Learning from Our Mistakes

Despite the hope surrounding finding a vaccine to halt the COVID-19 pandemic, top World Health Organization official Michael Ryan gave the world a reality check at a regular press conference on May 14 when he suggested that "this virus may never go away."

And while the medical community's top priority is a remedy, the rest of us need to focus on living with and mitigating the risk of COVID-19. That means understanding viruses are part of everyday life. 

For instance, if we are at the peak of an influenza, let's practice social distancing, let's get those six-foot lines down in the grocery store, let's not shake hands too much and be particularly careful and have quarantine measures in place around hospitals and care homes. Sometimes society has to give health care a helping hand and allow it to prepare, then it's time for society to get on with life.

If there's any good to come from living through the pandemic, it's that the public is learning there's a large portion of the population who are highly vulnerable and that the preventative habits we've formed with the COVID-19 pandemic, such as handwashing, physical distancing, staying away when you're sick, are all habits that should be recognized during the flu season.

The current COVID-19 pandemic once again reminds us of the lessons not learned from past events in which many individuals have either been injured or killed because we failed to learn from past mistakes.