In the corner of the entrance to my laboratory building lies a neglected and forgotten relic of the recent worldwide pandemic. This month, four years ago, the saga of Covid began in this country and would severely test the social structure of the nation. That first weekend of March 2020, my wife and I were on one of our frequent long weekend trips to New York city to see a Broadway show. Early news stories at that time had just begun to describe a new viral illness, with cases being detected on the west coast, and mere days before our trip, in upstate New York. With little concern, we went ahead with the trip and spent several days roaming around Manhattan taking few additional precautions over our normal routines. We enjoyed being in the audience of a performance of The Lehman Trilogy, viewing what would be virtually the last performance of that wonderful show. The Monday after that first March weekend, we flew home. Less than a week later, Broadway closed and the city of New York locked down. Thus began a public health crisis that would test the nation's resolve and resourcefulness.
Today, happily, the situation is much improved. The past four years seem to be both a blink of the eye and an eternity. The anachronistic sign that stands forgotten in a corner of my building is a souvenir of those difficult days as we struggled to deal with this new illness. What the crisis revealed about society is both heartening and dismaying. We saw the endless and largely unappreciated dedication of healthcare workers on the front lines of the fight against this new, insidious illness. We also came to belatedly appreciate the value of the unsung members of society, the grocery store workers, restaurant servers, and all those in constant contact with the public who provide crucial services. With more disappointment, however, we saw with clear vision the utter and complete moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican party. From the party leader and nation's president on down to local government, the GOP failed the nation with its endless obstruction of virtually every public health measure from masks to vaccines to social distancing, the vilification of scientists as they struggled valiantly (and sometimes imperfectly) to understand this new pathogen, to the belligerent, cultish adoption of unproven treatments and medications that were mere defiant emblems more than they were useful countermeasures to the disease. So now, four years later, the nation and the world stands, scarred but hopefully wiser and better prepared for challenges to come.
