OUR COVID-19 LESSONS

More than three years into the COVID-19 pandemic and with America's public-health emergency expiring on May 11, it is clear that this moment is an opportunity not only to reflect on successes but also to grapple with the setbacks, pitfalls, and failures that defined our response. The responsibility to improve our response to future health crises lies in correcting our failures in this one

- KIZZMEKIA S. CORBETT

I was a senior researcher at the National Institutes of Health, leading a team that developed a COVID-19 vaccine. As I review our fight against the virus, from the front row of the front line, three paths of action stand out.

First, the government needs to change the paradigm that defines the focus of federal research, with an emphasis on being proactive instead of reactive. There are 23 families of viruses associated with human infection, and the state of the research into each of these families varies significantly. In my specialty of coronaviruses, we had made significant strides before the pandemic struck. The strides we made were not because of any extraordinary funding streams, but merely because we were interested in closing gaps in scientific understanding—particularly in light of the recent threats posed by SARS-1 and MERS, which showed the pandemic potential of coronaviruses.