COVID-Complicated Graduations: In-person or Virtual?

Her first reaction after receiving the email from the University announcing that commencement would be conducted online was to cry. Across Southern California, larger colleges were announcing plans for in-person graduations—so why not hers?
Then, twenty-two-year-old Anya dried her tears and turned to Instagram, asking: If Vanguard University hosted an in-person graduation, would they attend?
When eighty percent of the respondents said ‘Yes,’ she and two classmates created a GoFundMe account and started selling tickets.
I Want the Pandemic to End /I Don\’t Want the Pandemic to End: Two Perspectives

When Anika Chandok’s Bakersfield middle school shut down last spring and her classes went online, it felt like the beginning of an adventure. “I was in my pajamas, sitting in my comfy chair, “ the thirteen-year-old recalls. “I was texting my friends during class.”
“Then I received my academic progress report. I was an A and B student before the pandemic and now I was failing three classes.” Anika gathers her wits and shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts.
“The academic slide left my mother in tears. My mom insisted I create to-do lists and moved my workspace into the guest bedroom to pull up my grades.” Pausing to take a sip from her water bottle Anika looks at her therapist Laura Mitchell Moore who gives her an encouraging nod.
The Doctor Who Got Fired For Using Left-over Vaccine*

The Georgia doctor looked at the clock ticking loudly on the wall in his office, with a staccato, steady beat. Twenty minutes past 5 p.m. He had six hours.
Now that a vial of Covid-19 vaccine had been opened for his last patient on this blustery February day, he had to find ten eligible people for its remaining doses before the valuable medicine—more precious than liquid gold, he’d been told—expired. In six hours.
Scrambling, the doctor made house calls and directed people to his office outside Savannah. Some were acquaintances; others strangers. A bed-ridden octogenarian woman. A mother with a special-needs child who used a ventilator. A man in his 80s with dementia.
The Unequal Scramble for Vaccines

As soon as Los Angeles County began offering Covid vaccines to residents 65 and older, Sonia Khatri, whose non-profit agency ran a medical clinic, noticed something different.
“Suddenly our clinic was full of white people,” said Dr. Khatri, the head of Asha Kiran, which provided services to the poor. “We’ve never had that before. We serve people who are disproportionately colored—Indians, Pakistanis, Mexicans, some African-Americans.” She adjusted the steel-rimmed thick eyeglasses on her nose, which everybody said made her look like Gandhi.
Her brain has turned to mush: Inside Nursing Homes

After months of near isolation inside her senior care facility—India Home—Suman Pandey no longer recognizes her daughter, Tanya.
Tanya stumbles out of her mother’s room towards the nursing station just outside, too overwhelmed to speak. She’d expected to see some changes, yes—after four months of not being able to visit Mummy she’d felt her chest heave at the shrunken woman she found slumped against the pillows, her thick black hair had gone fine, wispy and completely white. Bits of pink scalp showed through. Had it truly been so long?
But what made Tanya’s knees buckle and her mouth fall open in a cry that was like the wail of a broken, desolate heart was the blank face her 84-year-old mother turned to her as she entered, bearing a box of Mummy’s favorite besan ladoos.
“Who are you?” Suman Pandey asked, her eyes huge and confused.
There\’s A New Demon in Town: Lord Corona

Good thing it was her shift that night.
Reema was sweaty and grumpy. In full PPE (gown, N95 mask, face shield, and gloves) for the past five hours. Every time she exhaled her glasses and face shield fogged up. She tasted stale air and burnt coffee from breathing in and out through her mask. (Note to self: schedule teeth cleaning on a weekend that you are not on call!)
She got a page. Getting a page marked ‘urgent’ was not unusual because the St. Vincent de Paul Modesto Shelter had new admissions all the time for people experiencing homelessness who were positive for Covid-19 and need a safe place to recover. But the content of the page was unusual. A new mom and her two-week-old baby with Covid-19 were on their way to the shelter.
News from the trenches: A week of coronavirus isolation

March 16
After a blast of cheery emails and messages on WhatsApp, Twitter, FB, Instagram, and Tumblr on how many people have recovered from coronavirus, what meditation apps to download, where to buy hand sanitizer, and where not to go for empty shelves of toilet paper rolls, a short simple notification shows up on Nextdoor:
“I can’t stop eating!”
Six days later, and the post is still trending. I want to hold up an emphatically guilty hand. A long-time believer in the intermittent fasting way of life, I usually have no problem fasting for sixteen hours straight. Now, I’m eating for sixteen hours straight!
Why can I not stop binging? Could I have been exposed to a mutated version??