Dr. Marc Siegel: COVID and the 500,000 deaths milestone -- keep in mind the tale of two pandemics

As we enter the last week in February, over 60 million people have been vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Here in New York, my Uncle Leonard had a bilateral ear infection requiring emergency surgery but the hospitals were full, and he died at home at age 9 months. That was seven years before my mother was born. Lockdowns didn’t work very well to stem the tide, except in cities like St. Louis or San Francisco where there were still few infections at the time everything was closed. There was a big debate over streetcars and whether to keep them running or not. Some cities had them running with the windows open with mandatory social distancing.   There was little understanding of what a virus was and many still thought the pandemic was caused by a bacteria.