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2020 MEDICAL YEAR
IN REVIEW
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Schools recognized challenges with virtual learning and gave in-person
classes a try. Long term care facilities were able to allow visitors under
certain conditions. Religious services resumed with precautions.
We, as a community, re-learned that shaming people into social re-
sponsibility was met with resistance and non-conformity. Positive
role modeling was more effective. We re-learned, as a community, that
privacy of health information was still important in a pandemic, so
efforts to blame the sick was fruitless. We recommitted, as a commu-
nity, to find ways to protect the vulnerable and recognize how to care
for our loved ones in new ways. We, as a community, found out how
interdependent we are and how tenuous the relationship between our
personal health and the health of those around us are connected.

7. The Speed of Science is Slower Than Some Expected
Americans have long lived with the belief that ingenuity would
bring a speedy solution to any health threat, especially one that the
rest of the world had failed to halt. Yet, what the pandemic has re-
minded our country is that a solution is not a singular action, med-
ication or vaccine, but an arsenal of smaller steps to success. Those of
us in health care and public health know science does not occur at the
speed of a one-hour episode of CSI. Instead, science is calculated from
known experiences with similar viruses, previous pandemics and tech-
nology. Where we did advance…testing capabilities, medications,
treatment modalities, innovation in ventilators and mobilization of
human resources to hot spots, it seemed as if we were constantly trying
to get there faster; rightfully so. There were experimental treatments
and need for recovered donors. People across the globe tried home
remedies promising protection only to add another health risk that
public health had to inform people to avoid. Science was moving, but
not nearly at the speed people wanted.
In San Antonio, the city was able to be involved in vaccine clinical
trials, treatment trials and gave birth to an innovative testing center
that promised to return COVID results in 24 hours for a fraction of
the cost. The city was home to the first cases of COVID that were the pandemic, is health is not only what occurs in a doctor’s office but
evacuated from cruise ships early on in the pandemic and later helped it is driven by social factors such as food insecurity, social isolation, lack
sister communities across Texas with patients when they experienced of transportation and other issues of inequity. The pandemic high-
surges. These experiences helped build out the robust capabilities that lighted the populations that are disproportionately impacted by the so-
San Antonio was able to leverage in the treatment of people in our cial determinants of health. The ability to access food was often tied
hospitals and in the community. Science was not occurring as people to places that were closed or the loss of work pushed families into
expected, but it was occurring every day. poverty. Suddenly, the social determinants of health were visible, and
palpable. Public health was keenly aware of the magnification of needs
8. Spotlight on Social Determinants of Health since they were speaking to people in the community daily.
The COVID-19 pandemic had many visuals that will be embla- We also will not know for years how some decisions such as discon-
zoned in our minds for decades. Some of those images captured the tinuing a medication so that you can buy food instead, will impact the
national media of what was occurring in San Antonio, such as the arena productive life expectancy after COVID. What about the decisions
parking lots filled with cars waiting for food assistance from the San to postpone childhood immunizations or the family who lost health
Antonio Food Bank. Yet what those in health care already knew before insurance when the job was lost? We are unable to predict the long

16 SAN ANTONIO MEDICINE • December 2020