Note to the U.S. healthcare industry: Heed the words of Spanish-American writer and philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Hard to believe, but it’s been more than four years since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 pandemic an international public health emergency on Jan. 30, 2020. (The WHO officially ended the emergency May 5, 2023, though the disease is still very much with us. As of May 29, 2024, the pandemic has caused 7,049,376 confirmed deaths worldwide, making it the fifth-deadliest pandemic or epidemic in history.)