GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – It’s been a year since the spread of COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. Local health officials are looking back at the past 12 months, and what is yet to come.
When Prevea Health CEO Dr. Ashok Rai reflects on the last year, he says one thing sticks out.
“We talk about the last year, and all I can think about is the loss. The of loss of life, the loss of time together, economic losses, it’s just been traumatic for everybody,” Rai said. “Who would’ve thought a year ago, that over half a million citizens of the United States would no longer be with us?”
Rai believes that most, if not all of it, could’ve been prevented if we knew more about the virus and done the right things quicker and more efficiently.
“If you compare other countries that have the same resources we do, and really nobody has it the amount of resources in the United States do, but there are other modern countries that did not see the level of loss because they had a consistent response and we didn’t,” Rai said. “I think it’s pretty obvious when you compare us to other countries that had the same opportunity for loss of life, that there are a lot of things that we could have done differently.”
Rai pointed out that they didn’t have a response with the science in front of them right away, but it flooded in rapidly. It didn’t take six months to develop a plan, it took about 30 days for scientists and healthcare officials to make what Rai calls ‘significant recommendations.’ The issue, Rai says, is that people just didn’t listen.
“We decided argue over six inches of cloth rather than mourn the death of a half million people. So there are a lot of things that in hindsight, timing-wise, we could have done so much better,” Rai explained. “People made health care, health decisions, scientific research into a political football, which none of us who are trained in this would ever imagine happening.”
He says there were more voices in the educational space than medical professionals are used to seeing, and that some maybe weren’t quite as well-trained or informed as others.
“Think about that great med school that opened up this year on Facebook, and all of a sudden you had a ton of different opinions out there. And that’s what they were, they were opinions. They weren’t based on scientific methods, they weren’t based on research, they weren’t based on historical scientific evidence,” Rai told WTAQ News. “What led to a lot of comments and basically divisions within our country, is that we couldn’t sort out what was real and what wasn’t.”
That’s what leads to some concern moving forward for Dr. Rai. While one year is a milestone, it’s not quite mission accomplished.
“It’s only 365 days. It’s one year, 52 weeks. Those are just numbers. We are not done yet,” he said. “I worry that we’re gonna let off the gas in an inconsistent manner around the country, and we’re gonna allow this virus to replicate in ways that are damage us and prolong this pandemic.”
Rai argues that we know how to get done with this as fast as possible. But people need to work together.
“We just everybody to get along and listen. Get vaccinated, put on your mask, maintain your distance. We don’t need that just in Wisconsin, we need that across United States for this to work, and we’re already seeing holes in that,” Rai said. “As much as we want to be done with this, people aren’t taking the advice of scientists, they’re not looking at the research, and they’re making decisions based on opinions rather than good scientific evidence. And we could be in this boat longer than we need to be.”
Most computer modeling puts things at the end of the summer, or even mid-summer, before many health care officials will see the ability to back down on some restrictions. But that’s in prime conditions.
“If we don’t do everything we’re supposed to do, that could be extended for months, and even well into 2022,” Rai said.
This comes as Wisconsin announces their next eligible groups for vaccinations in Phase 1c, which is set to begin on March 29th.
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