The Covid Test: 5 years later

This is a special bonus edition of MSNBC Daily |

VIEW IN BROWSER   SPECIAL EDITION Saturday, Mar. 15, 2025 THE COVID TEST Welcome to a special edition of the MSNBC Daily newsletter. This week, to mark the fifth anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring the coronavirus a pandemic, we published a six-part series called "The Covid Test," which tallies the multiple ways the U.S. fell short and is less than prepared for the next pandemic.   I conduct an interview with John M. Barry, the author of 2004's "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History," who points out the one good public health decision he says President Donald Trump has made this term. Dr. Esther Choo laments the country's loss of trust in medical officials who worked so heroically during the pandemic. Dr. Uché Blackstock says too many white people shrugged at reports that Covid was hitting Black Americans hardest. Paul Waldman explains that Trump wasn't the only reason Covid hit rural America so hard. Funeral home owner Malcolm Gibson says his phone seemed to never stop ringing in the earliest days of the pandemic, and Dr. Kavita Patel says we still haven't healed from the polarization the virus exacerbated.    — Jarvis DeBerry, editor THE ESSAYS DR. KAVITA PATEL Covid fractured American society. Five years later, we still haven't healed. The Covid-19 pandemic reveals itself not as a singular event but as a multifaceted crisis that exposed some deep-seated fault lines. Read More PAUL WALDMAN How Trump allowed Covid to ravage his strongest supporters When Covid moved from urban America to rural America, it found different but equally fruitful pathways to bring infection and death. Read More MALCOLM GIBSON I'm a funeral director. The Covid pandemic was the most harrowing stretch of my career. As a funeral home operator, one of my lingering memories of Covid is of a phone that seemed to never stop ringing. Read More JARVIS DEBERRY How the American people have memory-holed Covid The U.S. was considered more prepared than any other country to deal with a pandemic. But when Covid arrived, multiple flaws were brought to the surface. Read More DR. UCHÉ BLACKSTOCK When Covid hit Black Americans hard, too many white Americans shrugged The higher rates of infection and death weren't the result of anything Black people had done to make ourselves sick; they were an example of how systemic racism plays out in our lives. Read More DR. ESTHER CHOO The Covid pandemic forced ER doctors like me to battle a different kind of virus In some ways, health care went through a portal during Covid and exited in a different reality. Read More Download the MSNBC App: 30 Rockefeller Plaza New York, NY 10112 PRIVACY | CONTACT | UNSUBSCRIBE