One of my friends in Canada got diagnosed with terminal cancer the other day and has only a few months left to live. I most likely will not be able to visit them before they die due to a complete shutdown of flights to get there. I guess this is what life was like in the era before airline travel, if you happened to know of anyone overseas you'd hear of their ill health and never get a chance to say goodbye in person.

They are currently in hospital and due to the pandemic there's no visitors allowed at all. To be alone like this while dieing is particularly brutal.

One of the things I've noticed about the whole situation with the pandemic is the enormous amount of denial, this desire to have a facade of everything is fine and business is as usual. Events like this remind me how this denial is very unhealthy. Things have changed and the old "normal" will not return.