Two Years of COVID: What Have We Learned?

In the two years since the first known COVID-related death occurred in the United States, Americans have relentlessly argued about masks, school closings, business restrictions, and vaccinations, with personal politics often determining where one stands. The most important constant, however, has been a virus that pays no heed to political bickering or anti-vaccine fanaticism. Two years into the deadliest pandemic in a century, more than 2,200 Americans are dying daily from COVID-19, giving the United States a sharply higher death rate than other wealthy nations. The overwhelming majority of the deaths were unvaccinated people. In this episode, historian John Barry discusses what Americans, from political leaders to public health authorities and ordinary citizens, got right and what they got wrong about the pandemic, as the spread of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant begins to subside in some parts of the country.