The White House has announced the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency and is disbanding its COVID response team. As we officially move on as a nation, there are lessons to be learned from the pandemic, and 33 of my peers and I lay out many of them in our new comprehensive report, Lessons from the Covid War. This group convened two years ago in the hopes of laying the foundation for a National Covid Commission. With no official inquiry in sight, we decided to publish our findings.
As the title suggests, the report compares fighting a pandemic to fighting a war. Governments may not think of pandemics as a security issue, but a problem that kills millions, costs trillions, crosses borders, and erodes the custodial function of the state is the definition of a security issue. Pandemic preparedness requires the type of investment that affords a wartime readiness posture.
