Being away from family can be tough during the best of times but this pandemic has truly tested and damn near broken me.
It was only a matter of time that someone closer to you gets infected and that happened 3 weeks ago when my brother fell ill (he's recovered now).

The initial bout of panic and scrambling for travel arrangements (it was looking pretty bad for a while) as his condition started to deteriorate was thankfully short as we needed cool heads more than rash decisions (taking 2 flights and passing through 3 big airports).
My other brother and my sister had to physically stop my parents from being in the same room as him. Shouting was involved. All that was quite difficult to manage from a distance but we have learnt of thousands of families around the world go through much tougher situations.
The medics, I can't even imagine how they are managing. The governments and the people are both siding with the virus in this long war.
Its all just so baffling to me, and even more absurd with every passing day that we have imposed it upon ourselves. On the most vulnerable.
Anyway, my brother is an otherwise fit 34 years old cyclist and he loves to go hiking every chance he gets so he probably had the best chance out of whole family to recover from the pneumonia in both lungs and dropping oxygen levels...
I don't think either of my parents will.
My family is in a privileged and fortunate position where we could care for him at home. We have friends and classmates that are doctors so could just call them and discuss the situation.. Could arrange oxygen and breathing equipment... All this is not available to most people.
Now, with all the (great and positive) announcements of vaccines, many people seem to think its all over, when it is far from!

Best organised regions will need months till everyone (or enough people) are vaccinated.
Others will need years, if at all they manage it.
In the meantime, people will get sick.
They will need all sorts of care, EVEN if they overcome the initial infection.

If you have followed me, you surely know I am bit of a broken record on this but maybe I am possibly not mad to be?
Please do whatever is in your power to stop the spread of this virus, if not for yourself, then for other human beings. Not everyone will survive this.

You really should do it for yourself too, you know. We need you in this world.

@ Trump: don't read the last sentence.

More from Life

"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".

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