2020 MEDICAL YEAR IN REVIEW
Pandemonium 2020 By John J. Seidenfeld, MD
As I recap the year 2020, months seem like waves coming ashore, each one bigger than the last. At the time of this writing, more than 230,000 people have died from COVID 19 in the U.S. causing anxiety and grief (numbers in addition to expected deaths in prior years’ statistics). So many wise and wonderful people have been lost. What happens now and what lessons have we learned?
18
January 2020 We discovered that the vaping lung injury epidemic was attributable to a West Coast company selling vitamin E oil to rogue marijuana growers for inclusion in vaping pods. The oil received in barrels by the distributor, had a warning label “not for inhalation”. It was repackaged into smaller containers without labels and resold to cut THC put into vaping pods. Once off the market, the electronic vaping associated lung injury (EVALI) epidemic ended. Rare cases from toxic inhalants have been reported over the past ten years and will continue to dribble in. Reports of a deadly strain of Coronavirus causing pneumonias and other serious illness were received from Chinese authorities and front-line doctors beginning in December of 2019 (after an initial coverup which often greets bad news). Life in the U.S. continued as before with no travel restrictions, but the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) went on alert and began sending out regular reports by early February for the period between December 2019 and February 2020. As I now teach at the University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine (UIWSOM) and discuss topics such as Coronavirus with osteopathic medical learners, many felt no alarm and were confident that the CDC and WHO (World Health Organization) would contain the outbreak. I made plans to get together with friends in the coming months, to travel to meetings and to make reservations for summer travel. Face-to-face work continued. February 2020 More concern was raised as reports from the outbreak appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine and Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report from the CDC. We felt concern about
SAN ANTONIO MEDICINE • December 2020
