Marking five years of COVID

By Mary T. Bassett, MD, MPH
Director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights

March 11 marked five years since the World Health Organization declared that the world was in the grips of a pandemic, the first in a century. By the end of March, most states had entered what we would call “lock down” with mandatory stay- at- home orders.

Few of us really want to recall those days. I was sitting at my desk at FXB getting calls from my New York City colleagues, who had data to show that community transmission was underway. The data were irrefutable, but there were no COVID test kits. They pushed for a shutdown and faced resistance because the economic consequences would clearly be severe. Their alarm escalated as the data came in. I also got calls from elected officials.

For months, New York State would be in the top 10 states nationwide for COVID deaths because of those early, haunted days. In New York City, ambulance sirens blared down empty streets. Refrigerated trucks parked outside of hospitals to serve as temporary morgues. By the end of March, it was already clear that COVID would cut a deeply unequal swath. First to sound the alarm was Milwaukee, with data showing a disproportionate share of people who died of covid were Black. Milwaukee was also the first jurisdiction to declare racism a public health crisis. Only in July did we get national data to examine race/ethnicity.  

For some time, before Zoom entered our lives, we seem to have realized a lot of the meetings we have are not necessary. I read. I started tuning into World Health Organization briefings and listening to reports from doctors in hard hit Italy. The university was all online. There was an eerily beautiful rendering “Hallelujah” (sorry for the advertisements) by students at a South African boarding school. Zimbabwe lost several of its leading physicians, friends of mine. It was time to speak up as we could. I had fun promoting vaccination with Dapper Dan. With Natalia Linos, we turned to op-ed writing- I wrote a piece that holds up on why we should not demonize cities (code for people of color). But when the call came, I headed to Albany to serve as Governor Hochul’s health commissioner in time for the Omicron surge. My days began with the data at 5:30am each morning. I had to do my part.

To this day my sense of time during COVID seems off. By the time the pandemic was declared over, over one million lives were lost, with excess mortality throughout highest among Blacks, Latinos and the indigenous. The highest number and rate among high income countries. If we assess success by saving lives, we failed. Along the way there were astonishing (not in a good way)  episodes. But there were also astounding accomplishments- the mRNA vaccine (thank you Kizzmekia (Kizzy) Corbett) and the child tax credit expansion halved child poverty. Those are accomplishments to celebrate with the hope that lessons have been learned. Given the current context, it seems unlikely that we’ll be ready the next time. And there will be a next time.

[The above represents solely my own views and does not necessarily represent the views of the institution.]