What made America’s Covid death toll even worse: the gnawing pain of human separation

A woman who died of Covid-19 lies in an open casket during a socially distanced viewing in Freehold, New Jersey, in June 2020. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

In the middle of the night on 20 August last year, Gordon Robertson received a phone call from the Florida highway patrol. The officer had pulled over his brother, Bruce, who was disoriented and claimed he was coming to see him.

“I’m thinking, that’s really odd: I had told him he was not allowed to come up here and visit until he got vaccinated,” said Gordon, 71, who lives in Longwood. “I asked him a dozen times, ‘Bruce, you gotta get this. You gotta get this.’ And he wouldn’t do it.”