He's a health and science reporter for the New York Times and was recently awarded the 2020 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism by the Columbia Journalism school.
All that background noise is by way of saying that in an interview with a fellow New York Time's reporter, Donald McNeil put the current sorrows over curtailed Thanksgiving dinners in perspective:
The holiday season is just around the corner. What advice do you have for families eager to celebrate with their loved ones?
Do it by Zoom. Don’t let Junior come home and kill Grandma. Think of this like World War II — our soldiers didn’t get to fly home to eat turkey. My father was at Normandy. My mother was with the Red Cross in occupied Austria. They missed the holidays. Life went on. There were happier years later.
painting: Rebecca Lemov
