Barring a slowdown in our vaccination campaign or the emergence of an India-style mutation of the coronavirus, this pandemic will in all likelihood reach its conclusion sooner rather than later. But our next pandemic could prove to be bacterial instead of viral, and inadvertently, the coronavirus may have instigated it.

To make room for coronavirus testing and treatment, plenty of clinics that treat sexually transmitted diseases were forced shut by the lockdowns. As a result, screening for STDs plummeted over the past year. Compound that with the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just announced that STDs reached a record high in 2019, and the nation has an obvious problem.