Lessons from the pandemic and its aftermath
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Updated at 11:26 a.m. ET on February 12, 2025
Five years ago, the coronavirus pandemic struck a bitterly divided society.
Americans first diverged over how dangerous the disease was: just a flu (as President Donald Trump repeatedly insisted) or something much deadlier.
Then they disputed public-health measures such as lockdowns and masking; a majority complied while a passionate minority fiercely resisted.
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Finally, they split—and have remained split—over the value and safety of COVID‑19 vaccines. Anti-vaccine beliefs started on the fringe, but they spread to the point where Ron DeSantis, the governor of the country’s third-most-populous state, launched a campaign for president on an appeal to anti-vaccine ideology.
Five years later, one side has seemingly triumphed. The winner is not the side that initially prevailed, the side of public safety. The winner is the side that minimized the disease, then rejected public-health measures to prevent its spread, and finally refused the vaccines designed to protect against its worst effects.
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David A. Graham: The noisy minority
Ahead of COVID’s fifth anniversary, Trump, as president-elect, nominated the country’s most outspoken vaccination opponent to head the Department of Health and Human Services. He chose a proponent of the debunked and discredited vaccines-cause-autism claim to lead the CDC. He named a strident critic of COVID‑vaccine mandates to lead the FDA. For surgeon general, he picked a believer in hydroxychloroquine, the disproven COVID‑19 remedy. His pick for director of the National Institutes of Health had advocated for letting COVID spread unchecked to encourage herd immunity. Despite having fast-tracked the development of the vaccines as president, Trump has himself trafficked in many forms of COVID‑19 denial, and has expressed his own suspicions that childhood vaccination against measles and mumps is a cause of autism.