Six Years Later: What We Actually Know About COVID-19.

It's been over six years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and three years since the U.S. public health emergency ended. But the virus is still here, and the debates about how we handled it are far from over.

In a recent CNN interview, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stirred up controversy by claiming that lockdowns were "the thing that did the most damage to our country." He went on to make several statements that infectious disease experts have labeled misleading or false, including claims about vaccines, measles, and Lyme disease.

Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious disease physician at Stanford who actively fights vaccine misinformation, didn't mince words: "You could write a book about that whole interview."

What Science Has Actually Shown:

The Vaccines Work Especially Against Severe Disease.

When Pfizer and Moderna first rolled out their COVID vaccines in December 2020, clinical trials showed they were over 90% effective at preventing symptomatic illness. Over time, especially when the Delta variant hit in summer 2021, breakthrough infections became more common, raising questions about transmission prevention and waning immunity.

But here's what held up: the vaccines consistently provide strong protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death.

A September 2021 CDC study found that two doses of the Moderna vaccine were 93% effective at keeping healthy adults out of the hospital, while Pfizer was 88% effective. Another study from March 2022 showed unvaccinated adults were 12 times more likely to be hospitalized than those who got vaccinated and boosted.

Think of it like the flu shot.protection is strongest in the weeks after you get it, and the formula gets updated each season to keep up with a changing virus. Even now, research shows that getting vaccinated roughly halves your chances of ending up in the ER or hospital.

Are They Safe?

More than 700 million doses have been given in the U.S. alone. Mild side effects like sore arms, headaches, and fatigue are common. Serious side effects? Rare.

The FDA required at least two months of safety data before authorizing the vaccines, and monitoring has continued ever since. Issues like myocarditis (heart inflammation) have been seen, mostly in young men within a week of their second mRNA shot but most recover quickly with rest.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was restricted in May 2022 due to a rare blood-clotting condition, and it's no longer available in the U.S. But Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax remain approved.

The CDC's current stance is clear: "Everyone ages 6 months and older should get an updated COVID-19 vaccine."

Kids Get Severe COVID Too.Just Less Often

Older adults have been hit hardest. More than half of COVID deaths between 2020 and 2023 were among people 75 and older. But nearly 1,700 children died from the virus during that same period. For the youngest kids under 5 hospitalization rates were alarmingly high during the 2021-22 season.

Vaccines for kids arrived about a year after adult authorization, and even later for the littlest ones. But they still provided meaningful protection: during the 2024-25 season, the latest vaccines were about 76% effective at preventing ER visits for kids 9 months to 4 years old.

It's worth noting that COVID vaccines were never broadly mandated for school attendance. States handle those decisions, and none required COVID shots. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends them for young and immunocompromised children, but for others, it's left to parental choice.

Masks Actually Help:

Wearing a mask cuts down on transmission. It's not foolproof, but when sick people wear masks, they spread fewer germs and when healthy people wear them, they're less likely to breathe in virus particles.

Early in the pandemic, we didn't fully understand that COVID was airborne or that asymptomatic people could spread it. As knowledge grew, CDC guidance evolved from targeted recommendations to universal masking, and then to risk based recommendations tied to local transmission and hospital capacity.

One study found that hospitalization rates dropped in communities where local leaders required masks.

Herd Immunity? Not So Simple

Herd immunity works well for diseases like measles it's highly contagious, but the MMR vaccine is highly effective and provides lifelong protection. Get 95% of a community vaccinated, and the virus struggles to spread.

COVID didn't play by those rules. The virus mutates quickly, and neither infection nor vaccination offers lasting protection. Early hopes that we could achieve herd immunity through infection the so called "Great Barrington Declaration" approach.were widely criticized. The WHO called the idea of letting a dangerous virus sweep through unprotected populations "unethical."

Today, the CDC has shifted its goal: it's no longer about stopping transmission entirely. It's about preventing severe illness and death.

Hospitals Were Overwhelmed Not Empty

RFK Jr. claimed that ICUs were "empty all over the country, including in New York at the height" of the pandemic. Federal data tells a different story.

At the end of 2020, hundreds of hospitals were at capacity. By early 2022, 19 states had less than 15% ICU capacity left. In New York City alone, nearly 15,000 deaths occurred among hospitalized or ER patients in April 2020 far exceeding the city's usual 1,600 ICU beds, even after hospitals scrambled to expand.

At least 1.2 million Americans died from COVID more than one in every seven global deaths, the highest count of any country. The U.S. death rate was among the worst in the world, second only to Peru.

Why did the U.S. fare so poorly? Experts point to a lack of federal coordination, disjointed communication, and stark disparities in access to healthcare. Political polarization around vaccines and the promotion of unproven treatments like ivermectin didn't help either.

COVID Is Still Here:

In 2020, COVID was the third leading cause of death in the U.S. It stayed in the top 10 until last year. Hundreds of Americans are still dying from it every month.

Millions are also living with long COVID a condition with symptoms ranging from fatigue and breathing difficulties to neurological and digestive issues that can last for months or years. Estimates vary, but one recent study suggests that 1 in 6 infected people may develop it.

Looking Back and Forward:

Six years later, we know a lot more than we did in 2020. We know vaccines save lives, masks reduce spread, and the virus isn't going away. We also know that our response was messy, politicized, and far from perfect.

The question now isn't whether we got everything right we didn't. It's whether we're willing to learn from what worked and what didn't, so we're better prepared for whatever comes next.