

University of California San Francisco
Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH, an infectious disease expert and professor of medicine, has been an ardent voice for science during the coronavirus pandemic.
I am glad to be able to disseminate information but don’t like the attention it brought during such a politicized pandemic. For instance, I wrote about the importance of face masks early on, which earned me ire from the right. I have now been writing about off-ramps for restrictions like masks, which seems to make the left unhappy. I cannot wait to go back to my day job!
You can develop a highly effective tool that could effectively end the pandemic – the vaccines – but that is not enough. The politicization of this pandemic worries me that the U.S. won’t be prepared for the next one.
I believe we set up a false expectation that immunity from the vaccine is impenetrable. The vaccines are actually doing what they were designed to do: prevent severe disease. Because antibodies wane with time, vaccines’ ability to prevent disease transmission does decline. However, T-cell and B-cell immunity continues to prevent severe disease among most groups.
My biggest regret is thinking India had more immunity than it did when it opened in February 2021. Like others, I was lulled into complacency before the delta variant became so formidable. Three of my relatives in India died during the terrible second wave. In terms of success, I wrote many op-eds on the importance of and strategies for school reopenings, the first one after vaccines for teachers were available. I hope I contributed to that dialogue in the U.S.
That we’ll be able to keep the virus under control in the U.S. once it becomes endemic. I am also optimistic about child vaccinations and the development of targeted oral antivirals.