I Got Caught in a Pandemic Panic 2 Years Into Covid. It Felt Like Day 1.
The New York Times
The Omicron variant turned my trip home from South Africa into a nightmare episode of conflicting public health orders that often seemed to have little connection to science.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — In early November, I flew to southern Africa to report a series of stories about the state of the Covid-19 pandemic in the region, including one about the remarkable work being done to stanch the emergence of new coronavirus variants. My last afternoon there, South African scientists announced the discovery of the Omicron variant. Hours later, I got on a plane in Johannesburg to head home to Canada.
By the time I landed for my connection in Amsterdam on the morning of Nov. 26, the world had gone into full panic mode and I was swept up in a chaotic, at times frightening, tangle of orders and conflicting rules that seemed driven more by fear than medical science.
My firsthand journey through Covid response measures has shown me that, two years into this, we have yet to learn how to anticipate how both viruses and people will behave, or how to plan accordingly. We are going to need to get much better at both if we are to get through the next pandemic with less loss of life, and less suffering.
