PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Many people talk about going back to “normal,” the mask-free days pre-2020 when we would just live life without the looming threat of a once-in-a-century virus.
But the 53 authors of the COVID Roadmap, including Penn immunologist Dr. John Wherry, say normal wasn’t good enough. Going forward, they say we need to adjust and be ready for the ebbs and flows of COVID-19.
The medical and policy experts came together to draw up the COVID Roadmap, which serves as a plan to get the country past the emergency phase of the pandemic. The 136-page document was spearheaded by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Penn’s vice provost for global initiatives, who has been a Biden administration adviser.
“We outline in a dozen or so chapters the areas where we need to focus attention to make sure that we can move a potentially concerning situation toward a more manageable situation,” said colleague Wherry.
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It’s not the “new normal,” they say, but the “next normal,” where we can truly get back to living, working and learning like we did pre-pandemic, and without making the same mistakes.
Public health measures — like “better surveillance, testing linked directly to treatments that you can get locally, figuring out which vaccines we may want to be developed,” Wherry said — will be ready to go if they’re ever needed.
Other recommendations include serious investments in biosecurity, proper ventilation and air filtration in schools and businesses, stronger policies for workers, and health care with equity in mind, so communities of color aren’t left behind.
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Roadmap creators say the country needs $100 billion in the first year and billions more each year after that — a bargain compared to the trillions of dollars lost during the pandemic.
“This virus is still going to be here causing disease, causing death,” added Wherry, “and we’re gonna need to figure out how to manage that and how to work with that in our health care system and our society.”