While the world’s top infectious disease experts are quick to caution us that a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is possible, and while some states in the nation are witnessing spikes in the number of cases reported on a daily basis, Dr. David O’Gurek, a Summit Hill native on the staff of the Temple University Hospital, Philadelphia, is adamant about the need to maintain social distancing and “follow the science.”

O’Gurek witnessed firsthand the challenges COVID-19 brought to the medical profession, noting, “Honestly, it’s scary beyond belief.”

He explained a theme of uncertainty is still prevalent in treating patients, as attending physicians are often challenged to consider protocols for practice, safety of the patients and staff, and how care delivery mechanisms were “changing every other day at the start of all of this.”

As scientists studied the virus, he said, “new knowledge was coming at us each day about treatments that perhaps were effective, but needing to consider commensurate risk.”

Doctors, meanwhile, were often busy fielding questions “about when this all would be over,” and were frequently perplexed to determine if a patient did in fact have COVID-19 or if they were experiencing typical allergy symptoms.

“This proved very difficult to distinguish,” he said.

O’Gurek said treating COVID-19 patients brought some of the toughest days of his young career.

“Despite that,” he said, “As I reflect on time in the hospital, my fears seem inconsequential compared to individuals kept in lonely hospital rooms with limited access to the outside world, people coming in wearing protective equipment that some I’m sure found even more frightening, and feeling a variety of symptoms that no one was sure when or how they would improve. Hearing from family members who felt guilty that they got a relative sick who ultimately passed from complications of COVID-19 and wondering how they will ever live with that guilt, I knew that my fears and my thoughts clearly needed perspective.”

While the doctors are trained for dealing with these types of challenges, O’Gurek said the difficulty comes as they transition to new ways of delivering care, particularly utilizing technology that takes some of the interpersonal connection away.

He said, “At a time when we truly need to wrap our arms around each other, we need to practice physical distancing. As has been suggested by many, however, it is critical to realize that while physical distancing is important to mitigate risk, social connectedness is critical to maintain overall individual and community health.”

Surprising to O’Gurek is the public’s belief in “so much privilege and entitlement,” saying this “no doubt contributes to the existing inequities that perpetuate system failures.”

“Discussions become so polarizing such that maintaining stay-at-home orders is infringing on people’s rights or being against improving economic conditions,” he said. “Similarly, if you are for opening up that you are somehow against safety or life. Politicizing these discussions as opposed to developing common ground and plans that are grounded in the best available evidence amplify ambiguity and frustration.

“Some of our political leaders, on both sides, act like children in the schoolyard defying orders or passing a note to ‘meet me after school’ rather than remembering the people who put them there in the first place and the oath they swore to uphold and protect.

“Our lack of ability to rise to the occasion and remember those essential core elements that make us America is disheartening. At a time when facts seemingly do not matter, science is waived in the face of capital, and divisiveness jeopardizes right as well as reason, I am surprised we are not using this time to evaluate who we are as a people and if this path that we seemingly have been on is the one we wish to stay on.”

Meanwhile, he said, COVID-19 has already prompted a transformation of the delivery of medicine, but, he suggested, “The rise of complications of delays in care for patients with chronic diseases, as well as the significant psychosocial trauma as a result of social distancing, will need a better system so much more than ever. Systems that understand the relational components of care that extend beyond in-person contact but are able to sustain in a setting of telemedicine will need greater emphasis.”

He said the system must take a proactive approach to health care, focusing on “wellness as opposed to sick care,” adding, “This will be essential to sustain individual and community level health. As systems have been forced to consider mechanisms to fund and assist with food, job, and housing insecurity, we need to think forward about how we deliver care to ensure systems provide reinforcing social determinants of health for all communities.

“We, in fact, should have been thinking about these things all along.”