Epidemiologists – like oncologists and climate scientists – hate to be proven right. A year ago this week, the communications rush began from epidemiologists in academia to the public and to local governments about the imminent dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the face of a weak federal response.
St. Patrick’s Day parades were canceled with days to spare. Hospitals were turning suspected positive cases away because of a lack of tests. Epidemiologistspredictedthat hundreds of thousands Americans would die over the following year, with the upper boundaries above a million. This was our country’s biggest challenge since 1941, and we did not meet it.