23 Pandemic Decisions That Actually Went Right

A lot went wrong with COVID, but the responses that worked could help guide us in future pandemics.

More than three years ago, the coronavirus pandemic officially became an emergency, and much of the world froze in place while politicians and public-health advisers tried to figure out what on Earth to do. Now the emergency is officially over—the World Health Organization declared so on Friday, and the Biden administration will do the same later this week.

Along the way, almost 7 million people died, according to the WHO, and looking back at the decisions made as COVID spread is, for the most part, a demoralizing exercise. It was already possible to see, in January 2020, that America didn't have enough masks; in February, that misinformation would proliferate; in March, that nursing homes would become death traps, that inequality would widen, that children's education, patients’ care, and women's careers would suffer. What would go wrong has been all too clear from the beginning.

Not every lesson has to be a cautionary tale, however, and the end of the COVID-19 emergency may be, if nothing else, a chance to consider which pandemic policies, decisions, and ideas actually worked out for the best. Put another way: In the face of so much suffering, what went right? To find out, we called up more than a dozen people who have spent the past several years in the thick of pandemic decision making, and asked: When the next pandemic comes, which concrete action would you repeat in exactly the same way?

What they told us is by no means a comprehensive playbook for handling a future public-health crisis. But they did lay out 23 specific tactics—and five big themes—that have kept the past few years from being even worse.