A few weeks ago, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP26, was held in Glasgow, Scotland. The meeting reflected a global effort to address climate change. Climate change is a unique challenge, in that it poses an existential threat, yet its effects have accrued so gradually over time that, until recently, it has been difficult to rally support for addressing the problem. In considering climate change, I have found myself thinking about other slow-burning threats, and how we often fall short in addressing them. For example, on May 15, 2017, TIME magazine ran the following cover story:
Source: TIME Magazine Web site. https://time.com/magazine/us/4766607/may-15th-2017-vol-189-no-18-u-s/. Accessed October 8, 2021.
The TIME cover story reflects one of the most perplexing realities of the COVID-19 pandemic: we saw it coming. We did not know specifically that a pandemic would strike in 2019. But we were long aware of the likelihood that such a contagion would emerge, and we knew it would probably happen relatively soon. Yet when COVID-19 did come, it looked very much like it caught the world unawares. Our response was a chaos of good ideas and bad ideas, good implementation and bad implementation. Many of these shortcomings can, of course, be ascribed to poor—or, at best, inconsistent—leadership. US leadership, in particular, was in the midst of immense disruption and transition when the pandemic struck, with the unprecedented figure of Donald Trump in the White House and a presidential election like no other culminating in November of 2020. It was perhaps unavoidable that these circumstances would shape the coherence of our pandemic response. Indeed, there is a temptation to lay all our failings during COVID at the feet of the unique political moment in which it unfolded. This temptation may be particularly acute for those of us in public health, who have an interest, human beings that we are, in not always facing our shortcomings as squarely as we might.
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