Ruthann Richter

Five years after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, infectious disease experts continue to draw on its lessons for future disasters. Yvonne Maldonado, MD, the Taube Professor in Global Health and Infectious Diseases, led Stanford Medicine's COVID-19 response.

Four years ago, celebrated cellist Joshua Roman was returning from a performance in Florida when he collapsed in tears on the stairs to his New York home, unable to take another step. A bout with COVID-19 left him so debilitated that at times he could barely lift his cello bow or even open his eyes and speak. "I would have this sudden onset of violent shaking and not know why. I still have that but it's much less often," he said recently.

They're in the water we drink, the food we eat, the clothes we wear and the air we breathe. They've pervaded every ecosystem in the world, from coral reefs to Antarctic ice. And they've infiltrated the human body, lodging themselves in everything from brain tissue to reproductive organs. Microplastics -- plastic fragments up to 5 millimeters long -- are inescapable.