COVID-19 will have a profound and permanent impact on how we interact with other people and with the world at large. This really hit home to me a month ago. My son and I were walking our dog Emi—a docile, lab-border collie—when two very large dogs (mastiff/Irish wolfhounds, I learn later) rushed out of nowhere and attacked her—biting and snarling, literally at her throat. I clutched her leash, feeling the weight of all three dogs, and scrambled to stay on my feet and get my dog to safety. The owner of the two large dogs soon joined the fray and pulled his dogs back, but he didn’t offer so much as an apologetic glance.
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In 1999 Annie Dillard published 
My physician neighbor works in several urban emergency departments where mental illness and substance abuse cases run rampant. When I ask him about the impact on readmissions, he lights up: “Are you kidding? It’s off the charts!”
You’ve probably noticed it’s been a bumpy regulatory ride for bundled payments of late. On November 30, 2017, CMS cancelled two “mandatory” bundled payment programs that targeted cardiac and joint replacement care episodes. Then, on January 9, 2018, they announced a new “voluntary” bundled-payment model for 32 clinical-care episodes. What are we to make of this? Will a voluntary approach work? And what does this have to do with teamwork? 
Late one night in April 2018, my good friend and work associate finds it so difficult to breathe she wakes her husband to drive her to Emergency. One day she’s on her feet at work, the next she’s in the ICU, diagnosed with Streptococcus Pneumonia, on oxygen, intravenous antibiotics and pain medication. 
My oldest son is on the autism spectrum which brings him both challenges and unique skills, such as perfect pitch and encyclopedic memory. One of his gifts is an ability to see patterns that most of us miss. At least I do.
You may have seen him—the man on the commuter train to Los Angeles—leaning over his laptop, glasses slipping down his nose, wired in, absorbed, on deadline, not to be disturbed. Because he wears a suit and tie, you may assume he calculates quarterly sales results due on arrival downtown. It would be easy to make this mistake. The truth is he’s two thousand miles and forty years away.
Consider for a moment the sorrows of Max Planck, the theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory. In 1909, his wife, Marie Merck, died of tuberculosis. In 1914, his son, Erwin, was taken prisoner by the French during the First World War. Then his eldest son, Karl, was killed in 1916 at the Battle of Verdun.
One Boy's Way of Knowing 