COVID panel offers lessons learned, three years on
| Washington
On Jan. 6, 2021, Dr. Alexander Lazar was overseeing COVID-19 testing in the U.S. Capitol, and was just closing down the site when his cellphone started blowing up.聽There is an emergency, shelter in place.
At first, he wasn鈥檛 too concerned. As he headed up to the crypt, however, he saw people sitting on the ground, some of them bleeding. Rioters had breached the building. He identified himself as a doctor and began examining the injured. Later, a SWAT team evacuated him to the Senate side, where he set up a medical station and took care of people until 3:30 a.m.
In retrospect, he sees the outburst of violence on Jan. 6 as linked to the polarization around COVID-19 policies 鈥� with both symptomatic of growing distrust in government.
Why We Wrote This
Congress never formed a commission to evaluate the U.S. COVID response 鈥� including what went wrong and why. So this group of experts took it upon themselves.
鈥淗owever you think about COVID 鈥� whether you think it was really bad and deadly, or nothing and all invented 鈥� regardless of which of those stories you believed, how we managed it was not good,鈥� says Dr. Lazar, who served as聽biosecurity director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. 鈥淧eople are really frustrated, they have a sense that government is not working for them.鈥�
Now Dr. Lazar is part of a group that hopes to change that with a book they鈥檙e releasing today: 鈥淟essons from the COVID War.鈥� Led by Philip Zelikow, who oversaw the bipartisan 9/11 Commission report, the sets out to examine not just how the U.S. government responded to the pandemic, but why 鈥� why it made certain choices, and what the tradeoffs were. More than three years after the pandemic shutdown began, they hope it will prompt a 鈥渞ethink鈥� of how the U.S. approaches public health crises, and a collective look at what can be done to prepare better next time.聽
The several dozen authors, drawn from fields ranging from history to economics to epidemiology, hope to fill in gaps in public understanding 鈥� and to help counteract some of the partisanship and distrust that complicated COVID-19 policymaking. Indeed, one of the group鈥檚 key conclusions is that the heightened polarization around the pandemic was not so much a cause of policy failures, as an effect of those failures 鈥� including a failure to communicate.聽
鈥淏ecause they don鈥檛 understand what happened, people then tend to turn the story into their own preferred cultural narrative: 鈥榃e didn鈥檛 do enough to protect the economy鈥�; 鈥榃e listened too much to Tony Fauci鈥�; 鈥榃e didn鈥檛 follow the science,鈥欌�� says Mr. Zelikow. 鈥淭hey have no idea 鈥� well, what else could you have done, other than what we did?鈥�
At the same time, because scientific assessments always have to be weighed against social, economic, and other impacts, pandemic response and mitigation are聽鈥渋nherently political,鈥� argued fellow author聽Gary Edson at聽a pre-launch event at the National Academy of Sciences on April 24. Officials should be open about that 鈥� by giving the public clear information and laying out the various tradeoffs.
鈥淲e can鈥檛 simply pretend that the next time around we鈥檙e going to be better off if we could insulate the scientists at the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and public health officials from politics,鈥� said Mr.聽Edson, president of the COVID Collaborative, a bipartisan group of political and scientific leaders. 鈥淲e need to recognize that what we need to do is a better job of managing the inherently political nature of pandemic response and mitigation 鈥� this tension between individual freedom and collective responsibility.鈥�
On May 11, the COVID-19 public health emergency will officially end. With everything that citizens and the government have been through over the past three years, many are fatigued and would like to declare victory and move on.
鈥淚鈥檓 afraid that will be a 鈥楳ission Accomplished鈥� moment, putting COVID and the very real threat of new variants or new pathogens firmly in the rear-view mirror,鈥� says Mr. Edson, a former deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush.
He and his co-authors are hoping their book will serve as聽鈥渁 wake-up call鈥� and spark a renewed effort to understand what went wrong with the U.S. COVID-19 response 鈥� and make necessary course corrections.聽
A dispassionate report
In late 2020, former Google executive and Obama science adviser Eric Schmidt brought together a few foundations to sponsor what they hoped would be a national commission on COVID-19, similar to the one Congress established to look into the 9/11 attacks. They brought in Mr. Zelikow to lead the effort.
Bipartisan bills were introduced in both the House and Senate to create such a commission, but the measures languished. Eventually, the group decided to publish its findings on its own.聽
The book is dispassionate and straightforward, with relatable metaphors. Among them: The government during COVID-19 was like a symphony without a conductor. As a result, state and local officials did a lot of improvisation, sometimes in concert with the private sector, but the overall effect was at times dissonant.聽
A key example of that was the lack of a unified communications strategy to update the public and explain the rationale for protocols like social distancing. John Barry, a historian who wrote a definitive book on the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and was brought in to help shape the 2005 National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, recalls an exchange with a public health official who was shying away from giving a direct assessment out of fear of scaring the public.
鈥淭hey鈥檙e not going to trust you if you don鈥檛 tell them the truth,鈥� says Mr. Barry. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e going to figure it out if you try to sugarcoat things.鈥�
Baruch Fischhoff, an expert on risk communication at Carnegie Mellon University, adds that it鈥檚 crucial for officials to be candid about what they don鈥檛 know. And he says it鈥檚 important to do at least minimal testing of their messaging 鈥� even if it鈥檚 just on office colleagues or family members.聽
鈥淭here鈥檚 been a catastrophic failure of our public health authorities,鈥� he says in a Zoom interview. And that led to serious distrust, which can鈥檛 easily be won back: 鈥淎t the national level, they have a big hole to dig themselves out of.鈥�
There also was no senior member of government whose job it was to gather and regularly disseminate information to the public 鈥� a function he says should be separated by a firewall from 鈥減ersuasive communication鈥� meant to compel certain behaviors.聽
鈥淥ne needs an independent office whose job is just to gather, analyze, and communicate the facts in tested formats,鈥� he says, which establishes trust with the public through regular, straightforward updates. 鈥淚f that function were fulfilled, it would be much easier to do the persuasive communication.鈥�
The red-blue divide
Going forward, says Mr. Edson, pandemic response needs to involve more multistate collaboration, with public health officials acting in concert with elected officials, the private sector, faith communities, or civil society to help mitigate politicization.聽
Dr. Lazar saw the benefits of that while participating in a forum that held Zoom calls three times a week for officials from dozens of states to compare notes on operational challenges like setting up testing centers or reopening schools. People from red states wanted to talk to him about how Texas was reopening its schools 鈥� and people from blue states were curious, too.
As different as their states or communities were 鈥� whether red or blue, rural or urban, small or big, a lot of the on-the-ground struggles they faced were the same.聽
鈥淚t was like a common crucible that we were all being forged in,鈥� he says.聽
On the margins of those calls, people would reach out individually to share cellphone numbers and arrange to follow up later.聽
鈥淓ach of us needs to take a deep look at ourself and think about: How are we participating in a system that is this dysfunctional?鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not always just the other guy 鈥� we need systemic change and we all need to be a part of that.鈥�
