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As an intensive care unit doctor, I often find myself thinking about the apparent randomness of infectious disease. Two people go out to dinner and have the same meal; one ends up in the emergency room with food poisoning, but the other does not. The seasonal flu runs through an entire family, except for one individual who remains healthy. A case of mono can be a bad memory for one person and turn into a death sentence for another. Doctors look for the vulnerabilities that we can see to explain these outcomes, like age, vaccination status and underlying conditions, but we are often left without answers. (Daniela J. Lamas, 3/8)

No one can deny that the distribution of vaccine doses has been obscenely unjust. In high-income countries, some 72 percent of people have received at least two coronavirus vaccine doses; in low-income countries it is only 5.5 percent. Of over 4.7 billion coronavirus tests administered so far, about 22 million have been in low-income countries — about 0.4 percent of the whole. The cost is being paid in economic disruption; in school closures where remote learning is not an option; and in the growth of a massive genetic pool where dangerous variants continue to emerge. (Michael Gerson, 3/7)

Here is something on which we can agree: The once-in-a-century pandemic caused more than a public health crisis of suffering and fatality. Measures to combat the contagion — social distancing, masking, telework and vaccine mandates — touched every part of our lives. These took a heavy toll on child and elder care, student life, behavioral health, the economy and politics. Is there any good news to extract from this ongoing public health threat? (Ethan Dmitrovsky, 3/7)

Do you believe we’re at the stage of the COVID-19 pandemic where the industry can finally start to think about the new normal? (Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips and Dr. Alexander Garza, 3/8)