March 11, 2024, marks five years since the World Health Organization officially declared the outbreak of Covid-19 a pandemic. What began as a localized outbreak in Wuhan, China, in the fall of 2019 swiftly spread across the globe, altering the course of modern history.
Covid, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, appeared to be an outbreak of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. By Jan. 30, 2020, the WHO classified it as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. As cases surged worldwide, the pandemic declaration on March 11, 2020, signified the widespread and severe impact of the virus.
The next day, March 12, 2020, the first case of Covid in Alaska was diagnosed.
Governments around the world, including in the US, responded with lockdowns, travel restrictions, forced masking, mandatory shots, and social distancing measures. Those who didn’t comply lost their jobs, were shunned by family and friends, and ridiculed as conspiracy theorists.
Health systems were pushed to the brink in 2020 and 2021, and frontline health care workers faced unprecedented challenges. Unvetted vaccines were rushed into use and governments outlawed alternative treatments that could have saved lives.
Five years after WHO declared the pandemic, and after millions died either from the virus or because of an underlying condition, President Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of WHO.
In his executive order of Jan. 20 — Inauguration Day — Trump wrote the withdrawal from WHO was “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states. In addition, the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments. China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has 300 percent of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.”
