NEWS
OPINION
1 million US COVID deaths, 5 lessons
Honor American lives lost by learning
from pandemic to save lives in the future
Dr. Jerome Adams
Former U.S. surgeon general
The United States has reached the
grimmest of milestones – 1 million dead
from COVID-19.
Even if you believe that half of those
deaths are “from” versus “with” CO-
VID-19, it would still represent more
Americans dead than if a Sept. 11 attack
had occurred every week since the pan-
demic began. And for the record, I and
many other experts believe we’ve great-
ly underestimated versus overestimat-
ed deaths from the coronavirus.
No matter what “tribe” you’re in, I
hope we can all pause and reflect on the
gravity of all the parents, grandparents,
siblings and friends lost. That many
people shouldn’t die in modern times
from an infectious disease.
The easy path would be to write
about everything that went wrong.
From politics and communication, to in-
equities and the lack of public health in-
frastructure and preparedness, there’s
no doubt we could have slowed, if not
prevented, our rapid ascent to this hor-
rible number.
However, truly honoring all those
who’ve died means not only looking at
the negatives, but also asking ourselves
what we’ve learned and how we can ad-
vance health and health care delivery,
such that we spare millions of others
from a similar fate.
It is often hard to see through the fog
of war, but the greatest advances in
health and health policy in our nation’s
history have in fact come during times
of crisis:
h Blood transfusion therapy was rev-
olutionized during World War I, tripling
the survival rate.
h World War II ushered in the age of
penicillin, saving the lives of 1 in 7
wounded United Kingdom soldiers.
Teach nation’s racist past to help prevent hate crimes
How 18-year-old suspected Buffalo shooter shows
inflammatory speech still terrorizes my community
Eileen Rivers
Opinion projects editor
USA TODAY
In a matter of minutes at a supermar-
ket in a mostly Black area of east Buffa-
lo, New York, a shooter ended the lives
of 10 people. Among them: Pearly
Young, 77, who handed out food to the
needy; Aaron Salter, 55, a former police
officer; and Katherine Massey, 72, a
writer who pushed for civil rights. Three
people were injured.
Add one more to the list of lives that
were thrown away. If the suspected
shooter is found guilty, he could face life
in prison for what authorities have
called a hate crime.
It appears that the plot to kill inno-
cent minorities started long before the
Saturday afternoon attack. The suspect
looked for Black neighborhoods on the
internet. A screed was found online that
is believed to be his. The writing con-
tains alarming and hateful messages
about minorities and information about
altering a firearm. He already had stated
that he would kill others and himself in
response to a school assignment. For
that, he was sent to a psychiatric hospi-
tal, but released days later.
Why were signs that he was a danger
not more closely monitored and acted
on? And how does our society keep
missing that signs of hatred among
younger white Americans (who are re-
hashing the kinds of attacks common
during and before the civil rights move-
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h The Persian Gulf War brought sub-
stantial innovations in trauma care,
translating into countless lives now
saved from motor vehicle accidents and
shootings.
The COVID-19 pandemic will be no
exception.
Here are five lessons learned during
the pandemic that will prevent millions
more from dying in the future:
1
Real time data collection. At the
beginning of the pandemic, even
the president didn’t know how
many Americans were hospitalized
or had died from COVID-19. Now almost
anyone can look on their state health
department’s website and see local
numbers for the past 24 hours. COVID
forced us to acknowledge and address
our outdated and underfunded data col-
lection processes, and the public now
sees real time reporting as the norm.
2
Faster research sharing. The
speed at which the scientific
community has responded –
from both a research and a com-
munication standpoint – is an underap-
preciated marvel. It used to take years
for promising research to be published,
and a decade or more for science to be
translated into clinical practice. Today’s
discoveries are published online and
become new clinical paradigms in days
to weeks versus years. If we can main-
tain this new era of information sharing
and uptake, it will greatly reduce suffer-
ing and death from an array of public
health and medical issues.
3
Telehealth expansion. Accord-
ing to the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services, the peak
of the pandemic saw 63 times
the number of telehealth visits that oc-
curred pre-pandemic. It’s not that tele-
health was new; it has been around for
decades. But COVID-19 forced patients,
providers and health systems to adapt
to a world where in-person visits simply
weren’t feasible. Patients now will de-
mand telehealth services moving for-
ward. This will help not just rural com-
ment) are real threats? How is it that
white supremacist ideology is still so
dangerously alive in a generation that is
supposed to embody hope, progress and
change?
Some recent acts of mass violence on
Black Americans and against Black
movements have been committed by
young adults – the shooter who killed
Black worshipers at a church in Charles-
ton, South Carolina, in 2015 was 21; the
suspected shooter in Buffalo was 18.
What curriculum fight tells kids
The latest incident comes at a time
when parents across the country are
fighting to keep curriculum out of
schools that could teach their children
how racism and hatred have not just
marred entire communities but have
also hindered American progress.
Instead of teaching children as much
as possible about a church bombing that
killed four young Black girls in the 1960s,
and devastated Black parents across the
country, fights over curriculum tell
young people that empathy for groups
damaged by the nation’s past is unnec-
essary. A church in Alabama filled with
worshipers has been replaced by a su-
permarket in Buffalo filled with commu-
nity caregivers and public servants.
Education about this nation’s strug-
gle with racism and oppression always
has been weak. The fight against the
imagined boogeyman of critical race
theory threatens to make a flawed sys-
tem (and uninformed generations)
worse.
How is this country supposed to be-
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A National Mall art installation last fall
by Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg
commemorates the Americans who
have died from COVID-19.
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
munities, but also the single urban
mother who couldn’t arrange child care
to come in for her appointment. Or per-
haps it’s the man who is reticent to come
into an office setting for counseling but
is willing to address mental health is-
sues virtually.
4
The power of public-private
partnerships. The pandemic
and Operation Warp Speed have
shown that if you invest a suffi-
cient amount of money, choose the right
partners and give them the right re-
sources, you can defy what even most
scientists believe to be possible. As late
as August 2020, many health experts
still thought it would be a year or more
before we had a safe and effective vac-
cine. By that winter we had two COVID
vaccines, and by spring 2021, a third.
The development of immunizations,
therapeutics and testing throughout the
pandemic is truly the greatest global
medical achievement of the past half a
century. And it happened because of
public-private partnerships. We now
have hope for vaccines and cures for
HIV, cancer and other diseases. Lives
will be saved in the future because of the
come less racist, less violent and more
accepting when so many Americans
fight to keep kids in the dark about their
history – and in doing so, doom them to
repeat it?
Last year, a group of white students
in Texas repeated a horrible chapter of
America’s past, not through a violent
physical attack but by selling Black
classmates on a social media app. Ac-
cording to news reports, the students
used racially charged and psycholog-
ically damaging language. It was the
same kind of dismissive language com-
monly used during auction block sales
of Black men, women and children dur-
ing centuries of slavery in America.
In that same Texas area, parents
have fought against teaching critical
race theory in schools, and others on the
state level have pushed against curricu-
lum and books related to slavery and the
nation’s racist past.
It’s hard to imagine a young person
being colder than white supremacist
politicians of the past such as Alabama
Gov. George Wallace, who shouted in
1963, “Segregation now, segregation to-
morrow, segregation forever.”
Catering to white supremacy
But livestreaming your own killing
spree – which is what authorities said
Saturday’s suspect did – surpasses
even Wallace’s callousness.
That act reduced criminal behavior to
something akin to promoting a brand
for hatred.
Why think deeply about your own ac-
tions (or dig deeply into what’s causing
your hate) when you can hide behind
the feeling that your crime is part of a
bigger cause associated with a training
film you’re creating?
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urgency and innovation created by lives
lost during the pandemic.
5
Use of pharmacies. The pan-
demic forced a reckoning re-
garding the lack of timely com-
munity access to physicians in
the United States. There was simply no
way for every patient who needed a test
or vaccination to be able to see a physi-
cian to obtain one. Thanks to better use
of pharmacists and pharmacy clinics
(often staffed by nurse practitioners)
patients can access testing, vaccina-
tions and even treatment for COVID-19
– at a pharmacy that’s 10 minutes away
versus a traditional health facility that
may be over an hour’s drive. This has
helped address health inequities, and
the pandemic is just a start. We simply
must continue to look for more safe and
innovative ways to extend access to un-
derserved communities.
A bonus lesson learned is a much
greater awareness of the importance of
community health and public policy.
Simply put, none of us can exist on this
planet for long alone.
Conversely, our own actions can’t in-
definitely shield us from the actions of
others. This is true whether you believe
too many didn’t do enough to protect us
from COVID-19, or whether you believe
public mitigation measures over-
reached and caused economic, educa-
tional and emotional harm. The virus
showed that we are all in this together.
This is a lesson we’re still learning, but
it’s one we must embrace to save lives in
the future.
As we reflect on the sorrow that
comes with a million lives lost, let’s all
vow to honor those deaths by turning
them into something positive. History
tells us we can save exponentially more
lives than we’ve lost – if we learn from
our battle with this virus and adapt.
Ships don’t typically change course
during times of calm. It often takes a
storm to force us to forge a new direc-
tion. We must create a better “normal,”
where we’re better prepared for the next
virus and where lessons from the lives
we’ve lost save lives in the future.
Dr. Jerome Adams now is a professor
and executive director of health equity
initiatives at Purdue University.
Technology has allowed young peo-
ple to distance themselves from their
actions – and quickly spread material
for copycats.
We love to brag about our nation’s
love for equality. But instead of fighting
for this value, we’re finding ways to
cater to white supremacy in the name of
free speech.
Perhaps we can learn from other
countries.
In Germany, curriculum about the
Holocaust is mandatory and students
visit concentration camps. For many,
this brings a sense of understanding
about human suffering, loss and the im-
portance of not repeating such a grave
moment in the nation’s history. It also is
illegal to use the internet to spread
white supremacist ideology in Germany.
It’s illegal to deny the Holocaust. Social
media platforms are tightly regulated by
the government when it comes to hate
speech.
We take pride in our Constitution – in
the power it gives states to resolve is-
sues such as education; in its free
speech protections.
I’m not calling for our freedoms to be
diminished. But tolerance for inflam-
matory speech without education has
repeatedly brought disastrous results –
ones that are killing my community.
Education, which leads to empathy and
understanding, is key.
When will new generations of Amer-
icans stop supporting throwback prin-
ciples associated with white suprema-
cy? When will domestic terrorism asso-
ciated with racist hate end?
When what we teach matches our
supposed values.
Eileen Rivers is the projects editor for
USA TODAY Opinion. Follow her on
Twitter: @msdc14
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