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Yong Discusses U.S. Pandemic Failures and Key Lessons

Although the United States was ranked the world’s most prepared country for a pandemic in 2019, it faltered when the COVID-19 crisis emerged, Ed Yong explained.

“What this says to me is that we have absolutely no idea how to assess and quantify how prepared a country actually is for a pandemic,” said Yong. 

Yong analyzed the U.S.’s long-term struggles in responding to the pandemic during the Gerson Family Lecture on Wednesday night.

Yong joined The Atlantic as a staff writer in 2015. During his time there, he covered the novel coronavirus outbreak in China in early 2020 and closely monitored subsequent COVID-19 outbreaks. He has received numerous accolades for his science reporting and two New York Times bestsellers, I Contain Multitudes and An Immense World.

In 2019, the Global Health Security Index evaluated each country’s ability and capacity to prepare for a pandemic, Yong explained. In this rating, the United States placed first in nearly every category. 

But when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, the U.S. accounted for 16 percent of all COVID-19 deaths, despite making up just 4 percent of the world’s population. 

“From the very start of COVID, people longed to return to normal, but the truth is that normal led to this,” said Yong.

Long before COVID-19, Yong said, the U.S. grappled with understaffed nursing homes and a fragile healthcare system in which employees were burnt out. Social media had already evolved into a powerful tool for spreading misinformation, he added. 

According to Yong, the United States’ values of individualism and liberty drove the country to address the pandemic individually rather than cooperatively. 

“To counter problems like this, we need to think collectively,” Yong said. “Instead of asking, ‘What’s my risk?’ You have to ask, ‘What is my contribution to everyone’s risk?’”

The pandemic disproportionately impacted marginalized communities, including the elderly, immunocompromised individuals, and people of color. Young explained that our individualistic instincts led many to ignore this disparity in an effort to regain a sense of normalcy in their lives.

“The problem is that your circumstances constrain your choices, so low and common minority groups found it harder, always, to avoid infections, to isolate when sick, to hold hourly wage jobs without paid leave, or the option to work remotely,” Yong said.

Marginalized areas experienced the highest hospitalization rates, Yong said, which resulted in a wave of distrust from those communities. In response, the U.S. prioritized retaining society’s trust through the advance of technology. 

“But a vaccine is useless without vaccination, and vaccination depends on systems,” Yong said. “It depends on all that social stuff that we’ve come to ignore.” 

People go through a cycle of neglect and panic, Yong emphasized. In a crisis, communities panic and allocate resources to deal with the problem. Once the problem is resolved, he explained, people forget the lessons learned and fall back into complacency. 

“This is not a passive thing,” said Yong. “This happens because we are told to neglect, because we are told to move on.” 

Yong emphasized that we did not fully understand COVID-19. Many people dismissed long COVID-19 as either a psychological condition or a symptom of chronic fatigue.

“They’re just depressed. They’re stressed. But this is nonsense. There’s plenty of clear physiological, objective evidence that this is the case of long COVID,” said Yong. 

Reflecting on the failed attempts to combat the pandemic and address long COVID-19, Yong acknowledged the challenge of remaining optimistic. Still, he encouraged the crowd to recognize their ability to drive change. 

“One kind and good decision can greatly influence the health of a lot of other people, and it is incumbent upon us to not only make those choices, but to imagine a better future,” said Yong. “We all have the capacity to make those choices.”

February 2, 2025

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