Well, this month marks the five year anniversary of the COVID 19 pandemic in New Jersey, when a 32 year old man from Fort Lee was diagnosed with the virus and little was known about how the disease spread or how much of a risk it posed.

The first death would come just ten days later.

For many now, though, the pandemic may feel like a distant memory with flu and other respiratory viruses taking center stage.

But the virus, which continues to mutate, isn't gone, and its effect on New Jersey and the world are still very clearly being felt.

For a look back at where we started and where we're at now.

I'm joined by health care writer Leo Stanton.

Lelo.

What a great piece.

It's hard in some respects to believe that this was five years ago when that first case was reported.

And I guess the question everybody wants to know is, is COVID still a threat or how much of a threat is it five years later?

Yeah, I mean, it is still a threat and it's significantly lower than it was five years ago.

However, one thing we did not mention in this piece and there will be more to come, is, you know, for some people it's never gone away.

Right.

There is long COVID.

There are people whose lives have been forever changed by whether they lost someone or, you know, someone in their life was forever changed in another way, a job loss or whatever.

So I think the impact is still really big for some people.

I was there was a Pew poll done that showed like for, you know, three quarters of the people, it had an impact, but they're also largely over it and have moved on.

And, you know, when you look at the data as far as infections and we got sort of trained in the public of looking at this data, you know, the flu is a much bigger threat.

I think it's almost eight times as many people going to the emergency room in the end of February from the flu than there were from COVID.

So we're in very, very different times.

When you look back at that data, which you went through really thoroughly in your piece, what was the turning point?

I think there were several.

And really, I mean, credit really goes here partly to Colleen O'Day, who, you know, not just did these graphics for this story, but, you know, her graphics.

I know readers and viewers depended on some of this stuff from us.

And I also just want to say, as a reporter, I depended on it because her graphics laid it out in a way that really enabled you to get that story.

I would say there were several turning points.

I mean, when we started to do the crackdowns in New Jersey, I mean, these were really controversial executive orders.

Remember, you know, hair salons, nobody got their hair cut out anymore.

Restaurants, bars, you know, it goes on events.

Gyms, everything.

And we reopened parks.

You know, that was a turning point.

Vaccines was another turning point.

And then Omicron was a third turning point, I would say, because that one just showed us, you know, the scope of an ever changing virus is really hard to imagine where the damage can be severe.

So where does that leave us now?

Right.

So I think we are in a much more you know, we're in a better place with the data.

You know, one of the other stories I'm working on looks at sort of are we better prepared and what did we learn?

Well, we learned a lot of things sort of clinically and sort of systems wise, health systems wise.

New Jersey, as a state, did a fair amount of work to figure out its own sort of governmental response, what was good, what was not good.

And some of those plans are very, you know, very useful, will be very useful in the future.

However, everybody tells me there are still gaps in what we know, what we what we you know, public funding or funding for public health is extremely limited.

It is going in a different the wrong direction.

You could argue if you're doing that work and depend on that work, which we all do, but also, you know, we have a very unstable situation at the federal level right now.

And what that means in terms of disease control is the numbers aren't necessarily updated regularly enough.

You know, sometimes they're two or three weeks late.

Sometimes they're much more.

Funding is a big question.

Policy decisions, you know, will you have support if you're a governor and you decide you have to close schools again, God forbid?

Nobody wants that.

But, you know, maybe it's your maybe it is your least worst option, right?

No.

Those are the things that are hard to tell given what's going on on the federal level.

What would happen if we had another pandemic?

And I would just know, you know, H5N1 is not an immediate risk to the the, you know, human public.

We have people in the state.

We've already lost cats.

We have people who have lost birds.

You know, it is it is a virus.

It evolves.

We should keep an eye of our minds.

Yeah.

Well, of course, you can read all of this and more on our website And Spotlight Newstalk.

Leila's reporting is there, along with all of those graphics that break it down through the years.

Leila, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks very.