SARS-CoV-2

Yet the reality is that SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, is still finding ways to infect people by evolving new mutations, and a new variant has raised concern among virologists that continue to track the virus.

And we're always just one nasty mutation — something the SARS-CoV-2 virus has done countless times — away from another major resurgence of COVID.

While I’ve given in to social Covid fatigue at the classroom level, I have now decided — more than five years after the SARS-CoV-2 virus reached U.S. shores — that we need to muster the energy to reflect on the pandemic and extract a few lasting messages to help us rethink many aspects of science, and the world.

Lastly, along with the technical arenas outlined above, the pandemic also taught us that the most revealing lessons may have little to do with the SARS-CoV-2 virus or any details that deal with the basic science of infectious disease.

And that people continue to die from, and be disabled by, SARS-CoV-2 infection without any movement to change the situation.