Even when the shortcomings became obvious, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continued to rely on its systems for monitoring and responding to influenza, insisting even into 2021 that its flu-based interventions were the right tools in the fight against COVID. We didn’t pursue an approach that closely tied our efforts to track and contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to the characteristics of the virus. This central shortcoming explains many of the gaps in our response to the pandemic we actually faced.
