Letter: Complacency is the real concern on pandemics

In his Jan. 15 column, Michael Barone critiques the two years the Democrats held the trifecta of federal government control. Economic results are definitely mixed and one could make arguments the future is bright or dark. But it is his criticism of the handling the COVID-19 pandemic that is wrong.

Let us look at what resulted. Over one million Americans died in the first two years from the virus. Many more people suffered long-term effects. The U.S. health system almost failed completely. The world has not faced such a deadly respiratory viral pandemic since the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Our public health officials had to learn how to deal with this threat in real time. It was, as they say, like building the airplane while you are flying it. How can he say there were "unneeded masking and vaccination requirements?" Maybe all of those refrigerated trucks rented by morgues to store the excess dead human bodies were "unneeded."

He says that the Center for Disease Control "failed to conduct useful research." There is now a massive scientific literature on COVID-19 produced by governmental and private entities.

He states "Public health authorities tried to squelch the fact COVID infection conferred immunity comparable or superior to vaccination." True, natural infection confers immunity, but to produce 100 healthy Americans with immunity post-infection, how many must die of COVID or suffer lingering effects of long COVID? Better to vaccinate those 100 people to spare the others.

To snarkily say the whole effort was a failure is wrong. What is wrong is becoming complacent and thinking the next pandemic will be a cake walk. The big mistake the United States made was the chronic underfunding of our public health infrastructure causing us to be caught flat-footed with COVID-19.

William I. Swedler

Naperville