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COVID-19
WHERE TO FROM HERE

“Stay safe” is a common admonition nowadays. But sheltering numbers. Are the incidents of deadly contagions increasing? It cer-
at home and social distancing are not new concepts. Even in the tainly feels like it. Or could our ever-growing interconnections of
Middle Ages, those who could escape from the crowded, rat-in- travel, economies, nonstop news broadcasts expose adverse occur-
fested large cities fled to the countryside to cloister themselves. The rences faster, at deadlier speeds? Our collective spirits sag as we
creep towards 100,000 Americans dead because of COVID-19.
wealthy partied; the poor starved outside their castles. Farmers sick-
ened. The food-chain supply and distribution lines halted. There
were no food banks then. The known world economy faltered as Our hopes float with news of teams of scientists around the world
racing towards promising vaccines. The U.S. stock markets plunged
traders (and infected rodents) sailed to other ports, thereby smearing and are crawling back up. People lost their jobs and sources of in-
the Black Death to outlying countries. The world of Emperor Jus- come for their basic necessities. Some will have work again; others
tinian may have been the initial epicenter in the early 1300s only to may remain unemployed. Our society, like that of the Middle Ages,
explode into the deadliest pandemic by the mid-14th century. An has been punched. We are aching all over. At least most of us are
estimated 75 to 200 million Eurasians — rich, poor, mighty, weak, still alive — recovered or unexposed.
young, old — perished, an Unfortunately, la danse
unwanted reminder of the macabre continues. Death
frailty of life, the universal- has never taken a holiday.
ity of death. Neither has COVID-19.
Personal protective An eventual vaccine does
equipment (PPE) existed not hint of lifelong immu-
then and now. Instead of nity. Perhaps like the in-
N-95 masks, physicians fluenza vaccine, it will be a
wore beaked masks with best guess annually as to its
glassed eyeholes reminis- latest mutated morphol-
cent of those worn for ogy. Meanwhile, we in the
carnival festivities. Herbs profession of medicine
and various aromatics continue our tradition to
stuffed inside the beaks fu- continue to protect our
tilely countered the putrid fellow human beings. We
miasma thought to carry can only hope that they re-
the offending causative turn our love for them by
agent. The rest of the following our advice to
PPE included a wide- wash their hands fre-
brimmed hat, waxed-fabric quently, to stay away from
overcoat and a cane used sick people and to wear
to examine patients with- masks to protect others.
out contact. In essence, to stay out of
Towns even employed the hospitals by not getting
physicians to look after the infected with COVID-19!
health of its folks, a com- As I watch the news and
mendable start to the sub- see people sans masks
specialty of public health had the physicians actually been trained crowding into movie theaters, bars, beaches and amusement parks,
to be medical doctors instead of, say, a fruit seller. Fortunately for their fears of dying receding in the rush to get on with living, I won-
the people back then, real physicians and scientists such as Nos- der what novel bug is coming and will it be even deadlier…
tradamus, Paracelsus, Ambroise Pare truly served to advance knowl-
edge and supportive treatments. Wendy Kang, MD, JD is board certified in Anesthesiology and in Pain Med-
History does instruct. Are the bugs getting deadlier? In terms icine Anesthesiology and is a member of the Bexar County Medical Society.
of human lives lost, the Black Death still trumps our modern world

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