The following is an excerpt of a commentary recently published by the Times Union and authored by PRI Leads, Wafaa El-Sadr and Ayman El-Mohandes.
To be ready for the next pandemic will take investment both locally and globally. But as the U.S. turns away from its role as a global health leader, we put ourselves at risk.
Five years ago, the world was brought to its knees by a virus. COVID-19 was a textbook case of how a new infectious disease could emerge, rapidly spread and, within a matter of weeks, cause dramatic loss of life, widespread human suffering and incalculable economic damage across the globe.
More than 7 million deaths are directly attributable to SARS-CoV-2 infection as of February 2025, with more than one million deaths in the United States alone. But taking into account likely COVID-related deaths – what epidemiologists designate as “excess deaths” – data suggest that the pandemic may have caused between 19.1 and 36 million deaths (as of January 2023).
The economic consequences of the pandemic are no less startling. When considering direct costs plus the value of the loss of health and life, experts estimate the financial fallout of the pandemic to have been on the order of $16 trillion.
Read the full article at the Times Union.