When, 50 or 100 years from now, a historian or medical student looks back at the sequence of the 2020-2022 COVID-19 epidemic, the timeline will be deceivingly linear: beginning, middle and an ending that trails off but never really stops.

The student of 2122 will see a column of dates and matching milestones, along with patterns preserved in graphs from weekly and monthly reports. There will be the one- and two-year comparisons of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. From the far future it could look like a well-plotted novel, starting with small alarms and growing premonitions, followed by a universal calamity until the hero scientists reduced the viral enemy to a foreshadowing of future uncertainties.

The 2072 observers, however, will include people who have lived through the pandemic, and they will know that a timeline flattens out the real story and a novel imposes artificial order. Neither captures the ride we are on, soon to enter its third year.

The pandemic has been marked by sudden reversals, false starts and educated guesswork. Who would have foreseen, for instance, that the high point of quickly developed vaccines would be met with the low point of resistance from so many Americans? And two years in, we are a country that did not have enough tests to distribute when it became clear that testing was key to managing with so many unvaccinated. Long after the country could have been manufacturing large quantities of the most effective masks, the N95 and KN95 types, there are not enough to fill the promised deliveries.

The realization that COVID is going to be around longer than any of us calls for long-term planning, stockpiling and distributing the supplies and equipment that would fight the next surge or the next new pandemic. Once the United States had such a policy, but it was ignored and its funding diverted. Now that the first major pandemic in our lifetimes has shown what it is like to be unprepared, we need to create a better system for the next round, whenever it comes.

A lot has been learned; now the task is to institutionalize that knowledge so it does not have to be rediscovered.

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Follow the lead of science. Since it became known that the omicron variant is less deadly but more contagious than earlier versions, public health officials and government have rewritten certain guidelines. The value of contact tracing in schools, for example, has lessened with the vaccination of students and staff. There are more cases, but most compare to what would be expected from the flu we have lived with since 1918.[/naviga:li][naviga:li]

Be prepared at all levels. Don't wing it except in truly unforeseeable circumstances. We agree with President Biden that the states can and should manage the equipping and staffing of their COVID responses, but that means that 50 different administrations are at the end of the supply pipeline for federal assistance and in competition for other sources. Frankly, the Lamont administration, which has regularly gotten high marks for its handling of the pandemic, could have lost a lot of that earned credibility with the bungling of the announced distribution of home tests and masks. Municipalities have made the best of what is sent to them and attempted to distribute fairly and quickly.[/naviga:li][naviga:li]

Incorporate lessons learned. The need to give fatigued health care workers respite, the critical importance of keeping schools open, the mental health crises that arise from isolation must all influence planning with an urgency we would not have known until learning it the hard way. Continue to seek advice from experts in each field, and ensure they get to know and listen to each other.[/naviga:li][/naviga:ul]

The worst failure in this long struggle would be if we did not learn from it.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.