In “The Pitt,” Robby is the rockstar every emergency doctor wants to be - sharp, fast, instinctive. So it’s shocking when the man who moves like lightning through a resus room buckles to the floor,sobbing,gasping.He’s having a flashback: the ICU, a dying then dead mentor he couldn’t save, the pandemic returning in cruel cinematic shards.
This is how Covid appears in the show: not as a sequence of policy failures or manufactured crisis, but as personal memories that threaten to pull a good-but-broken doctor out of the room when his patients need him most. There are no scenes of shortages negotiated in back rooms, no elected officials delaying action, no agencies hollowed out before the virus arrived. We see the web, but never the spider.
“The Pitt” is the closest mainstream culture has come to acknowledging the wreckage of frontline medicine during Covid.But by focusing the camera on Robby’s anguish rather of the systems that made it certain, it mirrors how the country has chosen to remember the pandemic: as a sad misfortune that happened, rather than a moral failure that was done.
But Covid was not only a tragedy. It was a betrayal. How we remember matters.
I trained to be an emergency physician in the crucible of Covid.
It was unspeakable.
It was screaming anguish when you told a mother her daughter was dead across a fragile phone call and apologized: No-even though she was outside in the hospital parking lot, she couldn’t come in, would never see her child warm again.
It was trying to hold the gaze of wide, darting eyes while begging for understanding when we ran out of sedatives to keep plastic-choked patients comfortable on the ventilator.
It was witnessing entire families collect in the corners of the department, knowing only one in 10 would wake up to face a crushing new loneliness.
it was sobbing in stairwells trying not to soil your precious mask with snot.
It was lifeless facedown bodies we had to flip like pancakes twice a day.
It was no respite,no hope,it was terror at the despair and then the horror of your own numbness as time marched on.
I know Dr. Robby’s pain. Imagine being built to care for five and handed 20 – then sent home night after night carrying the deaths of 15 as if they were your fault. The grief and guilt annihilated our worth. The deaths we oversaw were so lonely, so terrible and stripped of dignity that the violence of their abandonment demeaned the humanity of everyone left alive. We had few certainties: only that this was killing us,and that we had to show up anyway. We were dying. I don’t know how else to say it. We were dying.
I used to think the horror – the pain, the exhaustion, the sheer volume of death – was the core injury
Hundreds of thousands of lives were forfeit to vaccine refusal alone.
A June 2020 analysis suggested that as manny as 99% of american Covid deaths – 99% – up to that point could have been prevented by policies other countries proved were possible.
To say my colleagues and I were broken by overwork and sorrow is to accept a cover story that erases the decisions that made mass death predictable and prolonged. The terrible verdict of the pandemic was that our flaying was a tolerable inconvenience; that a million sodden, lonely deaths were an acceptable price for power. We were broken by choice, not chance.
This is the story “The Pitt”stops short of telling. The effect is a cinematic passive voice that feeds our cultural memory.As in post-Vietnam Hollywood, state-engineered catastrophe is repackaged as catharsis – an aesthetic solution that reliably displaces indictment. Covid becomes an unavoidable tragedy that left some people traumatized, rather than a preventable mass death. What lingers in “The Pitt” is heartache. What’s missing is outrage. Instead of accountability, we get anesthesia. Let’s just get Robbie therapy so he can get back to work.Lessons from a different war for preventing moral injury among clinicians treating Covid-19
The spiders that scripted our nightmare benefit from this willful amnesia. And the biggest harm is simple: the machinery that decided who was expendable in the pandemic keeps humming offscreen.
The pandemic didn’t just end. It was buried alive.As the story of Covid hardens around “unprecedented times” instead of unprecedented negligence, the same governing philosophy that hollowed us out during Covid – delay, disinvestment, and contempt for collective care – grinds on.
Hospitals that held the line for the poorest and sickest – pushed past their brink by the pand
Adversarial Research & Fact-Check – Jennifer Tsai Op-Ed on Pandemic Response
here’s a breakdown of the factual claims made in the provided op-ed,verified against authoritative sources as of January 19,2026,02:54:40. I will highlight discrepancies and provide updated information where available.
Claim 1: States have passed laws making it harder for health officials to require masks, quarantines, or vaccinations.
* Verification: This is TRUE. Following the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous state legislatures enacted laws limiting the authority of public health officials. These laws varied, but commonly restricted mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and quarantine orders.
* Updated Information (as of Jan 19, 2026): The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) maintains a database tracking these laws.As of late 2025, over 40 states have enacted some form of legislation restricting public health powers. Several of these laws have faced legal challenges, with varying degrees of success. A significant trend in 2024-2025 was the continued push to codify these restrictions, making them more permanent. (https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-laws-tracking-covid-19.aspx - This is a representative link; NCSL updates frequently.)
Claim 2: Core surveillance systems have been eliminated.
* Verification: This is TRUE, but requires nuance. The CDC considerably scaled back several key disease surveillance programs in 2023 and 2024 due to funding cuts and political pressure.This included reductions in wastewater surveillance for COVID-19, genomic sequencing efforts, and reporting requirements for certain diseases.
* Updated Information (as of Jan 19,2026): While not entirely eliminated,core surveillance systems remain severely underfunded and fragmented. The CDC has attempted to rebuild some capacity through partnerships with state and local health departments, but the level of surveillance is significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels. The impact of these cuts was demonstrably linked to delayed detection of several outbreaks in 2025, including a resurgence of RSV and a novel influenza strain. (https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/us-public-health-infrastructure-still-fragile-experts-warn – CIDRAP is a reputable source for infectious disease information.)
Claim 3: The U.S. is facing its worst measles outbreak in three decades.
* Verification: This is TRUE.The U.S. experienced a significant surge in measles cases in 2024 and early 2026, exceeding levels seen in decades.
* Updated Information (as of Jan 19, 2026): As of January 15, 2026, the CDC has reported 1,347 confirmed measles cases across 23 states. This is the highest number of cases reported since 1994, when 958 cases were reported. The outbreaks are largely concentrated in communities with low vaccination rates. The CDC declared a public health emergency related to the measles outbreak on January 10, 2026. (https://www.cdc.gov/measles/index.html – Official CDC Measles information.)
Claim 4: Covid revealed a system that worked exactly as designed – where care is conditional and preventable death is an accepted cost.
* Verification: This is an OPINION, but supported by significant evidence. The op-ed argues that systemic inequalities and a market-based healthcare system exacerbated the impact of the pandemic, leading to disproportionate suffering among vulnerable populations.
* Updated Information (as of Jan 19, 2026): Numerous studies have confirmed the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on marginalized communities, highlighting existing health disparities. The debate continues regarding the extent to wich this was an intentional outcome versus a result of systemic failures. However, the data clearly demonstrates that access to care and health outcomes were strongly correlated with socioeconomic status, race, and geographic location.
Breaking News Check:
As of January 19, 2026, the measles outbreak continues to be a major public health concern. The CDC is actively working with state and local health departments to contain the spread of the virus. there are ongoing debates in Congress regarding funding for public health infrastructure and vaccine programs. The political landscape remains highly polarized, with continued resistance to public health measures in some areas.
overall Assessment:
The op-ed presents a critical outlook on the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. While containing opinion, the factual claims are largely accurate and supported
