Clayton Dalton

Writer

Clayton Dalton's patients are facing death alone, without the comfort of friends and family. Maybe we'll realize that physical proximity and connection are essential, he writes, and finally see what we’ve lost by letting this mode of connection lapse.

My Patients Are Sick And Alone. What The Pandemic Can Teach Us All About Intimacy

I worry that, before the pandemic, our reliance on mobile technology was steadily disrupting our ability to form and tend to close physical relationships

I take a great deal of pleasure in nature’s splendor, but for me the perennial source is human connection, and all of the richness it entails. 

Employees at an intensive care unit of the Federal Clinical Center of Higher Medical Technologies of the Russian Federal Medical Biological Agency  treats COVID-19 patients, patients with suspected coronavirus and patients with viral community-acquired pneumonia. (PSergei Bobylev/Getty Images)