Five Years After Covid‐19: What Have We Learned (and Forgotten)?

As we pass 5 years since the COVID-19 pandemic raged across the world, the global crisis and disaster research community seems to have returned back to normal. The pandemic marked a unique episode in our lives, characterized by face masks, infection curves, lockdowns, test facilities, and vaccination campaigns, but also homeschooling, video calls, and online teaching. At the height of the health crisis, we witnessed something on a scale we had never seen before: medical systems getting overrun, overcrowded intensive care units, cooling trucks being loaded with bodies, and a surge of infections and fatalities in elderly homes. Some nursing homes were hit so hard, hardly any elderly were left. By the time vaccines became available, it marked the beginning of the end of the crisis. Still, we witnessed massive protests, vaccine hesitancy, and antiscience movements. It turned out not only the virus, but also the crisis itself morphed before our eyes from a health crisis to an economic crisis, to a solidarity crisis, and a crisis of trust and authority. As the pandemic came to an end, most of us restarted our work and things returned back to normal. Classes returned on campus, fieldwork was possible again, and research proposals on other topics were being developed. The only relic that seems to have survived is our home office usage. Five years after, COVID-19 seems like a distant memory for many. For some, still suffering from long-COVID, from related health issues, or from the loss of family or friends, the stark reality may just have started to sink in. Crisis researchers have long warned about the interconnected nature of modern risks, the pandemic brought this reality into sharp focus. For many scholars, the pandemic was not just a health crisis, but also a profound test of governance, resilience, and social cohesion. Health systems were the initial epicenter, but the ripples spread rapidly. Economic shocks, mental health problems, domestic violence, political instability, and social inequities all emerged—partially as a consequence of pandemic mitigation policies. COVID-19 exposed vulnerabilities across public health systems, supply chains, and political structures, while also highlighting the essential role of science, communication, and community action in navigating this complex transboundary crisis. The pandemic called upon the academic community in a broad sense to apply or expand their knowledge to the crisis at hand. Now 5 years after, we may question what knowledge and insights stuck with our academic research field in risk, crisis and disaster? But also: what might we have already forgotten? The post-pandemic landscape presents important lessons learned and new questions that call for reflection. In the post-COVID era, we should evaluate, harness lessons, and invest in pandemic preparedness. Yet, as the immediacy of the crisis fades, we witness a new geo-political reality that is rapidly outflanking COVID's urgency. Instead of investment in pandemic preparedness, we witness budget-cuts, bans on international health research cooperation and shifting priorities towards defense and homeland security. Are we reliving the well-known fallacy we have seen so often after crises, are we only as good as the last crisis? In our earlier COVID-19 bibliometric review editorial (Kuipers et al. 2022), we witnessed a surge of COVID-19 studies unprecedented for our field. The pandemic gathered more attention than any previous major crisis or disaster. In this editorial, we compared the spike of interest to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, both landmark events in our field. In Figure 1, now updated with publications from 2023 to 2024, we see that the spike of interest is already past its peak. Will it decline as quickly as it emerged? What lessons will stick with us and continue to influence the field, and what will we forget and leave behind? We highlighted that several well-known literatures in our field were also applied to COVID-19, such as on risk management, crisis communication, governance, resilience, and vulnerability. The pandemic also gave rise to new topics, including citizen behavior, state power, and the business and mental health impact of crisis measures. It was interesting to see how we could identify and classify a range of basic, motor, and niche themes that were prominent during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic (Kuipers et al. 2022). Crisis communication was a particularly important basic theme in the literature, driven by frequent press conferences held by prime ministers, sometimes accompanied by virologists (Reyes Bernard et al. 2021). Such political-level crisis communication emerged as key moments to introduce various measures and provide meaning to the situation. In addition, learning emerged as a key basic theme, particularly regarding the lessons from SARS and MERS that were identified and implemented during the first wave of COVID-19 (Feitelson et al. 2022). Indeed, countries that had previously experienced SARS or MERS seemed better equipped to respond in the initial stages of the pandemic. A third basic theme was vulnerability, when research once again demonstrated that disasters such as COVID-19 affect societies unequally, underscoring the need for policies to address and mitigate these inequalities. Beyond these long-standing basic themes, we identified several motor themes that instigated progress in the field as new lessons emerged during the pandemic. A key motor theme was mental health, which gained prominence as lockdowns and quarantine measures limited social interaction. For example, Thomas and Terry (2022) clearly demonstrated that mass quarantine was associated with increased levels of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress in society. In contrast, social cohesion also emerged as a motor theme, highlighting how communities came together in the wake of the pandemic (Aruta et al. 2022). This aligns with traditional disaster sociology studies emphasizing the role of altruism in the wake of disasters. Another motor theme that contributed to progress in the field centered around the effects of behavioral cues aimed at ensuring compliance with public health restrictions, such as frequent handwashing, mask-wearing, and social distancing. While already common in several Asian countries, these measures were new to many parts of the world and required shifts in behavior. A range of studies investigated what type and form of communication was most effective in soliciting compliance. Findings indicated that clear communication is crucial for fostering community resilience (Fenxia 2022) and that individuals actively engaged in information-seeking were more likely to follow government recommendations (Zhao and Tsang 2022). Moreover, trust in government was a decisive factor influencing whether people actively sought and shared information (Wang and Xiong 2022). Finally, we also identified a range of niche themes that, while relatively isolated in the literature, remain relevant to the study of the pandemic. One such niche theme is the role of surveillance. A critical aspect of pandemic preparedness is the ability to set up a reliable and effective surveillance system to monitor virus propagation. To collect such data, many governments asked citizens to install contact-tracing apps on their phones, which recorded interactions with others. Additionally, traffic flows, public transportation usage, and sewer systems were closely monitored. The lack of accurate data on virus propagation during the pandemic vividly demonstrated the challenge of balancing openness and closure, as well as privacy and effective monitoring, especially when the need for surveillance increases in times of crisis (Klauser and Pauschinger 2022). It is particularly alarming, in this light, that exactly the capacity and resources for international alerts, data exchange, and cooperation have come under severe strain in the current geopolitical context. In our review we ended with the question if COVID-19 was a game-changer. Did we return to a “new normal” when the crisis slowly faded out? 5 years after the pandemic ended, we can begin to answer that question. In this editorial, we bundle a large group of new COVID-19 studies in Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy to reflect on this question. A recurring theme in these studies is the critical role of local governments in managing the immediate and long-term impacts of the pandemic. While in many countries the direction of the pandemic response was decided on by the central government, local actors played a crucial role in translating and implementing the policy in our local communities. The study of Chatterjee and Arapis (2025, this issue) entitled “Crisis communication during COVID-19: Insights from Pennsylvania and Florida local governments” on decentralized crisis communication in two American states clearly showed the importance of this level of government. Based on data from the Pandemic Management Survey, the authors show how concerns related to school and business closures, as well as beliefs in their efficacy, had a positive impact on the adoption of communication strategies. The articulation, explanation, and implementation of policies that had a stark impact on our societies lied in the hands of local governments. The Chatterjee and Arapis study demonstrates how local capacity and autonomy are central to effective crisis response. Yet communication alone is not enough; local governments themselves had to adapt rapidly to evolving conditions. Research from Israel by Zaychik et al. (2025, this issue) on “Innovation and adaption in local governments in the face of COVID-19: Determinants of effective crisis management” examined what structural methods local governments used that excelled at managing the crisis by limiting virus propagation and stimulating vaccination acceptance. It shows the importance of social capital in reducing community vulnerability to crisis. The importance of social capital and that some groups are more vulnerable than others, just as in other types of disasters, indeed also appeared from our pandemic preparedness review in 2022. Successful municipalities had their crisis apparatus up to speed, by fostering a flexible organizational culture, embracing digitalization, and maintaining collaborative relationships with other agencies. This adaptability proved essential in navigating the uncertainty of the pandemic's early months. Political culture and governance structures also shaped responses to the crisis in profound ways. In the United States, perceptions of the federal government's response were strongly influenced by political affiliation, as shown by Hildebrand and Malone (2025, this issue) in “Representative bureaucracy and COVID-19 among local emergency response professionals.” Local emergency management officials in Republican-leaning areas were more likely to view the federal response as effective, while those in Democratic-leaning areas were more critical. This reflects the theory of representative bureaucracy, which suggests that government actors' responses to crises are shaped by the political norms and values of their constituencies. The political dimension of crisis management extended beyond the US context, as shown by an extensive study of 150 countries by Kaim and Kubbe (2025) in “Who is the Master of Disasters? A Comparative Analysis of COVID-19 Crisis Response and Resilience in Democracies, Hybrid Regimes, and Authoritarian States” in the previous RHCPP issue. A comparative analysis of responses across democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian states reveals that while authoritarian regimes were able to mobilize resources more quickly, they struggled with sustaining recovery efforts due to weaker institutional foundations and lower public engagement. Meanwhile, democratic systems tended to demonstrate greater long-term resilience due to higher levels of transparency and public trust that aided disaster recovery. This comparative study clearly points out that democratic governance underpins effective long-term disaster management, and achieving holistic resilience requires integrated strategies that prioritize both economic stability and sustainability. Community resilience emerged as another key factor in shaping the pandemic response. In a study by Diko et al. (2025, this issue) called “A tale of two disasters: Unpacking how social learning from the Ebola epidemic shaped COVID-19 response in informal settlements in Freetown,” the experience of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone provided a valuable foundation for responding to COVID-19. Similar to many Asian countries where the experience with SARS helped to organize a quicker response, helpful disaster response subcultures emerged in Sierra Leone. Residents and community-based organizations leveraged lessons from the Ebola crisis to organize local responses despite limited government capacity. This insightful case study in an understudied part of the world, reinforces the importance of social learning in disaster preparedness. Prior disaster experiences consolidate memory and foster adaptive capacity within communities. The role of learning and memory also surfaced in the context of regional cooperation within the United States, as described by McOmber and Kirchhoff (2025, this issue) in “State Pandemic Pods: US regional coalitions and their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Coalitions such as the Multistate Council and the Western States Pact facilitated collective decision-making and resource sharing during the pandemic based on earlier experiences. However, these coalitions also revealed the limits of institutional memory and path dependency when being adopted to a new type of crisis, as these coalitions sometimes also struggled to adapt to the unique challenges of COVID-19. Governments and health authorities during COVID-19 strived to get the general population to comply to all kinds of health restrictions and protective measures. According to Silver et al. (2025, this issue) in their study “The influence of environmental cues on behavioral response: An assessment of the Protective Action Decision Model in the context of COVID-19,” based on a longitudinal survey during 2020–2021 in New York State, behavioral responses were shaped by both environmental cues and perceived threat severity. Their research using the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) demonstrates that visible changes in the built environment, such as warning signs and hand sanitizing stations, encouraged protective behavior, such as masking and social distancing. Interestingly, these behaviors were influenced more directly by environmental cues than by perceived threat severity, challenging key assumptions of the PADM. This finding suggests that in public health emergencies, direct visual prompts may be more effective in encouraging protective behavior than efforts to raise awareness about the severity of the threat. The pandemic's socioeconomic impacts also hit the area of food security, as shown by Vincent Canwat (2025, this issue) in “Food Security Effects of Covid-19 Lockdown: Causal Pathways and Vulnerability.” Lockdowns disrupted supply chains and income sources, reducing access to food and forcing many households in Uganda to shift from higher-quality to cheaper, less nutritious options. While food availability increased in rural areas due to greater participation in farming, urban and economically vulnerable populations experienced a decline in dietary quality and stability. This highlights the trade-offs between public health measures and economic stability in crisis contexts and underscores the need for more integrated approaches to managing health and socio-economic impacts. This study especially shows, once more, that vulnerable populations tend to be hit harder by a disaster, also in the area of food security. When the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic ended, we entered the post-pandemic phase. Abagna et al. (2025, this issue) with their work on “An Integrative Review of the Pillars for Planning Progressive Post-Pandemic Cities” took up the challenge to envision what this means for our cities, based on an integrative review of the urban studies literature. The pandemic experience may have reshaped the way cities are conceptualized and organized. 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