KEY POINTS

  • The World Health Organization is warning that unless the lessons learned from the COVID-19 outbreak are applied, the stage is being set for a worse one
  • While COVID-19 is highly infectious and unpredictable, it sports a lower mortality rate than some other diseases
  • The U.S. continues to struggle to contain its outbreak, administering barely a tenth of the vaccines it had hoped

The World Health Organization used its last press briefing of the year to warn the world that COVID-19 wouldn’t be the worst pandemic to face humanity even as it continues to ravage the U.S.

WHO emergencies chief Mike Ryan said Monday that the lessons learned from the novel coronavirus must be applied if a more lethal pandemic is to be averted in the future.

“This pandemic has been very severe,” Ryan said in the briefing. “It has affected every corner of this planet. But this is not necessarily the big one.”

COVID-19 should be a “wake-up call,” Ryan said. While very infectious, COVID-19’s mortality rate is dramatically lower than those of some other diseases. Even the mutated COVID-19 strain found in the United Kingdom only makes it more infectious, rather than adopting more dangerous traits like drug resistance or greater lethality.

“These threats will continue,” said Ryan. “One thing we need to take from this pandemic, with all of the tragedy and loss, is we need to get our act together. We need to honor those we’ve lost by getting better at what we do every day.”

"We throw money at an outbreak, and when it's over, we forget about it and do nothing to prevent the next one. This is dangerously short-sighted," said the World Health Organization's Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
"We throw money at an outbreak, and when it's over, we forget about it and do nothing to prevent the next one. This is dangerously short-sighted," said the World Health Organization's Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus World Health Organization / Christopher Black

The U.S. continues to struggle to get its outbreak under control, with almost 3,000 Americans dying on Christmas Eve. Intensive care units across the county have run out of space as hospitals overflow, putting even non-COVID-19 patients at risk.

“You just have to assume it’s going to get worse,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN, warning that January could surpass even December’s record-breaking fatality numbers. “We certainly are not at the [vaccination] numbers that we wanted to be at the end of December.”

The federal government’s effort to distribute COVID-19 vaccines has floundered amid logistical blunders. "Operation Warp Speed" administered barely a tenth of its December goal of 20 million vaccinations. A second COVID-19 relief bill threw the annual budget it was bundled with into chaos after President Donald Trump called it “disgraceful.”

That set the stage for an ongoing fight over whether to increase direct aid checks from $600 to $2,000. The proposal face an uphill battle in the Senate. While it has support from Democrats, Trump has routinely tied it to his crusade against social media platforms that fact-check him as well as his unproven allegations of election fraud.

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