SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – March 11 marked the four-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a pandemic.
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease physician at UCSF Health, joined KCBS' Patti Reising on this week's "As Prescribed" to take a look back at how those four years unfolded here in the Bay Area.
Dr. Chin-Hong said those early days were like watching a guillotine come down -- slowly.
"It was more of a continuous realization rather than a sudden drop off a cliff, although that signified that day when we had shelter in place that the world was going to change," he said.
The medical world didn't know what to make of it, especially in the beginning when hospitals were taking care of the first wave of patients without diagnostic tests, vaccines and consistent safety standards.
"We were stressing out in the hospital," said Dr. Chin-Hong. "We were going in all these suits that we're going to wear to potentially protect ourselves from the unknown threat. And all of a sudden, this left the hospital walls into the community."
On the other hand, the pandemic did usher in several advancements in the medical field. Dr. Chin-Hong was shocked by the unprecedented speed at which the COVID-19 vaccine was developed.
"It usually takes years for vaccines to be made, given a novel threat. And then secondly, the technology that was used had been talked about as long as 10 years prior but hadn't really been actualized into a living, breathing vaccine that we can use on people," he said.
The pandemic also brought about advancements in diagnostics and drug treatment. Still, Dr. Chin-Hong was disappointed and surprised by how many things surrounding COVID, like vaccines and wearing face masks, became politicized.
"Most recently with early therapies and antivirals like Paxlovid -- there's even a term for that now, anti-paxxers, who really equate any treatment for COVID as having a political preference," he said. "As somebody in infectious disease, as somebody in the health field, it seems like doomsday to me because to have politics infiltrate into something that we learned in medical school in terms of how to protect yourself, or what has saved millions of people before... all seem to be a threat all at once."
The biggest lesson he's learned is that this won't be the last novel infection, but it should serve as a call to work together next time.
"We are one humanity. We have the same DNA. We share the same planet. We are the same species," Dr. Chin-Hong said. "Infections have no boundaries, they have no walls, so we all have to take care of each other."
Listen to this week's "As Prescribed" to learn more. You can also listen to last week's episode to learn about a recent UCSF study that linked cannabis use to increased risk of heart attack and stroke, here .
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