Five years ago, the World Health Organization declared that the outbreak of a novel coronavirus, COVID-19, was a pandemic—a designation that in many ways marked the beginning of a new era in politics, public health, media and our everyday lives.

According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, nearly three-quarters of adults in the U.S. say the pandemic did more to drive the country apart than to bring it together. It highlighted, and exacerbated, differences in values around the rights of the individual versus the rights of the community.

Many experts point out that the pandemic did not cause this fraying. COVID-19 arrived at a moment when distrust and division were already increasing, and as a new media environment was exacerbating those divides.

This new media landscape fueled an outrage that turned scientists and public health officials into villains. University Professor Amy Fairchild describes it as a “backlash movement” that has fundamentally reshaped our political and cultural landscape.

“Science is always evolving. It’s always contested. There are always gaps. There have been terrific scientific debates around, I don’t know, salt,” Fairchild says. “Science is always working in a context where social values and priorities are at play.”

Read more in the Christian Science Monitor article, “Five years ago, the world shut down. COVID’s imprint lingers from politics to schools.”