God Is Great. Beer Is Good. People Are Crazy.

Pandemic? WHAT Pandemic??

After two years of lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and social distancing, we’re back to “normal.” A million lost lives later, we’re doing our best to act as if nothing ever happened. It’s understandable; after two years of fear, hysteria, conspiracy theories, government mandates, and everything else that went with it, we can live again.

We once again go to restaurants, concerts, and sporting events without masks on. Some remain cautious about what they do and how they do it. Still, the majority have dived back into life as if nothing’s happened over the past two years.

We all want life to be normal again, especially given what we’ve endured. But, no matter how badly we might want that, there’s one nasty truth we ignore at our peril: We’re not done with COVID-19.

And it’s doubtful COVID-19 is done with us.

The worst of the Covid-19 pandemic may be behind us, but pretending that it is over will not make it so. A new Omicron subvariant, BA.2, is driving up coronavirus case counts in Europe and Asia, and experts predict it soon will account for the majority of new cases in the United States. The impact is uncertain. On the one hand, many Americans have already been infected by a similar strain of the virus. On the other hand, BA.2 arrives as people increasingly are resuming prepandemic behaviors, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly one-third of Americans have not completed their initial round of vaccinations, and more than 70 percent have not received booster shots.

In the face of this uncertainty, it would be reckless for the government to reduce its efforts to minimize new cases and help those who fall ill. Yet that is exactly what is happening after Congress recently failed to approve $15.6 billion for tests, treatments and vaccines.

When even Congress is acting as if COVID-19 is over and the Biden Administration is rolling back its efforts to fight the virus, it feels like we’re declaring victory in the middle of the third quarter. Of course, we’re tired after two years of being under the thumb of a deadly pandemic, but is declaring victory so early and walking away from it all a sound strategy?

Last week, the Biden Administration announced it would be reducing the shipment of monoclonal antibodies by more than 30% and that it would have to end them later this spring. With Congress reducing funding, the Administration has little choice. Still, does the fact that the pandemic is no longer front-page news every day mean that our collective sense of urgency should disappear?

Anyone with a lick of common sense knows that the time to prepare for an emergency is before it happens. It’s challenging to build an airplane as you’re flying it, which is essentially what the federal government has had to do over the past two years. Sure, you could argue that the Trump Administration’s denialism and ineptitude didn’t help, but COVID-19 would’ve tested any Administration, even the most competent.

Here’s what we should be scared about, though- the Biden Administration has said that

it lacked sufficient funds to place an order for enough doses of vaccines to ensure the availability of booster shots later this year.

So when is the best time for America to prepare for a possible variant? NOW, of course. No credible military force orders weapons systems as the battle is about to begin. The key to success is to have supplies on hand when they’re NOT needed so that when they are, public health officials can quickly and efficiently deploy them to where they can be most effective.

Unfortunately, Americans (and their government) often loath learning the lessons taught by history. So when we win, we too often let our guard down, never thinking that victory may not be permanent, that it may instead be a momentary lull before the worst arrives.

The past two years have inflicted real pain on America- both economic and personal. We’ve lost one million of our fellow citizens and thousands of businesses. We’re not the same country we were before the pandemic- yet too many Americans (and their elected representatives) seem to expect that we’ll bounce back to where we were before. Unfortunately, we’ll never be there again, not while COVID-19 is still with us.

The pandemic hasn’t disappeared. There are still parts of the world where low vaccination rates mean that populations are still at risk. We can’t know what the future holds for COVID-19…and America. The next wave of the coronavirus may already be on its way. Scientists and medical professionals can study and predict what may be coming, but we can’t assume we’re out of the woods.

The United States ought to maintain funding for public health, including the resources to monitor infectious diseases and to develop new vaccines and treatments, in the same way that it maintains funding for other forms of national defense. The gaping holes in the nation’s public health infrastructure, which the pandemic exposed, were created by exactly the kind of shortsightedness now on display.

The way to ensure that we’ve defeated COVID-19 is to maintain a robust level of federal and state funding for public health initiatives. We must continue to provide resources to allow for the development of new vaccines, treatments, and a better understanding of how viruses like COVID-19 will impact us.

The time to defeat the NEXT pandemic is now, but we’re not going to do it by metaphorically spiking the football in the middle of the third quarter and going home to knock back a few beers. There are too many lives at stake and too much potential disruption that could happen if we don’t continue the work that’s already taken place.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the sad truth that we haven’t valued- and thus funded- our public health infrastructure adequately. Because of that, we lack the voices who can translate evidence for us and warn of what may be in our future. Ideally, a robust public health system should allow us to prepare well ahead of any potential emergency.

The Obama Administration, for instance, compiled a pandemic “playbook,” which the Trump Administration ignored. As a result, the federal public health system was thoroughly politicized, even as the COVID-19 pandemic became a crisis that clearly couldn’t be “managed” by political appointees. Because of this, vaccines that could have saved thousands of lives became political issues instead of health issues. Thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands, died because they refused to believe that vaccines were life-saving medicine.

There’s still a lot of work ahead of us. We’re still not out of the woods, yet we’re acting as if the pandemic is over and we’ve won. I hope that’s the truth, but I also fear it’s not.

I can’t help but think of the chorus from one of my favorite country songs, by Billy Currington: “God is great. Beer is good. People are crazy.”