Every year, cardiovascular disease kills twice as many people, at a younger average age, as Covid has at its worst, and since 2020, there’s been a surge in fatalities from heart disease and stroke in the U.S.
The most important lesson of the Covid pandemic is that the only constant is change. Variants spread, cases surge and abate, treatments change and knowledge expands. This means that we — the public, elected officials and public health leaders — need to learn constantly and adapt quickly, acting on the insight that no one policy response is likely to stay effective for long.
As the SARS-CoV-2 surge recedes, we need to apply the lessons we’ve learned during this pandemic to improve our response to the next health emergency. One major obstacle has been the lack of health data needed to track the pandemic and assess its impact across the complex U.S. healthcare and public health ecosystem. This lack of timely, standardized data hampered our ability to respond rapidly and effectively to the pandemic.
Every year, cardiovascular disease kills twice as many people, at a younger average age, as Covid has at its worst, and since 2020, there’s been a surge in fatalities from heart disease and stroke in the U.S.
Omicron is causing a tsunami, not a wave, of infections in the United States. We’ve learned a lot about this coronavirus variant since it was identified less than two months ago. We know that Omicron is highly transmissible and now accounts for nearly all new Covid cases, having pushed Delta into the background. Omicron causes far less severe disease than Delta, especially among people who are fully vaccinated and boosted. And it appears that the current spike in Covid-19 cases driven by Omicron may subside nearly as quickly as it rose.
Last March, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged through New York City but hadn’t yet spread across the country, I wrote an essay headlined: “Could Coronavirus Kill a Million Americans?”
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed flaws in the ability of our global health architecture to prevent and respond to pandemic threats.
It’s been two years since Covid emerged, one year since vaccine distribution began, and one month since Omicron upended hopes for a winter of recovery. As we move into a new year, here are seven life-saving lessons from 2021 that can get us closer to ending the pandemic.
Removing trans fat from the global food supply saves lives and reduces the burden on health care by preventing heart attacks.
On Thanksgiving morning, Covid reminded us that neither death nor mutations take a holiday. And while the virus gathers strength, a pandemic of pandemic fatigue undermines our ability to stop the virus. The newly discovered Omicron variant quickly led to border closures, a stock market plunge, and a collective sigh of despair: Will the pandemic ever end?