My triple-vaxxed, 85-year-old mother caught COVID. Medical triage made her doctor useless.

Over the course of the past two years, as COVID-19 violently extinguished nearly 850,000 American lives, I’ve read about the strain the pandemic has placed on our doctors and nurses. But I did not fully appreciate the fraying rope that is our health care system until last month, when both my elderly parents got COVID-19.

The call I had been dreading for nearly two years came the morning of Dec. 27 from my mother, and the symptoms were all too familiar: coughing, trouble breathing, chest pressure, body aches and fatigue.

After a 10-minute squabble in which she tried to convince me it was just the worst cold she’d ever had, I prevailed and she took a COVID-19 test. It was positive.