E67: COVID-19 Roundtable Update - 3/15/21

This episode marks an anniversary: one year since this podcast’s COVID-19 roundtable began. In those early moments while we were busy sorting out what we were facing it was fairly well understood that the pandemic was not a short-term event, yet this 26th roundtable discussion seems a little surreal as we all harbor guarded hopes for better days ahead.

The last 12 months have been a terribly rocky road: (1) through politicization of public health interventions that disfigured the U.S. response, (2) through the prism of systemic racism with the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, (3) through rapid cycles of scientific data, healthcare experiences, and vaccine development, and (4) through the reality that American health care resources are not without limits. Many people stayed home. Many others risked their lives in essential roles. We are asked to distance from each other when all we wanted was to be together. We were unable to recognized life milestones in traditional ways. On top of all that, three longstanding American myths - of equality, abundance, and exceptionalism - got shaken to their core.

Which is why it seemed like the right time to spend this roundtable separating the wheat from the chafe. What, and who, and how did we lose? What did we learn? If anything, what did we gain? How, as of this moment anyway, might we go forward? For that matter, what do the next one, three, or six months look like?

These are the questions we’ll approach on our one-year anniversary of the Vitalyst Spark COVID-19 Roundtable. With apologies to Clint Eastwood, it’s time to take a look back AND a look forward at the good, the bad, and the ugly of COVID-19, as of March 15, 2021.