the United States failed to keep its citizens safe. 

While the end isn’t near and no one can say exactly when the pandemic will be over, we can start analyzing our responses and learn some key lessons.

Arguably one of the biggest lessons is that White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, or pandemic team, should be reinstated. As humans venture further into forests and nature, we’re releasing more and more viruses. 

The National Geographic reported deforestation is how humans are coming in contact with undiscovered viruses and that’s how HIV and Ebola spread to humans. There are some viruses like SARS that did go away, but we can’t blindly trust every single one in the future will.

As Dr. Anthony Fauci said, it’s very unlikely COVID-19 is going to disappear off the face of the earth. We need to stop pretending life is going “back to normal” after this, because we’ll need to redefine what our new “normal” is. 

We need to ask ourselves what needs to be changed and how the system failed us. 

I think an important lesson many Americans have learned is we need a better healthcare system. Clearly what we have in place isn’t working since we have the highest number of infections and therefore will probably have the highest death rates. 

Politicians have been talking about how healthcare in the U.S. needs to change campaign season after campaign season. So in November, hopefully, this will be behind us and we can elect politicians who will make those changes. 

Another lesson I think we should take away from the COVID-19 pandemic is the importance of listening to experts, not incapable government leaders. 

The back and forth arguing with reporters and “I didn’t say that” from President Donald Trump hasn’t helped anyone no. It even hurt an Arizona couple that took a form of chloroquine, a drug President Trump said could be a “game-changer.” They were both hospitalized and a man eventually died after ingesting it. 

The fact is social distancing is the most effective way to stop this virus until a vaccine or cure is found. I can’t imagine there’s one person who hasn’t seen either the domino or match video that demonstrates how social distancing works, but it would be hard for a virus to spread if it didn’t have a host, now wouldn’t it?

So let’s remember our mistakes and how we can grow from this because apparently we didn’t learn from the Spanish flu epidemic.