Five years ago, I drove home from work. With the exception of a few trips, I haven’t worked at an office since.

We are marking the fifth anniversary of when the COVID pandemic locked down the world. It took millions of lives and continues to cause deaths today. It affects our world in ways we still do not understand, and it could cause illnesses and early deaths years from now.

COVID is partly responsible for the situation we’re in today. If the pandemic didn’t happen, Donald Trump probably would have been reelected handily in 2020. It still would have been awful, but in a George W. Bush way. He wouldn’t actively try to destroy democracy if it worked out for him four years ago. Even with the pandemic, Trump still would have come out ahead if he had listened to Dr. Fauci and other scientists instead of pitching Ivermectin and talking about injecting bleach. Hell, he could have been recognized as a national hero if he successfully navigated our country through the pandemic, offered reassurance, and mourned with us. He could be enjoying retirement at Mar-A-Lago right now.

Instead, our national scientific infrastructure is being ripped out, we have an HHS secretary who pitches raw milk and French fries cooked in beef tallow, and measles is making a comeback because parents refuse to vaccinate their children. Meanwhile, we go on with our lives as if the pandemic never happened.

We didn’t learn a damn thing, and the next one will be much worse.

In 2014, I wrote about the Neil deGrasse Tyson Cosmos series and the dangers of rejecting science. The post turned out to be sadly prophetic.

The danger of rejecting science is that we make ourselves vulnerable to the ideologue and the huckster. We believe whatever false claims and malicious rumors float around because we don’t have (or rejected outright) the tools to refute them. We also lose the optimism that exploration and discovery provide. The unknown stirs our fears, not our curiosity. Faith becomes a stubborn clinging to a dead past instead of the trust that gives us courage to step towards the future.

Rejecting science will cause us to lose our industrial and technological edge. We will fall behind other countries that have the willingness to innovate. And when the next big enemy confronts us with superior science and technology, we won’t be able to defend ourselves.

What has made our country strong is our leadership in science and technology, as well as our commitment to democratic principles, diplomacy, and the rule of law. COVID has caused us to lose all of these things—as well as over a million lives. We lost them because we refused to learn and care about each other.