Opinion: Make America Infected Again?

It was a Sunday morning in early February 2020, and the governor of New York had just sent a text message: “When you’ve finished your second coffee, please give me a call.” Gov. Andrew Cuomo, then New York state’s strong and commanding leader, was sending a cryptic message to a media publisher.

“Hi Tom, I know we were planning to meet in Albany tomorrow but something big has come up,” Cuomo said on the phone, speaking in hushed tones. “I just spoke this morning to Dr. Anthony Fauci and (Washington) Gov. Jay Inslee, and something scary is heading our way. This new virus is extremely dangerous. I feel like I’ve been told that something worse than Hurricane Sandy is hitting us in two weeks and I have little time to prepare for it.”

By then, we had been seeing isolated stories of a deadly virus originating in Wuhan, China, that was already wreaking havoc in places like Italy. It hadn’t yet come near the East Coast, so it still felt like we were safe.

But Cuomo was right. Despite the early warning signals abroad, the federal government was ill-prepared and the country was caught off-guard. Beginning in March 2020, New York City was devastated by the rampaging virus and suffered more deaths from COVID-19 than any other city in America.

There was no “pandemic playbook,” and our leaders had to improvise based on limited and fragmented information. President Donald Trump said in those early days that COVID-19 “would simply go away.” State and local leaders rushed to close schools, restaurants and the subway system overnight to try to stem the carnage.

Here we are, exactly five years later, and some of our leaders have taken a dangerously skeptical view of vaccines and science in general.

In the aftermath of 9/11, we had a bipartisan national commission that issued a lengthy and critical report about the failures that led to this tragedy and recommendations on how to prevent anything like that terrorist attack from happening again. More than two decades later, our country has not suffered from a similar attack.

But after COVID-19, there was no federal commission and no public hearings in New York state or New York City to review what worked and what didn’t. More importantly, our current leaders still do not have a scientifically tested roadmap on what to do if another pandemic hits our city.

Seemingly every week, we see scary headlines in reputable publications like The New York Times suggesting that influenza subtype H5N1, more commonly known as bird flu, might become a public health crisis. “Could the Bird Flu become Airborne?” was the Times’ scary headline of the day on Feb. 3. “Cows Have Been Infected With a Second Form of Bird Flu,” blared the Times’ headline on Feb. 5. “Bird Flu Suspected in Deaths of Ducks and Wild Birds at N.Y.C. Zoos,” was the Feb. 8 headline. “We’re Running Out of Chances to Stop Bird Flu,” was the headline of a Times opinion piece on Feb. 20.

Earlier this year, the bird flu was spreading so much that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration discussed preparing bird flu vaccines for the public. And bird flu isn’t the only public health risk. Late last month, an unvaccinated young boy in Texas died from the measles, a scourge that seemed to be eradicated until recently. Tuberculosis took hold in Kansas in January – it’s a bacterium that easily travels through the air and can be fatal if left untreated.

Here’s a real news flash: several confirmed cases of measles have already been reported in New York City.

With no playbook, no vaccine and no consensus on masking or closing schools, are our leaders prepared for the next potential pandemic? Consider some hypothetical scenarios. If there were several cases of bird flu in children in New York City schools this week, do the governor and the mayor know what they’d do about school closures? If the bird flu or tuberculosis hits New York, is there a plan on masking or mandating closing restaurants and other places where people congregate? How will we mitigate any potential outbreak? What did our hospitals learn about ramping up for a pandemic?

We are about to embark on a contentious New York City mayoral primary campaign, but we’d wager that very few – if any – candidates or their policy advisers have focused on emergency preparedness for a bird flu epidemic. Isn’t that more important than whether the mayor should be tried in court for a Turkish quid pro quo or who is the most left-wing candidate in the field?

The national and global picture makes the outlook even gloomier – the U.S. may be taking concrete steps to jeopardize our ability to adequately respond to the next pandemic. Organizations such as the World Health Organization, research funding and government spending are critical levers for preparing for the worst.

Skepticism toward scientists has reached an unprecedented level, trust in government is lower than ever and more than 40% of youth use social media as their primary source of news – and we’ve seen how much misinformation and conspiracy theories go unfiltered on these relatively unmediated platforms.

There is a huge amount of room for improvement to reflect on what we lost since early 2020.

Like New York, most states have not done a deep dive into their COVID-19 responses. But there is one notable exception: New Jersey commissioned an independent review of its actions during the pandemic, which led to the production of a 900-page report that detailed its effects on public health infrastructure and recommended changes to prevent the state from being blindsided again.

Our elected leaders – especially the mayor, governor and their respective teams – should study our neighbor’s report and adopt its findings to ensure New York is ready for any future infectious disease outbreak. This time, the mayor and governor must be in sync before we are in crisis.

Let’s take concrete steps to learn from our history before we are doomed to repeat it.