Infectious disease expert Christopher Ohl reflects on COVID-19 past, present, and future

It has been nearly two years since the deadly coronavirus arrived in North Carolina. To date, more than 18,000 lives across the state have been lost to COVID-19, and its impact continues to be felt today in myriad ways.

But much has changed since March of 2020, when Governor Roy Cooper first ordered people to stay at home to stop the spread. As the numbers of new cases dwindle, and with most adults and a growing number of children now vaccinated against the disease, we take a moment to reflect on the pandemic, the situation on the ground today, and a prognosis for the future.

Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist infectious disease specialist Dr. Christopher Ohl spoke with WFDD's David Ford.

Interview Highlights

On the successes and failures of steps that were taken to protect the public from COVID-19:

We in North Carolina have kind of threaded the eye of the needle for the COVID pandemic without being too extreme on either side. Our lockdowns were reasonable and relatively short lived. You know, we didn't really know how to respond to a coronavirus pandemic like we had, and so, we had pulled out the old folder, our pandemic flu plans, and lockdowns and social distancing were a big part of that. And there was reasonable ideas out there and theories that it would help flatten the curve to release particularly the pressures on health care and public health. And it did that, but you know, it has economic consequences and also social ramifications. I think that the whole, ‘We're going to let vaccinated people be unmasked and the unvaccinated have to stay masked,' was one of the big mistakes. And that was largely interpreted by society here in the U.S. that the pandemic was over. Everyone took off their mask, and this really was what enabled delta to take hold here in the U.S. And the delta surge was a result of that.

On surprises:

I think one thing that surprised me was how much the COVID pandemic really brought out our problems in our health care delivery systems. School systems no longer had school nurses. And this hampered our ability to get the schools reopened. Europe and England were able to integrate their pandemic responses into their national health systems. It also brought out our inequities in health care. You know, our historically marginalized populations of color and ethnicity, really suffered the most, both in deaths, loss of income, education, you know, where their kids are, in terms of getting through school. Those problems were there well before the pandemic. The pandemic just exaggerated it to such an extent. The other thing that really surprised me was the divisiveness that ended up coming out. To me, it seemed like out of our political differences, and entered into our pandemic responses. Just quite frankly, we would be out of COVID now here in the U.S., if everyone would have gotten vaccinated.

On the current movement in several state legislatures to replace the authority of public health officials with that of politicians:

I think that that's a disaster. And it will be. Public health has a certain amount of expertise. I mean, I've been doing this now for 30 years in infectious diseases. You have to be quick and versatile. And you have to be responding to real data. If you're responding to notions and misinformation and political feelings, you're going to head off totally in the wrong direction. I think that here in North Carolina, we had a good cooperation between our governmental leaders and our public health aspects both at the county and the state level. But I really think that movement is a huge mistake, and it'll cost lives in the future.

And what I'm really worried about is that all the other vaccines that we have to prevent childhood infections mostly, will no longer be mandated and it'll fall off. The anti-vaccine movement is very strong, very well-resourced, and very dangerous. You know, I've watched babies die of whooping cough. And before the whooping cough vaccine, we had 60,000 kids a year die of whooping cough, and it is a horrible death. I've seen hospitalized people with measles. I've seen people die from measles, pneumonia. We don't want these things to come back. We just don't. They're horrible.

On the future and whether or not there will be a return to normal:

Yes, there will be a return to normal. As time goes on normal changes anyway. And so normal won't be like it was two years ago. And it shouldn't be. I think that we could pick up a lot of the things we learned about health care delivery, and how it's done — health care inequities and disparities — and we can improve on that. But we need preparedness for the next one. There'll be another pandemic of some sort or another that'll come down the pike again, and we need to be prepared. So, we need to ramp up rapid vaccine production through technology.

Testing? We need to do a lot better with testing. We really messed up with testing during this current pandemic. We need to have public health beefed up and it needs more resources. And then our acute care health facilities need to work together and do the planning to gather to be ready for the next one, and it'll make a huge difference.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This transcript was lightly edited for clarity.