Lessons Learned: Five Years of the COVID Pandemic

By Kelly Jordan

Five years ago today, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Doing so escalated the virus to one of international concern, which fast-tracked information sharing, vaccine development and deployment, and activated the global scientific community as they worked to understand the virus and minimize its spread. It is a clear moment in history with a distinct “before” and “after” in the ways in which this pandemic has changed the world.

With those early days still clearly visible in our rearview mirror, and the future of COVID and support for disease surveillance unknown, it is critical to pause and reflect on the wins and the mistakes that have occurred since the global emergence of COVID.

What We Have Lost

The biggest mark COVID has left on the world is the devastating loss of life. In the United States alone, COVID has killed an estimated 1.2 million people since 2020. Global deaths have been reported as more than 7 million, with some modeling estimates placing the death toll substantially higher. 

These are not just stats. COVID killed our relatives, our neighbors, and our friends. Lives were cut brutally short, often without funerals to commemorate them.

“Five years on from the onset of the pandemic it seems that many have forgotten the most consequential events: how devastating the first years were, how many lives were lost, but also how well the vaccines worked, and how many lives they saved,” says Ben Lopman, PhD, professor of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health.

There was a sense of national unity in the early days of the pandemic that has since been frayed. Trust in other people and in institutions has been tested, and in some senses, lost, too. 

Mistakes were made. In the early days of the pandemic, the urgency for pushing out new information and updates were accelerated to hyper speed, with little room for nuance. Guidance changed regularly and was often confusing when it came to masking, cleaning, and social distancing.

Stay-at-home orders and online learning minimized disease spread, but also contributed to business closures and learning gaps for America’s youth. And, the nation’s emotional vulnerability and collective helplessness in the face of an invisible enemy proved a rich environment for disinformation and misinformation to take root and grow into a pandemic of its own.

Despite the setbacks, science persisted. Surveillance systems and testing sites (and free at-home kits) were established. Vaccines were developed and deployed. Lives were saved. 

What We Have Gained

“The speed at which COVID vaccine development occurred, as well as the regulatory processes that allowed them to be tested and approved were extraordinary achievements,” says Lopman. “The logistical accomplishment of rolling out the vaccine in less than a year from the emergence of COVID was totally extraordinary.”

The public health response to COVID also advanced science’s interest in and ability to reliably forecast diseases and evaluate interventions (especially vaccines) through surveillance and monitoring tools, like wastewater surveillance. It also elevated the importance of the behavioral aspects of disease transmissions—think indoor versus outdoor contact and its role in disease spread.

After five years of research, testing, and observation, public health researchers have been able to study what works—and what does not—against COVID. Vaccination, handwashing, and masking are all safe, reliable ways to protect people from COVID and to curb transmission. These same measures are effective for other respiratory infections too, including flu and RSV. Staying home when you are sick also remains a critical step at preventing disease spread.

Where Do We Go From Here?

“Despite our greater scientific knowledge, I worry that society may be worse prepared now for an emerging infection than we were five years ago because of both misinformation and resistance to public health actions,” says Lopman.

To fight this, it is important for the public to continue searching out information from verifiable sources, to correct misinformation, and to avoid sharing questionable content.

Lopman notes that COVID is something we will likely be living with indefinitely. He says there are no signs we will be able to eradicate the virus, but he’s not as worried about the virus as he was years ago.

“Almost everyone has had COVID by now and has immunity from infection and vaccination. So, we are nowhere near as vulnerable to COVID as we were in 2020,” says Lopman. “What's concerning about viruses that are new to humans is the lack of population immunity. That’s what allowed COVID to spread so rapidly and why it was so severe initially.” 

Another Novel Virus in Our Midst

Which brings us to bird flu (H5N1). This has been a problem that scientists have been watching for over a year now. There have been several human cases, but no sustained transmission yet. Will it be the next pandemic?

“Given the amount of infection in cattle there is a legitimate worry that human transmission could be gained,” says Lopman. “To be clear, this has not happened yet. But, it is definitely concerning.”

Disease surveillance and accurate reporting about pathogens and their infections in both animals and humans requires collaboration integration among many entities, including several federal agencies (like those working across agriculture, animal health, and human health), and state and local health departments. When surveillance systems are paused and/or data reporting stops, it prevents scientists from being able to predict what could happen next, and how to best protect people from severe diseases if and when they develop.

The sustained support of key surveillance systems, according to Lopman, is critical for protecting the public from the next pandemic. The New Vaccine Surveillance Network, in particular, relies on hospitals and other health care systems around the country to provide the data to CDC to evaluate how vaccines are working in the real world. It's the kind of data that gets fed up to advisory committees for immunization practices.

“Those systems are absolutely critical for evaluating how well vaccines are working in the real world.”

Surveillance and collaboration led to our greatest success stories during COVID. They can do so again.