The Hopkins Forum: Debating the Legacy of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Description

It has been five years since the start of COVID-19, and the world is still reckoning with its impact: millions of lives lost, strained health systems, and divisions that continue to shape our politics and daily lives. Public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) were asked to respond to fast-moving science and intense uncertainty while societies faced the challenge of trust, misinformation, and compliance with evolving guidance.

This debate asks a pressing question: Where did the pandemic response break down, and what does that teach us about the responsibilities of both public health systems and the societies they serve?

Some argue that institutional preparedness and communication were not strong enough to meet the crisis. Others emphasize the role of social mistrust, misinformation, and resistance to basic measures that made it difficult for even the best-prepared systems to succeed.

The goal of this conversation is not to assign blame but to examine what happened, why it mattered, and how public health and society can work together more effectively when the next crisis arrives.

Participants:

• Jerome Adams—20th U.S. surgeon general; presidential fellow and executive director of the Center for Community Health Enhancement and Learning; distinguished professor of practice at Purdue University
• Tom Frieden—former director of the CDC; president and CEO at Resolve to Save Lives
• Dara Kass—emergency medicine physician; founder of the FemInEM Foundation; former regional director for Region 2 at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Mikhail Varshavski—family-medicine physician; YouTuber ("Doctor Mike") with more than 14 million subscribers; media personality
• John Donvan (moderator)—Emmy-Award-winning journalist

This event is presented by the Hopkins Forum, a partnership between Open to Debate and Johns Hopkins University's Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Agora Institute.

The event begins at 6:30 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m.