Five years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic caught our health care system unawares, nurses and other health care workers say we are no more prepared for the next threat.

“It’s scary,” says Tatiana Mukhtar, a nurse in New Orleans. The exposure during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic “was horrific, for patients and for health care workers” she says, “and having been there and having experienced that, I feel like we have learned nothing because [health care systems] are still not doing what we need to do.”

Although the emergency feeling of spring 2020 may have faded, the need for public health measures to combat the spread of disease remains urgent. COVID is still circulating widely, and studies show that at least 35 million adults have experienced Long COVID, and that COVID increases the risk of heart disease in both children and adults. This has also been the most dangerous flu season in 15 years, with up to 92,000 people dying of the flu between October 1, 2024 and mid-February this year.

The U.S. also faces a resurgence of both tuberculosis (TB) and measles, the latter of which is one of the most contagious viruses on Earth. Meanwhile, with the threat of a bird flu outbreak among humans also looming on the horizon, the Trump administration is eliminating what Mary Bowman, a nursing assistant professor, refers to as our “already meager public health infrastructure.”

“In truth, what was laid bare by the beginning of COVID was how disinterested capitalism is in people caring for themselves when they’re sick, when they could be sick, when they could get other people sick, when their families are sick, when someone dies,” Bowman told Truthout. “There’s just no space for humanity in it.”

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My latest at Truthout is up now. This piece is about the lessons that were learned from COVID that have been forgotten or rolled back, but it’s also about how those lessons — like high quality masking in the hospital — were only ever implemented in the first place because of the hard organizing work of nurses and others. In other words, we have to keep organizing!