Jamison: “doctors assumed that these patients were simply anxious or overly emotional.”
Laikos: “Earlier in the year (it feels like many lifetimes ago), I read that covid-19 was “just the flu.” We heard from scientific sources and popular media that other maladies were much worse, and that it would be a mistake to overreact to this one.”
Jamison: “in hesitant, general terms — “Uncertain future?” — but soon she settles on a more specific fear.”
Laikos: “I accepted these assurances without too much concern. It all seemed a bit remote to me — the way I imagine issues like food stamps may seem to a politician who has never needed them.”
Jamison: “a physical manifestation of some abstract human tendency — is dangerous. It obscures the particular and unbidden nature of the suffering in front of me.”
Laikos: “Now I also can feel, in a visceral way, the pain, fear and grief that the people in those videos must have felt.”
Jamison: “The disconnect felt even worse than the worm itself — to live in a world where this thing was, while other people lived in a world where it wasn’t.”
Laikos: “I believe that an ounce of empathy could have been — and in many states in the country might still be — our best method of prevention.”
I really like the quotes that you used and how each one makes a connection with each other. I noticed that these two characters have similar outlooks with each other on empathy in this discussion.