“Failure to thrive” is one of the medical examiner’s euphemisms for people who die of no apparent cause, people who, so far as we can tell, “just give up.” The maddening thing is, it’s real. It happens to people who’ve been uprooted /1

To people who are bereaved, people whose most meaningful human contact may be a television. It’s staggeringly common in nursing homes. /2

I hope epidemiologists in the United States are studding this, with help from gerontologists, psychiatrists, maybe even clergy and philosophers. 2020 may be the best opportunity for a mass study we’ve seen. /3

Reach out to isolated people you know, to distant family, or even to strangers. To the extent you can do it safely, rekindle or make friendships without the noise of open social media. Even if it’s just Zoom, a direct message, a phone call, or through plexiglass. /4

When the virus is contained, we’re going to have so much wreckage to clean up, so many lives to reclaim. All of us. I have nothing else. /end