Commonground
Senior Moderator
Excerpts:
If you ask anyone, they remember the exact moment that they realized that COVID-19 was going to change the world. For most of us, that moment came during the second week of March 2020. Schools were shut down. Many jobs became remote. But by the time most of our lives were changed by the pandemic, public health experts had already spent weeks or even months trying to stop the spread
To commemorate five years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, we're taking you into the lives of public health experts at the very beginning—before most of us even knew we were in a pandemic. We spoke with Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown and professor of epidemiology, Scott Rivkees, associate dean for education in the School of Public Health and professor of the practice of health services, policy and practice, Craig Spencer, associate professor of the practice of health services, policy and practice, Ashish K. Jha, dean of the School of Public Health, and Philip Chan, associate professor of behavioral and social sciences.
-snip-
What gives you hope for the next pandemic?
Jennifer Nuzzo: I really was heartened by how many people just kind of rolled up their sleeves and decided to pitch in and help. Particularly academics. They were behavioral scientists, data scientists, they just rolled up their sleeves and said, “What can I do to help?”
People were stepping into roles that they had never occupied before just because they are like, you know what, there's a crisis. I think it really speaks to what's best about America, that we have this remarkable scientific capacity, this remarkable sense that democracy breeds optimism, breeds ingenuity. You know when pressed and when stressed, people do really step up and try to help.
So as much as I think we look back five years ago on COVID with a lot of grief and trauma and reflecting on the fact that we lost more than more than 1.6 million American lives. I think it's also important to look back and kind of remind ourselves of our resilience and the ingenuity that we saw happen. And so I think that's what I choose to focus on.
This is not the first pandemic. We will continue to see these sorts of events happen. But it is my hope that we can channel that innovative spirit and sort of use that as our kind of North Star for thinking about how we can live in a world where these events will happen more and more likely, but live in a way that we don't allow them to just upend our lives, that we can be resilient in the face of them.
https://sph.brown.edu/news/2025-03-12/hiph-moment-everything-changed
If you ask anyone, they remember the exact moment that they realized that COVID-19 was going to change the world. For most of us, that moment came during the second week of March 2020. Schools were shut down. Many jobs became remote. But by the time most of our lives were changed by the pandemic, public health experts had already spent weeks or even months trying to stop the spread
To commemorate five years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, we're taking you into the lives of public health experts at the very beginning—before most of us even knew we were in a pandemic. We spoke with Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown and professor of epidemiology, Scott Rivkees, associate dean for education in the School of Public Health and professor of the practice of health services, policy and practice, Craig Spencer, associate professor of the practice of health services, policy and practice, Ashish K. Jha, dean of the School of Public Health, and Philip Chan, associate professor of behavioral and social sciences.
-snip-
What gives you hope for the next pandemic?
Jennifer Nuzzo: I really was heartened by how many people just kind of rolled up their sleeves and decided to pitch in and help. Particularly academics. They were behavioral scientists, data scientists, they just rolled up their sleeves and said, “What can I do to help?”
People were stepping into roles that they had never occupied before just because they are like, you know what, there's a crisis. I think it really speaks to what's best about America, that we have this remarkable scientific capacity, this remarkable sense that democracy breeds optimism, breeds ingenuity. You know when pressed and when stressed, people do really step up and try to help.
So as much as I think we look back five years ago on COVID with a lot of grief and trauma and reflecting on the fact that we lost more than more than 1.6 million American lives. I think it's also important to look back and kind of remind ourselves of our resilience and the ingenuity that we saw happen. And so I think that's what I choose to focus on.
This is not the first pandemic. We will continue to see these sorts of events happen. But it is my hope that we can channel that innovative spirit and sort of use that as our kind of North Star for thinking about how we can live in a world where these events will happen more and more likely, but live in a way that we don't allow them to just upend our lives, that we can be resilient in the face of them.
https://sph.brown.edu/news/2025-03-12/hiph-moment-everything-changed