A new report issued by the Lancet Commission looks at the first two years of the pandemic to consider what the world did right (spoiler: not much), what the world got wrong, and how we can end this public health emergency and prepare for future ones. According to the commission, the failures cost us 17.7 million unnecessary deaths globally — a figure that includes some 6 million reported deaths plus an estimate of unreported deaths. (Not to mention the many people still struggling with the long-term consequences of a prior infection with COVID-19.)
Here are four ways the world messed things up:
