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Things people love.

This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests about politics.

It's Thursday, May 7th.

I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of The New Yorker.

The coronavirus has brought with it a new vocabulary that's familiar to everyone,

not just previously arcane medical and scientific terms, but phrases that apply to our daily

lives, social distancing,

self-isolation, and shelter-in-place, to name just a few. Even as some economies begin to

reopen, millions of people around the world remain confined to their homes, vast numbers of whom

live alone. The experience of acute isolation has never been so pervasive,

and it brings its own dangers, as former surgeon general Vivek Murthy told CBS this morning in 2017

years before the pandemic hit. It turns out that loneliness is associated with a reduction in your lifespan. That is as severe,

as a reduction in lifespan that you see with smoking, 15 cigarettes a day, it's greater than the

...