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Hi and welcome to COVID Quickly, a scientific American podcast series.

This is your fast track update on the COVID pandemic. We bring you up to speed on the science

behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and

help you understand what it really means. I'm Tanya Lewis. And I'm Josh Fishman.

And we're scientific American senior health editors. Today we're going to talk about an

oncoming wave of disabling griefs that could hit lots of people. And we'll try and

unconfuse you about the complicated new mask-wearing guidelines from the CDC.

This is a sad story, but it's important. People who have lost loved ones to COVID are at high

risk for mental health problems called prolonged grief disorder. How is that different from normal

mourning? Well, it's paralyzing. Tanya, this is a high level of mental anguish that keeps people

from leaving their homes, taking care of their families, and holding down a job. It's a recognized

syndrome that can go on for a year or more without let up. Ordinarily, after losing someone close,

you can be anguished and then you start to function again in time. But people with prolonged grief

describe their lives as simply waiting to die. The scary thing is that it looks like there will be

a huge number of these people because of COVID. Katie Harmon Courage, one of our SIAM.com contributors,

crunch some numbers in a story that's now up on our website. About 5-10% of bereaved people get

...