Five years ago this week, STAT was interviewing nervous infectious disease scientists about a mysterious disease spreading in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, located roughly 500 miles west of Shanghai. On Jan. 4, 2020, we published the first of what would become a torrent of articles on the disease now known as Covid-19.
The intervening years have both sped and crawled by, too busy at times to take stock of all that has changed, too plodding to believe we have arrived at this anniversary already. (The first case of Covid in the U.S., in a person who had traveled to Wuhan, was not confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until Jan. 20, 2020.) What do we have to show for the time that has passed? Not enough.
There’s a saying attributed to all sorts of people that one shouldn’t waste a good crisis. In public health, especially, learning from disease outbreaks and environmental disasters is critical; figuring out what worked and what didn’t is fundamental to emergency response planning for the next time.