There have been many MANY articles written about the COVID-19 pandemic. Many more will be written before we get to the end, no doubt. Some people choose to focus on the science behind it, others talk about the effect it has on their own lives.
Here are two really good articles about the personal cost of dealing with COVID-19.
The first article is by neurosurgeon Henry Marsh entitled ‘COVID-19 And The Doctor’s Dilemma‘:
Doctors are usually both fatalistic and anxious about their family’s health. We know that bad things happen — we witness this at work every day — but also that bad things are, on the whole, unusual. Until you reach old age, that is. When members of our family fall ill, we have to wrestle with professional realism and anxiety driven by too much knowledge. I have little choice other than to think of the worst that might happen, work through my feelings about it, and then try to put it to one side. I suppose you could call this “catastrophising” but, I’m afraid to say, Covid-19 is a catastrophe, even though almost all of us, strange to say, will survive it.
Beautifully written, as is the second article, entitled ‘What I Learned When My Husband Got Sick With Coronavirus‘, by Jessica Lustig, deputy editor of The New York Times Magazine. One of the most poignant paragraphs contains this moving detail about a sweater:
I am texting the doctor. I am texting T’s five siblings on a group chat, texting my parents and my brother, texting T’s business partner and employees and his dearest friends and mine, in loops and loops, with hearts and thankful prayer-hands emoji. He is too exhausted, too weak, to answer all the missives winging to him at all hours. “Don’t sugarcoat it for my family,” he tells me. He has asked for the gray sweater that was his father’s, that his father wore when he was alive. He will not take it off.
Stay safe everyone.
Imran Idris 