Merideth Schlader of Summerhill said she learned a valuable lesson during the COVID-19 pandemic she’ll carry with her to the next one.
“You have to make an effort to stay connected,” she said.
Schlader practiced what she preached recently, drinking coffee with two friends, Cathy Smith of Cortland and Shannon Eggleston of McGraw, discussing a faith-based book they’d read together.
Jeri Shirk of Cortland said she was disappointed by how political the COVID-19 pandemic became, and hopes the next one won’t be the same.
And there will be a next one, experts said. Another pandemic, whether a new strain of COVID or otherwise, is inevitable.
The last pandemic, the Spanish flu of 1918 to 1920, killed 50 million of the world’s 1.9 billion people – about 2.6% of the world population, historians estimate.
World War I slowed response. The first cases were actually reported in Kansas, and migrated to Europe, and the trenches thereof, with U.S. soldiers heading to war. But nervous nations didn’t want an international panic, so widespread awareness came only after the flu was reported in Spain, a non-combatant.
The coronavirus pandemic has several parallels. It has killed nearly 7 million of the world’s 8 billion people since 2020, about 0.09%, a number achieved with a fast-paced vaccine program, better drug treatment and better technology in respirators than a century ago.
HEALTH OFFICIALS PREPARING
The COVID-19 pandemic showed a public health threat can affect the whole world, said Nicole Anjeski, Cortland County public health director. COVID had profound effects on not only physical health, but the health of economic and political systems worldwide.
“We may not understand the full impact of this pandemic for years to come,” Anjeski said. Individuals, local and federal governments, medical professionals, nonprofits and businesses had to work together to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.
Communication, Anjeski said, is among the most important tools of dealing with mass health events, a hard lesson learned early when miscommunication, unclear messaging and uncertainty marred health departments’ ability to communicate with communities.
For future pandemics, the health department annually reviews and updates emergency preparedness plans. It has yearly drills, too.
“We actively explore the most appropriate and efficient ways to provide transparent communication with the community, and we continue to foster relationships we have built with our local health systems, physicians, community organizations and agencies, local leaders and state partners,” Anjeski said.
‘IT TAKES ALL OF US’
Frank Kruppa, commissioner of Tompkins County Whole Health, that county’s public health department, said after 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks – when letters laced with toxic anthrax went out across the country – Tompkins and health departments across the country began constant planning for public health threats.
COVID-19 strained that preparedness, Kruppa said. Before COVID, health departments prepared for shorter-term, acute events, not widespread crises.
The pandemic taught Tompkins to build its resources, with more vaccines, with partners and with connecting with the public and media, he said. Communication is vital to navigating a mass public health event.
“Whether it’s county government, the community, nonprofits, businesses, we need to see how we make sure we all understand or have some understanding of a plan, and where everyone might fit in,” Kruppa said. “One of the positives out of this is a broader understanding with governments, businesses, nonprofits, of how it takes all of us to respond.”
NOT THE FIRST RODEO
Nellie Brown, director of workplace health and safety programs for the Buffalo Co-Lab of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said many factors could aggravate the next pandemic.
“Our diseases over the centuries tend to indicate they jump from animals to people, the next one will probably be something similar,” Brown said.
Climate change and human development exacerbate their spread, Brown said.
“We’re seeing huge amounts of extremes in our climate. That can cause a lot of animals to move. When you have animals that are forced to move or chased out, then animals we may not have had contact with are driven into contact with humans,” Brown said.
There’s debate on the matter, but Brown said most evidence indicates droughts facilitate diseases.
“When water dries up, organisms become more concentrated, and at the same time you have people unable to clean things or bathe. That makes things a lot more difficult,” she said.
In 2009, with the H1N1 epidemic, the U.S. attitude was that it didn’t need to plan because its medical system could handle anything, Brown said.
“Now look at what happened” in 2020, she said. “Failure to plan is a huge issue.”
Brown said the country shouldn’t rely on the marketplace to provide treatments and vaccines.
“Yes, it takes money to research and develop drugs and antivirals. It takes a lot of money,” she said, but profit shouldn’t be a major motive. “Don’t let the marketplace drive this because we need to be on the watch all the time, not just wait and see what drug will be profitable.”
NONPROFITS ADAPT
“If there’s another situation like COVID, I think we’re pretty well prepared,” said Jackie Leaf, executive director of Seven Valleys Health Coalition. “Whether we’re helping with clinics or materials we would be there to back them up. As things wound down, I think we had pretty good systems, I’m not sure what we would do differently.”
Seven Valleys has a food rescue program. When farmers were told to dump milk, even as there were shortages on store shelves – because production lines geared for single-serving and commercial containers couldn’t be converted to half-gallon and gallon jugs fast enough – the organization received excess milk and passed it out for free.
“We’re more prepared than we were the first time as far as food assistance,” Leaf said. With its new food rescue facility, Seven Valleys can store and refrigerate fresh food.
FOOD SYSTEMS
Cortlandville dairy farmer Paul Fouts said there’s only so much farmers can do to untie tangles in the food processing and distribution system. Dairy farmers, if they have the space and resources, could add storage tanks, a short-term solution not accessible to every dairy, especially smaller operations.
“I don’t know how they would do it, but there really needs to be some flexibility in the processing sector,” Fouts said. “The plants set up to process milk appropriate for food service suddenly couldn’t process milk because it had nowhere to go.”
Buying from local farms, Fouts said, could relieve supply issues.
Local food suppliers are more resilient against supply chain disruptions, shows a 2021 study by the World Economic Forum. Large, pervasive food systems are more vulnerable to supply shocks, whereas local producers are less dependent on large-scale labor, transportation or distribution.
STEPPING UP
Christella Yonta, president of the Cortland County United Way, said in the event of another global outbreak, the organization would do just what it did the first time to help distribute food.
“At the time of the pandemic, the United Way was uniquely positioned to manage through it, and by that I mean we already had a well-established network of community partners,” Yonta said.
Normally, United Way acts strictly as a fundraising distributor. During COVID, Yonta and her staff distributed food and masks instead of money. Yonta arranged with DoorDash to deliver food, a relationship Yonta says will continue.
Today, she said, the United Way and its counterparts are better connected and know more about what to expect.
“We just had to step up,” Yonta said “And we’ll do it again.”
