Where coronavirus continues, unabated.
 | By Basharat Peer Staff Editor, Opinion |
In the late 2000s, I was working as an editor at a magazine in New York. A few weeks after my stint came to an end, I was at a cafe and felt like I was having a stroke. I sensed the life draining out of the right side of my body. I was 29. |
After several days of treatment and monitoring at a hospital, I was fine. (It was attributed to some kind of a migraine.) The bill was about $20,000. I still had medical insurance for the month after the end of my magazine job — so it was covered. But had I gotten sick a bit later, I would have been in financial ruin. |
The experience taught me firsthand just how vulnerable the many Americans who cannot afford adequate medical insurance are. |
I left the United States and continued working as a journalist in South Asia, the Middle East and Britain. I thought about that terrifying experience last summer while living in London and reading about the devastating impact of Covid-19 across the United States under former President Donald Trump. America's struggles were no doubt compounded by its medical system. |
I'm delighted to see that America has started to turn a corner since President Biden took office. The country is not fully out of the woods yet, but around half of all American adults have received at least one vaccine shot, and about 84 million Americans have been fully vaccinated. |
But billions of people in parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where health care systems are weak, access to vaccines is limited and economies are fragile, are still struggling through the pandemic. |
The virus continues to wipe out lives and livelihoods across the world. A global hunger crisis has gotten worse. Women and men who clawed their way from poverty into the middle class have been pushed back by disease and the erasure of economic opportunities. |
There is a parking lot for ambulances behind Vanessa's home. She and her daughter have been watching the ambulances from their balcony. |
"For over a year now, my 2½-year-old daughter and I have been monitoring — avidly, anxiously — the movements of the 10 ambulances parked there," she writes. "Since the beginning of the year, fewer and fewer ambulances stay put." |
This difficult year has made us value every moment of happiness and respite. I hope it also makes us think more about lives beyond our communities and national borders. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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