"Ed Yong was the chronicler of our most recent plague years. His reporting on Covid-19 for The Atlantic won him a Pulitzer, but constant reporting on those who suffered the most during the pandemic took its toll on him. He walked away from The Atlantic, and from reporting on the disease, in 2023, with his final pieces largely focusing on long-Covid sufferers fighting for their survival."
"We were warriors once. That is, for decades, those of us working in public health were campaigners who fought for better sanitation and clean water, better working conditions in the factories of the new Industrial Age, better housing, and so much else that gave us the longer and healthier lives we take for granted today. And then we gave up the fight."
"Ed and Amy contend that the rise of American medicine was the death of public health in some ways. Amy's piece quotes Hibbert Hill and his book The New Public Health: "The old public health was concerned with the environment; the new is concerned with the individual.""
A prominent pandemic reporter left mainstream reporting in 2023 after chronic exposure to traumatic stories and focused final work on long‑Covid survivors. An influential 2021 analysis traced public health's decline to a retreat from collective environmental campaigns toward individual-focused medicine. For decades, public health campaigned for sanitation, clean water, safer factory conditions, improved housing, and other social reforms that extended lifespans. The rapid ascendancy of American medicine redirected resources and attention to clinical care and individuals, weakening public health's role as a societal advocate. Historical analysis links this retreat from social reform to reduced public health influence during recent crises.
Read at The Nation
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