https://ift.tt/32QjA8K The Sunday before last, I awoke to find that my aunt in India had added me to a WhatsApp family chat, titled “Mama”—her mother-in-law, my 91-year-old-grandmother. I scrolled through dozens of messages from my extended family, trying to figure out what had happened. At last I came to the dreadful news: “…Mama is positive.” My grandmother, who raised me, had tested positive for COVID-19. Her daughter-in-law, in turn, who lived with her was positive, as was her daughter, my cousin. A few days before, my great uncle, my grandmother’s last surviving sibling, had died of the virus. He, like my grandmother, had received one shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine. But it was not enough to protect him. On the seventh day, his oxygen levels and blood pressure plummeted, and his weak heart gave out. We did not dare tell my grandmother, for fear that grief would further compromise her health. It is hard to exaggerate the hell India has become in these past two weeks....
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