For nearly two years, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon has stood at a podium each week to inform the community of the toll of COVID-19.

“Overall, 2021 has been a tougher year than 2020, I think, for everyone. And certainly, I and my family are not immune to that. We feel the same pressure as everyone else,” McMahon told Spectrum News 1.

From the podium, McMahon typically appears calm and composed, and relied on data to direct decisions and inform the public.

“We made that decision, that everything is going to be data-driven when we’re talking about decisions that will impact people — and it will impact their liberties to a degree — and let the data drive the public health decisions and not so much the politics,” McMahon said.

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Data served as a guiding light, but it did not shield McMahon from the emotional toll of leading during a deadly global pandemic.

“Essentially, my stress knocked out my thyroid, which created cholesterol issues and other issues," McMahon said. "I, essentially, had a vascular-type event in my eye, which essentially ripped the muscle, and my vision went like that. So as the muscle healed, my vision started to come back together. It took a long time and we’ve worked on the other challenges, as well with medications."

“When that happened, I lost that natural adrenaline, which was like a shield to all the emotional pain, I think, really," he continued. "I was feeling what we were experiencing. But also, it challenged me in ways to really try to go to that next level to be able to lead in an incredibly important process," he said.

"That’s right where vaccinations started, Feb. 6, and it was very stressful at the start of the process,” McMahon added.

As the momentum of the vaccine took off, a new hope took hold in the community and the county executive’s response to the pandemic.

But it was not a cure-all to ending the pandemic.

“It gives you protection, but not necessarily guaranteed protection. But it will help you from really really bad outcomes and that’s what this will do. With the new variants, we need to make sure we do everything we can do to protect the medical infrastructure,” McMahon said.

As 2021 comes to an end, the pandemic lingers.

McMahon and his team remain vigilant of new data and protecting the community. And while there's not a lot of light at the end of the tunnel now, he said there are many lessons to take away from the last two years.

“I think, for the most part, everybody did their best with what they were dealing with. I do think that different parts of this process got political, which is a mistake, but at a local level, when they tell our story, we didn’t. And I’m proud of that,” McMahon said.