“Our House Is Burning Down”

A COVID-19 Conversation with Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Steve Goodman

A few days ago, I traveled to Boston to pick up my son from college. School officials had emailed several days earlier ordering all students to leave campus due to the threat of COVID-19. We were informed that classes would be held online for the duration of the school year.

The normally bustling college quad was eerily empty when I arrived. Stray students wandered about looking shell-shocked and disoriented. Cars piloted by parents pulled up to the dorms and students quickly loaded duffels and suitcases containing the contents of their lives. Soon-to-be-ex-roommates hugged, a few elbow-bumped, and some cried softly.

“It’s like the apocalypse,” my son said glumly in his dorm room, which looked like it had been ransacked. He and his three roommates were in various stages of packing. The rapid unraveling of this tight-knit community was disorienting and upsetting. They were joining a global wave of pandemic exiles.

I turned to my older brother to make sense of the extreme measures being taken to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health is his wheelhouse: Dr. Steve Goodman, MD, MHS, PhD, is an Associate Dean at the Stanford School of Medicine, where he is also a Professor of Epidemiology and Population…