Politicians in Massachusetts are pushing “resiliency post-COVID” and “envisioning post-COVID.”

As someone who has edited medical and other research for decades, I can recommend that the World Health Organization is who we should listen to about health. There is something dangerous and false being peddled by Massachusetts politicians. If we don’t want to re-experience our pain, we should not follow the lead of politicians on health or environment.

“The future of our district, post-COVID” is probably not going to exist in our lifetime. The novel coronivirus-19 is not likely to go away. WHO has been correct from day one about the progress of this pandemic; they correctly predicted the fatality rate (which has fallen, as predicted) and all aspects of what’s happened. WHO says COVID is likely to entrench in human virus ecology, like influenza, pneumonia and chicken pox.

Politicians should not dabble in science; they are terrible at it and warp facts continually. Viruses make up a large part of the human genome — yes, viruses have invaded our genome since the beginning and have left a huge footprint. They have steered our evolution.

Very likely, we will need annual or similar vaccination to respond to COVID mutations and outbreaks. Any year can be a year when an ultra-lethal variant arises, just like the flu. Influenza had three deadly outbreaks in the 20th century alone, including the infamous “Spanish flu.” Unless we change our travel habits, hygiene habits and public behavior habits, we can expect increasingly frequent pandemics like this one.

As population reaches 9 billion, it’s inevitable that we will experience pandemics on a regular basis, unless we change our habits. We will soon come to a time where pandemics happen about every 10-15 years. We are already in that cycle, but the efforts of the WHO and Medecins Sans Frontieres have helped attenuate outbreaks repeatedly (SARS, MERS, Ebola, etc.)

As population and international travel continue to increase, WHO will not be able to stem these outbreaks. The best gift we could leave to our grandchildren is to finally learn as a species how to handle epidemics. Peace lies in being prepared,

Nohham R. Cachat-Schilling

Amherst