Tag: COVID-19

How the pandemic made us confront what it means to be alone.

Drowning out a pandemic with alcohol.

Why it’s important to give things a sniff.

“Sometimes, the mechanism of the answer is something ludicrously complex, a thing that must be pieced out bit by bit. Other times, the solution requires retooling your perspective.”

On vaccine privilege in America and COVID-19 inequities in India.

Giving birth in the last year has meant a suffocatingly cloistered, rather than a communal, experience.

“’I think if the town survives, the newspaper will survive. I think we’re so intertwined. It’s not going to be one without the other. Our fates are going to be the same.'”

“Miguel Jr. and Jeannette are troubled that Miguel’s doctors didn’t present ECMO as an option, and then resisted the idea when the family suggested it.”

How scientists developed a COVID-19 vaccine in record time.

“Trevor spoke to Doug…“Physically, I’m doing fine,” he said. ‘My body’s just tired because we’ve been doing 20-mile days for eight days in a row.’ It was their final conversation.”

“She and her five housemates needed to find a way to live safely together. So they decided to adhere to a collective risk model of their own design.”

At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, cruise companies “went to great lengths to repatriate vacationers.” But for crew members, it was a different story.

“Leung says a “misalignment with nature” in building design is partly to blame for our scourge of chronic diseases and the current pandemic.”

“The first one I saw was on the path outside my house: a single white plastic glove, the fingers curled inward like a sleeping animal.”

Our top story picks in COVID-19 reporting this year.

Meet Eric Feigl-Ding, the town crier of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Workers who worked Monday through Saturday without missing a day were given a bonus of $50, later raised to $100, which was accompanied by a box of meat valued at $200 to $300.”

Three asylum seekers navigate coronavirus and climate change at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The structural conditions shaping care work are highly exploitative—and are profoundly linked to the high degree of COVID-19’s spread within both long-term care facilities and the communities that supply their labor force.”

We may not have a COVID-19 vaccine, but who will even get it when we do?

When things get hard, we look to our most fundamental relationships. This is the story of a son, a father, a camper van, a pandemic, and the ties that bind.

“A friend who teaches at another university tells me that a new Yiddish word has been invented: oysgezoomt, ‘over-exposed to Zoom,’ as in ‘Ich bin azoy oysgezoomt!’ (‘I’m so done with Zoom!’)”

In the wake of their parents’ deaths, three siblings struggle to get through the day-to-day.

A meditation on the nature of grief, at a time when the whole world seems to be grieving.

“She continued to write me, though she presumably risked retribution: more time in solitary, more nutraloaf, additional restrictions.”

The soft-focus Britain of Downton Abbey bears little resemblance to the real Britain collapsing under the weight of racism, austerity, and COVID-19. As Brexit plods on, it’s time for an honest reckoning of the history and future of this outsize little island.

“From the moment my mother died, I haven’t stopped thinking about how I could have saved her.”

“And yet, even though this health crisis reflects our nation’s political, social, and civic infrastructure, this plague has no consideration for morality. “

The remaining residents face isolation, and the challenges of preserving their history while enduring the present.

Bernice L. McFadden ruminates on all the things her mother has endured only to find herself spending her golden years in the midst of a deadly plague and state-sanctioned racism.