We have just experienced a unique two years — a COVID-19 pandemic period full of firsts, sorrows and, if we reflect, lessons we can use to improve ourselves.

COVID-19 exposed how ill-prepared the government was to respond to a pandemic. Two weeks to “flatten the curve” turned into two years of mask-on/mask-off and other rules that applied in one place while a few yards away there were a different set of rules. This jumble of public health messages left people confused, frustrated, scared and angry.

Public health agencies from the local level all the way up to the Centers for Disease Control scrambled to react. Many experienced public health officials fled the profession in the face of public scorn and, sometimes, outright threats to their safety. Those who remained learned how to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances and how to navigate the minefield of mangled messaging. These new public health leaders were subjected to trial by fire, and they rose out of it with the experience, patience and resilience they will need to better respond to the next pandemic or other public health emergency.

I remain in awe of the impossible tasks we asked our health care providers, their support staffs and caregivers to do. Seeing their exhausted faces and hearing their stories of helplessness and anxiety told me we need to offer greater support to them and train more of them.

Certainly we saw how the private sector is able to pivot more quickly than the public sector. We need to build in some of this adaptability to government employees and processes. We know now employees don’t necessarily have to be in the office to get their work done.

With the right technology, security, and supervision, employees who work from home can be just as productive and engaged as those in the office. Government agencies, in partnership with labor unions, can and should do more to provide work-from-anywhere options to employees who don’t have to be in the office to get work done. This is a huge change for the public sector and a one-size-fits-all approach will not address it going forward. Customer service means different things to different agencies, and we must do a better job of accommodating those differences.

The one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in public education either. We knew that already, but COVID-19 put it on vivid display. Some students thrived in the remote learning environment; many others foundered when they had to forgo in-person education. Far too many just disappeared. Students, teachers and families need education options; a rigid education system that ignores individual learning preferences doesn’t work. And our community infrastructure and social support networks must be robust enough to support traditional schools, virtual learning, charter options and new approaches just being devised.

Distrust in government has been around since governments began, but it’s clear that COVID-19 lit that simmering skepticism on fire. Public meetings became raucous events where people castigated public officials for pandemic mandates (or lack thereof) whether those officials had any control over the restrictions or not.

Meanwhile, online misinformation and conspiracies swept through our communities faster than COVID itself. Suddenly, everyone was a public health expert, and everything public health officials said was suspect. We seem to have lost the understanding that science and medicine are not fixed in stone. The professional practitioners evolve their understanding with new data and lived experiences. We must give them room to learn, and we need to enhance our abilities to think rationally and analytically about the information they present to us.

Public meetings are the hallmark of our democracy, and we kept those going during the pandemic. But there were kinks along the way as we sought to engage the public without creating super-spreader events. Our Legislature should take a hard look at new laws to provide flexibility for remote meetings with opportunities for the public and elected officials to participate virtually. We need to get those laws on the books now so we aren’t clambering to put them in place during the next emergency.

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Family and friends matter. We didn’t need COVID-19 to learn that, but the pandemic took our understanding from the abstract to the visceral. Grandparents suddenly couldn’t visit or hug their grandchildren. Nursing homes closed to visitors, forcing families to see their loved ones through windows. Others watched their loved ones die from COVID via FaceTime. Our hearts broke over and over, and there is now a much-needed focus on the many problems made even worse by loneliness.

One silver lining was the opposite of loneliness. I know of many families that treasured the slower pace and extra time together. People re-connected with each other, took up old hobbies, committed to exercise routines, adopted pets, learned to cook at home. I hope we carry these beneficial parts of lockdown with us, remembering the simple joys of less complicated lives.

We lost nearly 7,000 San Bernardino County residents to COVID. Every change we make in our public life and personal space to reflect these lessons should be done with honor to their memories.

Janice Rutherford serves on the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors.