>> More than 1.2 million Americans died from COVID-19 despite having one of the most sophisticated health care systems in the world, the U.S. response to the Coronavirus pandemic fell short when compared to other developed nations.

So 5 years after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic is the United States any better prepared to weather the next pandemic?

Joining us to help answer that question and more are Dr. Garth Walker medical director of value-based care at Rush University Medical Center.

Dr Robert Murphy, executive director of the Institute for Global Health at Northwestern Medicine.

And joining us via Zoom is Doctor Samir Wara director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Doctors.

Thank you all for joining us.

I want to start by asking each of you what you would say.

Some of the main lessons, the United States and in particular, our health care system have learned or think that we should have learned from our experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and Dr Walker Start with you.

Please.

>> Sure.

I think when I reflect back to 5 years ago, there were definitely some winds, particularly in the notion around developing a vaccine operationally being able to distribute it across the United States.

But when I think about opportunities of improvement, particularly around health equity and are marginalized communities, one of the biggest takeaways I took from there when I was at the Illinois Department of Public Health was just how fragile our primary care structure was.

how we need to ensure that we're thinking about populations and trying to make sure they're healthy or when a future pandemic presents itself.

Again, Dr. Horrific.

>> Besides the vaccine, which was a remarkable achievement in a matter of 10 months.

If you asked any expert and about vaccines in March of 2020, not one of them would have said that a vaccine could be developed within that year.

That calendar year, including Tony Fauci, head of an eye ad, was basically responsible for the development of this.

Everybody was wrong.

And that was a good thing because it happened so quickly by December, you had a vaccine on the market.

That was incredible.

It was affected.

People out of the hospital, keep people alive.

So it was one thing.

The second thing was the treatment.

There's a treatment there.

Several treatments out there.

The first treatment occurred really months after the pandemic start.

That was also remarkable, unfortunately, was a drug that was being used for other diseases that the just moved into the COVID spear tested it.

It worked.

And then the 3rd thing that work was testing.

And if you remember back to 2020, you can get a test if your life depended upon it.

I mean, that was a complete disaster.

But U.S. government came in again with a project called Rad X, Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics for COVID within a little over a year's time, we went from 0 tests per day to 8 million tests per day.

So those 3 things I really phenomenal.

And you talk about the vaccine, it also speaks to the importance research because the research upon which the vaccine was based, the mrna technology was has been researched.

>> You know, started 2020 years before her Dr Bora.

Same question to you.

>> Well, I'd say that we at the state of Illinois and then when the public public thinking about this topic quite a bit and >> little over a year ago we released a COVID after action report emphasize some of those strengths areas in which we could apply.

Lessons learned.

We were very fortunate that time to have strong central leadership with Governor Pritzker.

Also a data-driven response focused on addressing disparities.

But what we learned was that through our governmental systems, especially public health systems, we needed to focus on preparedness.

We also had to modernize our systems, both the kind of taking real-time data into action, as well as validating our workforce.

And finally, how important communications was during the pandemic being able to engage communities, build trust taking those advances in science and really applying them around across the state to ensure that we could have the healthiest communities all across the league.

>> Dr Murphy, how would you say the effectiveness of the U.S. response compared to that of other countries and for those countries that had the lowest per capita mortality rates, would they do >> we did the worst of we can 19th of 20 of the 20 highest income countries.

I mean, really a pathetic score.

And the reason for that is that we gave up on the mitigation is too early and we left it up to the states.

So we stopped the masking.

We stop the social distancing people stop taking the vaccines or didn't take the vaccines.

Our mandate, some vaccines all were lifted very early compared to other countries like, for instance, in France, which has a much better result than we do.

You couldn't go buy a cup of coffee in a coffee shop without a vaccine card.

You couldn't leave during the height of the pandemic.

You couldn't go more than quarter of a mile from your home without a significant purpose to go like to visit a doctor or something.

We had nothing like that.

And that's why our numbers are actually the worst 19 20 and the high income world that we live so Dr for accepting that hindsight is, of course, twenty-twenty.

What were some of the mistakes that you think were made during the pandemic?

That should be.

>> Could be avoided if possible in the future.

>> I do think and as we kind of continue to face.

>> Challenging times in public health, the importance of having those.

Cornerstone partnerships between the governmental systems, academic systems, health care systems like the 3 of us on this call critical to ensuring that we could have kind of real-time action.

How do we modernize our our systems in big in meaningful ways?

Indeed, one of the focuses of how do we speak to these complicated public health and health care topics in ways that we can get individuals to understand the unification of health and community health, the importance of that.

we that we are learning those lessons and trying to apply them in real time here in Illinois.

But it will continue to be a real sort of state of vigilance for to maintain our preparedness on now into the future for any kind of public health emergencies that arise.

>> Dr Walker, you mentioned this and we know that, of course, black and brown black and brown communities in particular had higher mortality rates than white communities in the U.S. what we know about the cause of those disparities and how that might be addressed in the future.

>> Sure.

I think when we think about different communities and different ethnicities that are affected differently by pandemics.

We have to think about the social determinants of health, the barriers to be able to get access to vaccines as well as their participation in research trials to be able to be positioned.

Well, to be protected.

He protected.

I think one of the winds from COVID-19 with that, we did have equitable representation in the development of those vaccines, but that doesn't necessarily replace the role of trust and the role of building trust regardless whether you're a part of the private sector, part public sector gaining trust is a full-time job and communities have Wright full hypothesis for to be able to question accordingly.

So I think being able to continue on those partnerships that were just mentioned, build those partitions steeply so that when the pandemic presents itself in the future, you can operation allies, the distribution of vaccines needed as well as education to be received for those communities.

>> We surprised by is those disparities back in 2020 when it was coming to light?

I'm not at all.

I think the evidence in the research around the disparities among different groups was very deep, very convincing and well known amongst those in the field.

The challenge was how do you react towards it and build the trust and be able to affect the communities that needed to be affected differently.

>> Dr Mursi.

Do you think the key lessons to be learned a medical political?

>> The medical I think we're on target.

I think as the reasons I already stated, but this is the disease that is the most political disease that I think has ever really happen.

Not that pandemics aren't filled with politics.

I mean, it goes back to smallpox vaccination back in this 17 th-century in Boston where when discovered very elation, which is a form of a smallpox vaccination.

The leaders of the community who are promoting it because it worked.

Their had their houses and firebombed.

People thought it's against God's will is just not a natural thing to do.

And so that feeling today and then with this pandemic, it continues.

And it's it's just a huge tragedy will happen with the next pandemic when we now have states with laws built where you never have a mask mandate, you can never have a social I mean, it's built into some laws and some of the states these people are really going to be put at odds and to and follow-up on the issue with the underprivileged minorities.

Because of the great efforts, actually that one on in this state and many others and many people, those vaccination rates treatment rates went up significantly during the pandemic.

And in the middle of the pandemic.

When the politics came in.

you know rates actually got worse?

White males, white males started doing worse.

We were doing a study.

We had to go out the suburbs where we had to go out there recruit them to get into a study to try to, you know, treat them.

So so we're almost out of time on and Dr. For.

I'm gonna give you the last word on this, because, you know, obviously there's a lot to talk about because we weren't able to get to the part about the United States withdrawing from the World Health Organization which declared a global pandemic.

But >> overall, would you say we are better prepared for the next pandemic?

Is a bird flu isn't measles >> will as you mentioned, just emerging challenges around public health.

I'd say that here in Illinois, we have invested in.

Our preparedness in our data systems.

>> And and in working all around you and effective ways to communicate with their communities.

>> But the COVID-19 pandemic showed us, we interconnected.

United States and world.

And have to do everything in our power to maintain those important global relationships to ensure that we are taking every precaution to protect our residents.

And you don't.

We across the nation.

>> All right.

That's where we'll have to leave it.

The 3 of you obviously have your