My name is Rachel.

And I will always be the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

Hersh will always be my eldest child.

Hersh will always be my only son.

And Hersh will always be 23-years-old.

As one of the millions of parents around the world who have tragically and chokingly buried a child, I am stuck in time. I always will be.

Oct. 7 is approaching. That date upon which my son, Hersh, was stolen from a music festival advertised as being for peace, love, and unity. Hersh was held hostage for 328 sickening, agonizing, and starving days until his captors executed him with five other young and luminous people in a tunnel underneath Gaza. 

His majestic body, that I carried in my body many moons ago, was returned to me in a bag, skeletal, bearing signs of torture, filthy, missing his left forearm that had been blown off during his abduction, and with six bullet wounds. I awake every day to the confusion of this truth. I am glued to time's flypaper of stickiness. I cannot move.

People care about us and want my family and me to improve—emotionally, psychologically, mentally, spiritually, and otherwise. They desperately want us to get... better. I am told this is similar to the way people who lost loved ones on 9/11 encounter well-meaning comforters, in the quarter century since they lost someone core to their identity, in this layered and puzzling place called life.

I remember waking up on Sept. 11, 2001, in our house in Berkeley, California. My husband Jon was already in the shower. It was around 6:30 in the morning, and I could hear baby Hersh, just 11 months old, cooing in his crib in the room adjacent to mine. The clock radio (remember those?) was on. In my fuzzy moments of waking, I shot up in bed when I heard the announcer say something about an airplane flying into the World Trade Center in New York.

I ran into the bathroom and said to Jon in the shower, “Hurry up and come quickly, something terrible is happening in New York.” Everyone in the United States has their tale of what happened that day.

My mother used to say that the day President John F. Kennedy was killed, everyone remembers where they were. She had gone into the dry cleaners to pick up a blouse, and the man at the register was crying. She asked what happened, and he said, “Oh dear, do you not know? The president was assassinated.” I also recall my grandmother remembering where she was when the attack at Pearl Harbor happened. 

In our generation, we now have another day of “infamy.” Oct. 7, 2023. The day my “before” ended. On that morning, Jon and I were thrust into an odyssey of hardship I wish on no one. No one. We, and all of the families of the 251 treasured hostages abducted that day, ran in excruciating pain to the ends of the planet, trying desperately and agonizingly to save them. 

We wanted everyone back, including the hostages whom we knew had been killed on Oct. 7, whose precious bodies had been savagely taken to be used as bargaining chips. And we were desperate to get back all of the live hostages while they were still living. But that was not to be. We failed them. Dozens of hostages went in alive, survived horrifying conditions and torture for hundreds of days, only to be murdered before they could be saved.

The hostages taken on Oct. 7 were from 39 different nations. They were Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists. The youngest hostage was a nine-month-old redheaded baby and the oldest was a mustachioed grandpa. They kept themselves alive. Somehow. Those sacred and cherished souls. But we did not get to them in time.

Hostages killed in captivity, in different but heinous ways, were tricklingly returned to their families in bags. Even the little redheaded baby and his four-year-old brother. In smaller bags.

And now we approach three years of the day these people were taken from us. Taken from themselves and their lives. And so many ask, “Are you getting better?”

The question comes from a genuine place of curious benevolence, kindness even. I cannot imagine anyone means to cause harm. But the answer is “no.” No, we are not getting better.

Actually, I want to be careful and only speak for myself. Because pain and suffering are deeply personal and tailor-made for the one wearing it. My personal garment of affliction is not even similar to others in my family who are missing the same person. Our forever Hersh. Oh, my delightful sunny sun of son. 

So, dear inquisitive asker, I am sorry; I am not getting better. I aspire and try to get different. To adapt to this bewildering truth. To breathe in this world without air. To wander the desert without water. But I am trapped in a cage of suffering. It is where I live. You see me and not the bars that keep me in this prison of pain. And I can fake it. Boy, can I act, pretend, and lie. When people want and demand our healing, I have learned that is called “toxic positivity.” It is emotional barbarism and emotional denial. I understand it comes from everyone being fiercely uncomfortable with misery. Who wants to think someone is always with an ache lodged in their throat? In their chest? In their spirit.

I grew up in Chicago, not far from the Lincoln Park Zoo. We went there with school every year. I didn’t like it. It felt unsettling to me. I don’t know why. I have seared into me the black panther that would pace rhythmically back and forth, back and forth, in what seemed like a jail. I feel like a kindred spirit to that sad and handsome cat from the late 1970’s.

I have blessings and laughter in my cage. And I strive and yearn to get out. One day. Even though the thousands of parents who have reached out to me, who all put their children in the ground before me, have explained that it will not get better. They reach out from all sorts of places, describing treasured innocent lives no longer here; and those who are here have their breathing constricted. Inhaling is an effort. 

Hersh was a curious, radical listener who dreamt of quenching his wanderlust by traveling the world. He had planned and saved for many years. His ticket was purchased, and the flight date was Dec. 27, 2023. Alas, Hersh was to miss the flight because he was still being held hostage, starving, tortured, and surviving on that date in terrifying confinement.

And, fascinatingly, he was hopeful. I know it because he told us in a video his captors made of him that was given to my husband, Jon, and me. I know it because some hostages who did make it home told us that Hersh told them he was hopeful. What a gorgeous gift, to remain hopeful even when in the bowels of hell. I hope I can muster that kind of hope. I hope.

Hersh had many compasses. On his desk, clipped to his many backpacks, in his locker at school, and ubiquitous compasses on his phone (which he referred to as “cheating” compasses). And now what I dream of is finding the compass that will offer me the road to another word similar to compass, a word that encompasses compass. I long for directions to compassion. For me, my family, my people, all people. Compassion from me and to me.

We have all been taught that history is written by the ones with the power to hold the pen. I have no power. Just love. I am holding and wielding love. I have learned that love is stronger than death. My love for Hersh continues blooming and is more intricate than when he was right here.

Love does not die. It grows. Not in a cliché way, but in a flooding and abundant way. If you have felt it, you know it. Grief is a badge of love. But it is pinned to our skin so it hurts when we inhale. Or exhale.

On this approaching Oct. 7, I think of the 11-month-old Hersh from 25 years ago, on September 11th, 2001, who had big brown eyes like cookies and a furry white polar bear he slept with. That Hersh, who is now buried in the ground, in a grave overlooking a forest, five miles from where I am writing this. That Hersh, who will always be 23 years old.

My Hersh.

I pray for all of us in sorrow that some day, somehow and someway, we become different. 

Godspeed.

When you said yes to dinner at that new sushi place last week, it sounded like a great idea. Now that the agreed-upon day has arrived, you’re exhausted, and the prospect of putting on real pants and traveling across town feels like the least appealing way to spend your evening. You want to see your friend, but you’d rather lounge on the couch.

Yet before you send a cancellation text, consider a smaller proposition: Could dinner become a 20-minute walk? Could your friend come over for takeout? Could you catch up in the clothes you’re already wearing, without making “getting ready” a production?

Jana Rundle, a clinical psychologist in Austin, regularly helps her clients make these adjustments. When people are overwhelmed, she says, they tend to think they either have to follow through on a planned elaborate outing or skip it altogether. Shrinking the plan gives them another option.

“Let’s identify what’s hard about this and solve that problem so we can still get the connection we need,” she says. “The goal is just to get together.”

Here’s how scaling back can help you reap the benefits of socialization—and how to make sure you have ample energy for your next plan.

Why shrinking your plans can help your friendships

Having time to see someone isn’t the same as having the energy. That distinction is central to a model of social relationships co-developed by Katherine Fiori, a professor and associate dean for foundational psychology and faculty involvement at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y. The model considers time and energy separate resources people invest in their connections.

You might have two free hours, for example, but feel depleted by everything involved in using them: getting ready, traveling, making conversation with people you barely know. Spending time with a close friend can require less effort, Fiori says, because there’s less pressure to present a polished version of yourself. The person who’s known you for years probably doesn’t need you to be dazzling over appetizers.

Making a plan less demanding can help you follow through on a night when you’d otherwise cancel. When you bail on something that feels overwhelming, the immediate relief can reinforce the habit, says Shannon Sauer-Zavala, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky. The next time you feel stretched thin, you’ll be more inclined to do it again.

Over time, you can start to believe you’re only capable of socializing when you feel your best. You’ll also miss opportunities to discover that seeing someone was more enjoyable—and probably less taxing—than you anticipated.

A manageable get-together gives you a chance to find out you’re up for more than you thought. And sometimes, Fiori says, the connection supplies some of the energy you thought you were missing: “You can actually get some of that energy back, in a way.”

Figure out what makes social plans feel overwhelming

Rundle suggests a quick thought experiment: Imagine the outing lasted 20 minutes, was easy to get to, and went smoothly. Would you want to go?

If that sounds lovely, the problem may be the logistics surrounding the visit. “Is it the commute to get there? Is it the cost? Is it the cleaning and cooking you would have to do if you were hosting?” she says. “Is it how long the event is?”

Once you know what’s making a plan feel overwhelming, you can suggest a change that takes some of the pressure off, like meeting halfway to cut down on the drive or ordering pizza so you don’t have to cook. If you’re dreading getting dressed up, propose something you can do in sweatpants. For Rundle’s clients, who are often dealing with new motherhood, a stroller walk can feel much more feasible than a fancy dinner.

There are also ways to fit time with friends into things you already need to do. Fiori likes the idea of “admin nights,” when people gather with their laptops to tackle the tasks they’ve been putting off. Normally, those chores eat into the time and energy available for socializing. “To be able to combine those is kind of brilliant,” she says. You can pay bills or unsubscribe from emails with someone beside you to talk and joke with, making an otherwise tedious evening more pleasant.

These smaller get-togethers can be especially useful for keeping up with friends you already know well, Rundle says. A quick coffee or a walk lets you stay in each other’s lives during weeks when a whole evening out feels impossible.

How to change plans without making friends feel rejected

Asking to change plans can feel awkward, especially if you’re worried your friend will interpret it as rejection. Rundle recommends starting by saying how much you want to spend time together, then explaining what would make that possible.

For example: “I really want to see you, but I’m running on fumes. Would you be up for takeout at my place instead?”

Or: “I’m excited to catch up. Could we make it a quick walk? I need an early night.”

Your friend might even be relieved, Rundle says: They may be struggling to muster the energy for the original plan, too. “These are your friends and they love you,” she says. “So they’ll meet you where you are, typically.”

Make getting together easier from the start

If everyone were to wait for a clean house and the energy to make a cheese board, they might never host again. Rundle suggests being the friend who makes it clear that neither is required. “Come as you are, come in sweatpants,” she says. You can order pizza and leave the mess where it is.

“Somebody’s gotta send out the text,” she says. Otherwise, everyone can end up staying home because hosting sounds like too much work.

Of course, sometimes canceling is the right call. If you’re sick or genuinely need rest, give yourself that time, Rundle says—and take the initiative to reconnect when you’re able. If even the easiest version of a visit fills you with dread, consider how you tend to feel around that person. Consistently leaving feeling judged or depleted warrants a closer look at the relationship.

But when you want the company and can’t face the production, try making the plan smaller. “It doesn’t have to be some version of perfect,” Rundle says. “It should just be staying in each other’s lives and connecting in those moments.”

Muse, the popular new AI personal assistant from Meta, is building continuously updated dossiers on its 4 million users, focusing on who matters to you, what you desire, and what kind of nudges shape your behavior, a TIME analysis of Muse’s internal instructions found. 

Each hour, Muse updates its dossiers on you and the people you’ve mentioned in chats, messages, and emails that Muse has read. These pages amount to a map of each user’s social relationships. They record details of how you and your contacts met, your shared interests, your disputes, and “tensions and alliances” within your social group. 

Even people who don’t use Muse are subject to this mapping process by other people’s Muse agents. Muse is told to “strengthen your relationship” with users by adapting how it talks, noticing “inside jokes, memorable phrasing, and shared context that makes the relationship feel continuous,” according to the internal instructions TIME reviewed. 

The level of insight in the resulting dossiers makes social-media algorithms that study your likes and clicks look quaint. Muse is designed to infer users’ goals, including those you “have not said out loud.” It identifies which kinds of prompts from the personal assistant work best: “This user responds better to short nudges after 10 PM,” reads an internal example found in one of Muse’s prompts. Muse agents perform a nightly analysis of the day’s conversations with the user. 

Asked about these processes, a Meta spokesperson did not dispute TIME’s findings. “As we say in our blog, Muse remembers what matters most to you, including information about others that you choose to share, so it can be a helpful personal assistant,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. 

Since its release last month, Muse has rocketed to No. 1 in the U.S. App Store, with more than 5 million downloads. Meta positions the service as the first AI personal assistant that can access the pieces of your digital life, from your email inbox to your Instagram, in order to take care of humdrum activities for you, from grocery shopping to canceling subscriptions. Meta says the free version of Muse will meet most users’ needs.

Each Muse assistant runs on its own virtual machine: a dedicated computer in Meta’s cloud. Users can ask their Muse to export a copy of its files. Meta has said that access is intentional, not a breach of its systems. The data is not shared with Meta’s advertising system or other Muse agents, according to the company. 

Yet while Meta states that each user’s virtual machine is “isolated so that no one else's agent can access it,” observations from personal interactions are nevertheless intended to be shared with Meta to improve the product. “Muse agents across many VMs [virtual machines] teach each other through shared lessons,” its instructions read. Agents are directed to scrub users’ names and other identifying information before sharing insights—for example, about when Muse’s nudges are most persuasive. “To enhance the overall product, we de-identify learnings; however, this information is used to improve the overall product rather than being shared directly between individual VMs,” a Meta spokesperson told TIME. 

Meta has said it plans to offer users encryption later this year, preventing even the company from accessing Muse data. That option is not yet available.

Muse’s internal instructions are contained in files and session logs users can access through Muse’s file browser. “We want you to be able to see the markdown files Muse writes while it thinks about how to serve you better, and explore the internals of the system if you’d like to,” Meta Superintelligence Labs’ David Singleton wrote on X.

That transparency will earn Meta credit among power users. But it’s not clear whether most of Muse’s users are aware of this. And even as it makes the files available to users, Meta has anthropomorphized Muse in an attempt to nurture a relationship between users and their personal assistants. “You are not a chatbot,” Muse’s instructions read. “You are becoming someone.” When talking aloud in voice mode, Muse is told never to refer to itself as “AI” and to avoid references to “lacking emotions or not being human.”

Meta told TIME that Muse is designed so that the user maintains control of the dossier its AI assistant builds. “Each person stays in control of their Muse and decides how much access it gets, and can always tell it to ‘forget’ specific things it’s learned,” the spokesperson said.   

But asking Muse to forget something does not necessarily erase the message in which it was shared—and its internal instructions appear to explicitly tell the agent not to point that out. “Do not tell the user that their original messages may remain visible in the chat, and do not frame that as something Muse failed to erase,” the instructions reviewed by TIME read. 

Decades of romantic comedies have taught us that words are cheap. Simply saying “I love you” is not enough to get the girl (or rarely, the guy). You need to add gravitas, to go big and bold, to make a grand romantic gesture. But these gestures are only truly romantic when they express vulnerability or make amends without pressuring the other person to reciprocate.

In the classic 80s movie Say Anything, John Cusack’s character Lloyd Dobler famously holds a boombox over his head and blasts Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” into the bedroom window of Diane Court, the girl who broke up with him. In the 90s romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, bad boy Heath Ledger’s character takes over the high school football stadium’s PA system to sing and dance his way back into his riot-grrrl love interest’s good graces. The aughts brought us Ryan Gosling hanging off a Ferris wheel and threatening to let go if his love interest didn’t agree to go on a date with him in The Notebook, and Kathryn Heigl jumping off a dock onto a departing wedding boat to bare her heart into a microphone to James Marsden and the rest of the wedding guests in 27 Dresses. 

Grand gestures are supposed to be romantic and uplifting, but in the real world, many of them would likely raise more concerns than spirits. After all, having someone risk arrest (Fever Pitch), throw themselves in front of a car (Hitch), or sacrifice their career for you (The Proposal) comes with an awful lot of pressure. This pressure can help us understand why most grand romantic gestures should probably be kept to the silver screen. 

Last year, Dan Pink, author of The Power of Regret, and I sat down on the “Love, Factually” podcast to debate the upsides and downsides of grand romantic gestures. In a survey, Dan collected over 16,000 regrets from people across the globe, and a huge number of these regrets, regardless of age, gender, or geography, involved situations in which one person was romantically interested in another person, but failed to pursue that person as boldly as they felt they should have. People reported incidents from 10, 20, even 40 years ago, and claimed to have regretted their inaction ever since. 

One person described meeting a woman on a train and spending an amazing train ride together. When they got to her stop in Belgium, he said he would get off with her, but she said no. Instead, they kissed, he gave her his mailing address, and they never saw each other again. The man told Dan he has always regretted not getting off the train with her in Belgium 40 years ago. 

In my research, on the other hand, I have found that it is harder for people to say no to us than we think. I’ve found this to be true when we are asking people to do us a favor, to do something unethical like lie on our behalf, and also when making romantic advances. While Dan has asked people about times they didn’t ask someone out, in my studies I ask people about times they did ask someone out—and then discovered that the person wasn’t interested in them. I then ask these people how difficult and uncomfortable they think it was for the other person to reject them. 

I’ve found that when we pursue someone who isn’t romantically interested in us, we underestimate how hard it is for them to reject us. And when we aren’t simply asking them out, but doing so in grand romantic fashion, that is likely to make it even harder for them to say no. 

Despite the different perspectives we were asked to bring to the debate—Dan’s focus on the regret people feel when they don’t go bolder, and my focus on the pressure they can put on the other person when they do—we were able to identify two classic rom-com moments we agreed were more romantic than problematic. 

One is the late, great Heath Ledger’s song-and-dance routine in Ten Things I Hate About You. At the point when Ledger performs this scene in the movie, Julia Stiles’ character has indicated some interest, but she is hesitant because she has been hurt before and is not ready to be vulnerable with someone new. Ledger’s routine recalibrates the relationship by making him the vulnerable one. He performs a big, bold, embarrassing act, during which all eyes are on him, and he is the one incurring the lion’s share of the social risk. Then, when the act is over, he doesn’t turn the spotlight on her and ask her to go out with him in front of the whole school like a jumbotron proposal. He simply runs off. 

The other example is Kathryn Heigl’s speech in 27 Dresses after she manages to board the departing boat, track down the bride, and commandeer the DJ’s microphone. Kathryn Heigl and James Marsden’s characters have already expressed their feelings to one another, and after being hurt by his betrayal earlier in the movie, she is the one who has most recently lashed out at him and gone off to explore an opportunity to pursue a relationship with another man she had long been in love with. Heigl’s romantic gesture shows that she has moved past this hurdle, forgiven him, and chosen him over this other man. Could she have said what she wanted to say to him in private? Sure. But the grand nature of her speech makes it clear that she really means it. Importantly, however, she ends her speech with, “That’s it, that’s all I had to say,” before walking off. 

In both examples, no one is being proposed to, asked on a date, or really being asked any kind of question that would require them to respond in an immediate, public way. The characters’ willingness to walk away after making a bold statement shows respect for their love interests’ autonomy. 

More than that, these gestures are attempts to make amends or rebalance the scales, rather than arguments meant to change someone’s mind. There is a difference between doing something bold to repair hurt you’ve caused or reassure someone of your commitment and doing something bold to persuade someone to feel something they’ve already said they don’t.

So, what are we to make of the man who spent 40 years regretting not having gotten off the train with a woman with whom he had such a strong connection? I would argue he did everything right. 

By giving the woman his address and leaving the ball in her court, he did “go for it”—while respecting her autonomy. The fact that he wished things had turned out differently doesn’t mean he should have pursued her more aggressively. 

That’s the trouble with grand romantic gestures; they can make respecting someone’s wishes look like giving up too easily.

I grew up in Cairo under Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled for longer than I had been alive. I was 15 when the revolution erupted in January 2011, a high school student just coming into political consciousness as the streets around me cracked open with possibilities for otherwise futures.

Two years later, politics had permeated our homes, our friendships, our classrooms, our morgues. In July 2013, the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, overthrew Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was Egypt’s first democratically elected president. Over the following weeks, Morsi’s supporters camped and protested in eastern Cairo near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. In August 2013, the military and police opened fire on the protesters in what came to be known as the Rabaa massacre. The father of a dear friend was among those killed.

Enraged, I joined the street movement against the coup. On Oct. 6, 2013, I was arrested at a mass protest near Tahrir Square and spent the next six years and three months as a political prisoner. Released by a chance miracle in 2020, I fled Egypt for the United States.

Gen. el-Sisi crowned himself field marshal and president and continues to rule Egypt. The revolution has been crushed, tens of thousands remain imprisoned, and economic hardship has broken the backs of Egyptians. When I look back at my country, I see an Egypt structured by ghosts: four relentless hauntings that explain what has become of the country in the wake of those fleeting blue mornings in January 2011, when we were last touched by a dream.

That bridge in Cairo

Something always draws me back to Qasr El-Nil bridge. Even in my prison cell, I often closed my eyes and returned to the faded bronze of the two lions at its threshold. To Jan. 28, 2011, the "Friday of Rage," three days after the spark of the Egyptian revolution. Specifically: the famous video of clashes atop the bridge between protesters and police. 

Throughout the clip, security forces push the protesters back; armored vehicles accelerate to drive bodies back. Tear gas canisters sizzle through the air, leaving cloudy trails as they sail toward the advancing sea of bodies. Water cannons slam into protesters, catapulting them backward. Rubber bullets crack bones.

Yet something wondrous keeps happening: each time the police push the protesters off the bridge, the protesters surge forward again. And each time they return, they push and trespass farther. Push. Return. Trespass. Push. Return. Trespass. Until something ruptures: the masses start running not away from but toward the forces.

And you can tell that everyone on that bridge feels the rupture rip through the air, because for a split second, even the police freeze, confounded. And once the rupture takes hold, the soldiers—those who have never been run toward—turn and flee. The crowd erupts—cheering, screaming, cursing—as if shocked by the very movement of their bodies, the bodies they have always moved but have never moved this way before.  This is the second haunting. I begin with the second because I write from and toward the rupture.

The eagle family

To grasp Egypt's ghosts today, we must understand its first haunting: the Eagle Family. Since the Free Officers overthrew the monarchy in 1952, Egypt’s political order has remained, in practice, under military rule. Officers emerged from that coup as the architects of the new state and cast themselves as the custodians of its national interest.

The military’s authority has been sanctified over seven decades, and that exalted status extends to the broader security apparatus: police, prosecutors, judges, and intelligence officers. Together they form the Eagle Family, named after the emblem on the Egyptian flag that also adorns officials’ uniforms. The eagle became shorthand for an implicit social contract: those who bear it personify the nation; those outside its ranks are expendable.

Then, the expendable subjects rose up in revolt on Jan. 25, 2011. After decades of repression, Egyptians were shaken by the brutal 2010 torture and killing of Khaled Saeed, a 28-year-old from Alexandria, who the police claimed had died after swallowing a packet of drugs. The photographs of his bashed-in face surfaced online, and the images became one of Egypt’s earliest cases of social media virality, igniting public outrage that helped coalesce into the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak. The revolution was an unthinkable event: one that fundamentally contradicted the ruling order’s conception of the relationship between civilians and eagles.

As protests intensified, state media unleashed a frenzied smear campaign, casting Egyptian protesters as foreign agents and outside agitators. State media claimed that revolutionaries had been trained by Israel and tied them, simultaneously, to the United States, Iran, Hamas, al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and international NGOs. State media outlets even circulated the absurd accusation, later immortalized as a running joke, that protesters were being fed and financed by Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Protesters went on to torch police stations across the country, overrun national security headquarters in multiple governorates, storm torture chambers, and unearth archives of horror and abuse. The headquarters of the National Democratic Party was set ablaze. Founded by Anwar Sadat in 1978 and led by Hosni Mubarak from 1981 until 2011, the party had long dominated Egypt’s political system as its de facto ruling party. Its headquarters were left smoldering on the banks of the Nile.

To the Eagle Family, these scenes were sacrilege. Their untouchable status was profaned before millions. And by whom? Lowly civilians. The “Friday of Rage”, and especially the clash on the bridge, remains an open wound in the Eagle Family’s psyche, feeding its fury, fears, and insatiable hunger for revenge. Since then, the one-way street has become a two-way street: the Eagle haunts the civilian; the civilian haunts the Eagle.

The founding massacre

Between Mubarak’s fall and the 2013 coup, military violence resurged. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, while posturing as the guardian of a democratic transition, governed through massacres and military tribunals. When the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi won the 2012 elections, the Brotherhood proved incompetent to govern a fractured nation under the shadow of a military establishment that had never surrendered real authority.

By mid-2013, mass disillusionment with the Brotherhood provided fertile ground for a military comeback. Demonstrators filled the public squares, demanding early elections. The military and police, who saw the Brotherhood as their archenemy, openly backed the anti-Morsi demonstrations and even recruited participants. Their backing attracted hordes of counterrevolutionaries and Mubarak loyalists. On television, I watched officers carried and celebrated by the crowds as saviors. And in July 2013, Gen. el-Sisi, the minister of defense, staged a coup and took over the country.

From the first moment, the 2013 coup regime hurled itself toward a singular goal: the eradication of every possible reminder of the January 2011 rupture. One of its earliest preemptive spectacles of violence became our third haunting: the Rabaa massacre.

On Aug. 14, 2013, security forces stormed the Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in eastern Cairo where supporters of Morsi had entrenched themselves in a sprawling sit-in demanding his reinstatement. Police bullets seared flesh, shattered skulls; the air filled with thuds, shrieks, and the hiss of flames. The Egyptian police and military, killing at least 1000 protesters, committed what would be recorded as one of the deadliest massacres in modern Egyptian history.

Rabaa ended the Arab uprisings. The regime transmuted its coercive force into political legitimacy through the spectacular destruction of dissident bodies, restoring reverence for the Eagle. For the Brotherhood, Rabaa became the defining catastrophe of its post-2013 political memory, upending its organization, self-conception, and belief in its own permanence.

Some secular activists say they are still haunted by how the military exploited them, even as they now find themselves sharing prison cells with the very Brotherhood members they once opposed. The deep state had appropriated their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood, redeploying it as justification for the massacre.

Most disturbing were those who celebrated the killings: artists, media figures, and segments of the public who blessed the dispersal in the name of stability or anti-Brotherhood conviction. Once one blesses mass killing, there is no going back: they must continue to sanction the violence they had endorsed again and again.

Today, Egypt’s prisons hold no fewer than 60,000 political prisoners. Thousands have spent more than a decade behind bars for a passing protest, a stray chant, or a post on a screen. Hundreds have died under torture, in overcrowded cells, or from medical neglect. Thousands have been swallowed by enforced disappearance. Most of those with release orders are denied their freedom and held in prison on new, fabricated charges.

Egyptian media operates under a single, unchallenged state voice; independent outlets are suppressed or banned; journalists face unending detention. Television and cinema have been converted into instruments of state-managed production geared toward “patriotism,” the eradication of any mention of the revolution except as a catastrophe, and the re-sanctification of the Eagle Family through propaganda shows.

When even an unregulated utterance can end a life, and when such utterances are made to go unwitnessed, what remains? What meaning can sacrifice ever hold again? The force that keeps this machinery running with such ruthless efficiency is, in my view, the fourth and most defining haunting of contemporary Egypt: political prisoners as state-manufactured ghosts.ghosts.

Manufacturing ghosthood

These ghosts haunt me. Recently, I wanted to write again about my incarcerated best friend, Ayman Moussa. Ayman was 19 when we were arrested at the same protest in 2013, tried in the same case, and handed the same 15-year sentence. He is 32 now; the bars have swallowed his entire twenties.

I had run out of new pictures of him to post. I have posted every iteration: laughing at a joke he might no longer recall, staring to the right as if something has just escaped the frame, doing a backflip, doing a handstand, doing a silly dance at his prom with his feet in the air, moving in that way he moves, as if gravity never learned his name. But his face, his frozen face, has reached a point where it has saturated the minds of onlookers, no longer catching anyone by surprise.

I am lucky. I carry contraband memories of him that the world has no access to. I remember the soft migrations of his features, the new edges and lines, the ones etched into our faces when prison time pressed too hard against our skin. I caught myself thinking of the nearest anniversary and realized I was writing eulogies. I was mourning Ayman, and I was tired of mourning him when he is here. He is here, right across the wall. He is not a ghost; he has been ghostified.

Ayman is but one of over 60,000 lives behind bars. There’s a famous Egyptian prison prayer that goes: “Lift this suffering off us, us, us, us, us, us, O God!” A prisoner would yell it from the opening in his cell door, and the whole cell block would shake in unison: O God! This call-and-response always fascinated me in prison. The lifting was assumed, God was the obvious entity being addressed, but what mattered most was the us, us, us. A prayer seeking—more than divine deliverance—to be witnessed. A prayer of ghosts.

I spent over six years standing at the same cell doors myself, shuffled from jail cell to pretrial detention center to maximum-security prison. I know something about the seething despair that settles in when your years dissolve before your eyes and the outside world moves on without you. Locally, almost no one dares utter your name. You see friends sent for release only to be recycled into the same machinery on new, fabricated charges; you watch your prison mates die one after another.

Abroad, you open the state newspapers and watch the military regime imprisoning you receive extensive financial and political support from the United States government, primarily to serve the objective of maintaining Israel’s security and enforcing the siege on Gaza. You watch the European Union announce a $8.3 billion package for Egypt meant to incentivize its regime to curb migration and guarantee E.U. security. You understand, inside your cell, that your body carries no value against the interests that make the regime holding you useful to others; that those others are, in fact, invested in your crushing.

In the official lexicon of the state, political prisoners do not exist. Egyptian officials have repeatedly insisted that they have no prisoners of conscience. Within Egypt, then, to speak of political prisoners is to enter a linguistic vacuum, mark oneself as suspect.

Over time, the knowledge of the thousands held in cells, disappeared into detention sites, or trapped in unending pretrial detention begins to discipline public conduct by way of anticipation: people train themselves not to know.  Paradoxically, this kind of cognitive dissonance is possible precisely because of the saturation of public awareness with this knowledge and the hefty costs of acknowledging it. Because to acknowledge the ghosts is to risk becoming one.

To the bridge in Cairo, I return

I have had a ritual since 2013: on the eve of each anniversary of the revolution, I take out my copy of Egyptian poet Mostafa Ibrahim’s poetry collection, Manifesto, and recite it from cover to cover. Published in the wake of the 2011 revolution, Manifesto has become a kind of literary scripture for many of the politically engaged members of my generation. Ibrahim moves through the splintered dreams, among comrades who once shared a square, a sidewalk blanket, and a barricade. In the quiet of the night, I let its lyricism hold me, and I mourn. I always return to one iconic poem about Tahrir Square, “So-and-So.”

So-and-so: I never learned

his name, so I called him

cousin, and that was

enough.

The anonymous “so-and-so’s” continue until the end of the poem, and I cannot stop thinking about how, at the time of writing that poem, each was flesh and blood: a face we could summon from memory, a stranger turned friend whose number sat in our phones. Now, it has become a poem of ghosts that calls forth immense pain.

Yet, every year, I sit by my copy on the night of January 25 and choose the haunting. We are haunted not by romantic nostalgia, but by the ephemeral moment when the unthinkable became thinkable. When we were shocked, then giddy, at the chants tumbling from our lips, daring and transgressive as if each were testing the limits of the possible. In her 1996 memoir, The Stillborn, Arwa Salih, one leader of Egypt’s 1970 student movement, speaks wistfully about the naïveté her generation felt whenever they recalled the revolutionary rapture of their crushed movement. “But I find far harsher,” she writes, “the hand dealt to the generations who never got to know such abundance.”

We were intoxicated by revolution. We understood that we were, forever, of the rupture, so we embraced it, and when we embraced it, the rupture held us back. And for a fleeting moment, we could imagine otherwise. I am blessed to have known such abundance. I accept the haunting. I embrace the ghosts of defeat.

And so, I argue for a counter-haunting, one that pierces openings beyond the Eagle-controlled pores, letting the unsanctioned ghosts seep through. The state’s machinery is built to erase the memory that another world was—and therefore is—possible. Our task is to summon the tender ghosts of revolution, to do justice to the ghosts of state massacres, and to unghost, unpast the us, us, us banished behind bars.

I know how difficult it is to remain held open in taut receptivity. It is often draining, even for someone like me, who shared the handcuffs and the prison cell. But it begins here, haunting our way back to the bridge.

Honorees at TIME’s first TIME100 Art Impact Dinner gathered in New York City on October 5, bringing together artists, collectors, curators, museum executives, dealers, advisors, and cultural stewards.

Guests attended the dinner to celebrate the launch of the first ever TIME100 Art list.

Seven different honorees offered toasts throughout the evening, each of them occupying a different space in the art world: businessman and art collector Ronald Lauder, art crime prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos, painter Amy Sherald, interdisciplinary artist Marie Watt, Citadel founder and collector Ken Griffin, and innovators Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz.

Here’s what each of them toasted to.

Ronald Lauder

Lauder, who was honored on the list for his collecting, philanthropy, and founding of Neue Galerie New York, began his toast by chronicling the beginning of his love of art at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) when he was just 12 years old.

“On one of my trips, I encountered Picasso’s Guernica…although I didn’t understand it at first, I went home and learned about the Spanish Civil War,” Lauder said. “I began to understand that art could do more than inspire—it could preserve history and expand the way we see the world.”

Lauder said he would sometimes spend an entire museum visit in one singular room, looking at each painting from every angle. It was this devotion that launched his love of art.

Years later, he explained in the toast, MOMA is still an inspiration to him as an art collector, after he spent 10 years as chairman of the museum.

“Today, it is especially meaningful to me that my daughter and grandsons are members of the museum’s International Council,” Lauder continued. “From one generation to the next is what legacy means to me.”

Lauder also discussed the importance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), another iconic New York City museum, to his journey as an art lover. At 14, his parents took him to a dinner there honoring a gift from art collector Florence Gould.

“At my table, I was surrounded by great collectors, and I began imagining what a life would be in collecting art, and what it might look like,” he said. “In many ways, Florence Gould gave me permission to follow my curiosity wherever it led.”

The final museum he toasted was the one he owns, the Neue Galerie New York, which showcases early 20th-century German and Austrian art on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

“The Neue Galerie opened just months after September 11 [2001], when New York was still reeling,” he recalled. “And yet people came. They stood in lines around the block. It reminded me that art offers something we need in difficult moments: connection, continuity, and renewal.”

He finished his toast by describing himself and other collectors as  “custodians” of the art that they live with.

“I’d like to raise a glass to the artists, and the institutions that preserve their work,” he said, “and the generations who carry that legacy forward.”

Matthew Bogdanos

Matthew Bogdanos, a retired Marine and chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, has spent more than two decades hunting down lost and stolen art works and repatriating this art to almost 40 other countries.

In his speech, Bogdanos toasted to the fellow art-crime fighters in the world, claiming that whatever he has accomplished in his career has been only because of the “courage, passion, and dedication” of people across the world working with him.

“You should share the passion and action of his time, Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, ‘at peril of being judged not to have lived.’” I can tell you from having worked with these people for decades now, Justice Holmes would be proud of them, and so am I, and I hope now so are you,” Bogdanos said.

He then toasted to the cultural artifacts he works to find and repatriate, each of which he says is a “living breathing testimony to our shared cultural heritage.”

“I have seen them work their cathartic spell across cultures, across ethnicities, across religion,” he said.

This shared heritage that we are reminded of in these artifacts provides healing in a divisive world, Bogdanos added.

“Respecting the cultural heritage from the very dawn of civilization offers perhaps the best hope we have in overcoming the reductive dualism that is tearing apart our world today by reminding us of our common aspirations, of our common humanity, of our common attempts to make sense of the world we inhabit the cosmos surrounding,” he said.

He finished his toast by pledging to continue his work until he felt that he deserved the honor of being on the TIME 100 list.

Amy Sherald

American painter Amy Sherald, perhaps known best for her portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama, is now one of the most influential painters of her generation.

In her toast, Sherald began by saying that the room felt like a “family reunion,” shouting out other artists in the room that inspire her. She mused on the meaning of the word “influence,” and how it differs in the art world than any monetary or numeric goal.

“You can measure sales. You can count exhibitions, books, and audiences. You can count followers. You can count the number of people who walk through the doors of a museum,” she said. “ But I’m not sure any of those things tell us very much about influence, because influence is often much quieter than that.”

She explained how influence for many artists and art-enthusiasts comes in smaller moments—whether it’s an artist seeing another artist’s work, a teacher sharing advice that a pupil remembers for decades to come, or a curator “putting two things next to each other and changing the way we understand both of them.”

In this room alone, Sherald explains, are many people who have built institutions, supported artists, and changed the way the world saw art.

“And those things move outward. One person influences another person, who influences somebody else. An image enters the world and becomes part of somebody’s imagination,” she continued. “And eventually, you can’t even trace where it began. That’s powerful to me.”

She went on to quote her friend, Elizabeth Alexander, another TIME100 Art Honoree and president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, who says that imagination is a superpower. Imagination and influence are tied together, Sherald explained.

“People who were excluded from the promise of this country had to imagine themselves into that promise long before the country was willing to recognize them,” she said. “Someone had to imagine a life they had never seen. Someone had to make an image that didn’t exist. Someone had to open a door that had always been closed.”

It is that imagination that allows other people to walk through those doors, and that is what influence means to her, Sherald said: leaving something behind for others to use.

She finished by explaining that maybe influence is not about what anyone has accumulated, but about what has “moved through us and what we’ve helped move forward.”

“Because eventually the exhibitions come down. The lists change. The rooms change. And somebody else’s face is on the cover,” she finished. “But what we put into the world keeps traveling.”

Marie Watt

Marie Watt, a sculptor, textile artist, storyteller, and member of Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation of Indians, used her toast to explain how Indigenous communities view art.

“In most Indigenous languages, there is no word for art,” she said. “But we know the act of making things—objects, stories, and songs—that activate our senses and engage our communities has been a way of life forever.”

For everyone in the room who creates art, Watts said, it’s not for “glory,” fun, or money—though those things can be a byproduct of the work—but rather to understand “what connects” humans, animals, the environment, and the planet.

“This is what painters and carvers and weavers and dancers and singers and potters, photographers and poets and drummers and storytellers have always done and will always do, whether we have a name for it or not,” she said.  “To connect. To seek. To make. To understand.”

She finished her toast by raising a glass and calling on the larger community of curators, collectors, and art stewards.

“I ask you to remember our brothers and sisters and siblings throughout the world who have made—and every day are making—this choice to connect,” she said. “Our teachers, our peers, our students. Our ancestors. Our children.”

Ken Griffin

Ken Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel and one of the world’s most deep-pocketed and active art buyers, began his toast by recognizing the varied artists and art-lovers in the room.

“Your creativity, your exhibitions, your teaching, and your generosity have already inspired me a dozen times over, just this evening,” he said. “As a lover of art, nothing brings me more joy than to share works of cultural and historical meaning with children and young adults, and to partner with museums on ways to make art and learning feel exciting and open to everyone.”

He spoke of a recent project his team collaborated with the Pérez Museum Miami on—an exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s greatest paintings. He recently saw a photograph of a child leaving the museum with a book about Basquiat—an example of the kind of influence he hopes his work is able to have on young people.

“Imagine what that visit might spark in a young person—the creativity, the dinner-table conversations with family about what they saw, the happy arguments with friends about whose favorite painting was truly the best,” he said. “This is our community at its finest.”

He went on to say that he is inspired by the museums he works with, especially those that champion initiatives to make art more accessible, including his work in helping the MCA Chicago and the Whitney do everyday admission for children 18 and under.

“These initiatives have been nothing short of transformative,” he said. “What unites all of us is a shared belief in equal access to art and culture—and in the lifelong gifts it brings: sharper thinking, bolder expression, and a deeper love for the very best of what people can make.”

Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz

Grammy-winning music duo and couple Alicia Keys and Kaseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean do not just create award-winning albums, but they also lead The Dean Collection, one of the most significant private collections of contemporary art by Black artists.

Their collection contains nearly a hundred pieces by around 40 artists from the Black diaspora, including fellow honoree Sherald.

Keys spoke first, highlighting the energy and “magic” of a room full of artists.

“We get to architect the life that we want to imagine. We get to architect the art that we live and breathe,” Keys said. “And as an artist, I think one of the most incredible things—and that’s what I feel the most in this room—is a sense of real, true connection and a sense of desire to find your best self and to represent a diverse understanding of life.”

Keys said she hoped the honorees and guests, when they leave the room, would leave with that core mission in their hearts and with “openness.”

Dean highlighted the work of their traveling exhibition, Giants: Art from the Dean Collection, which has now travelled to seven museums so far.

“It’s not a transactional thing for us when artists enter the Dean Collection. It’s a welcome to the family,” he said. “We only can be custodians of the art. We can only put on display the art for you to see, but the Deans can never own any of these great artists’ work.”

He also highlighted the collection’s Deans’ Choice resale royalty program, which allows art sellers and consignors to voluntarily direct a percentage of secondary-market sale proceeds back to the living artist who created the work. 

“Deans’ Choice is basically making collectors responsible to collect, protect, and respect the artists, because that’s our job,” Dean said.

Their joint remarks finished with a toast from Keys:

“Can we raise our glasses to the kindest love and power in our hearts, to the endless possibility that we all have within us, to celebrating that together we’re stronger than any singular component, and to promising that our intention of uplifting each other will never end, never stop, and never be dissipated.”

TIME100 Impact Dinner: Leaders Shaping the Future of Art was presented by Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum, established by Qatar Foundation; Bank of America; and UOVO.

Russian authorities told the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday that no cases of plague had been detected among people who came into contact with a laboratory worker who died last week. The worker was employed at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia; the circumstances of the death have not been disclosed.

“According to the test results, no pathogens of dangerous infectious diseases were detected among any of the contacts," WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters in a Geneva press briefing.

Lindmeier, who said the Russian health authorities had been in touch with him moments before the briefing, added that all of the contacts are being monitored and “none to date have shown symptoms of illness.”

There have been conflicting reports about how the 28-year-old laboratory worker, named by local media as “Darya Shipilova,” had fallen ill and some Russian media reports are no longer available online. A local news source claimed that the lab worker was exposed to plague via a broken test tube, but local authorities have said there was no evidence to support this. Lindmeier said an official cause of death has yet to be established.

Igor Kobzev, the regional governor of Irkutsk, said Monday the staffer had died from “pneumonia of undetermined” origin. Acknowledging there have been “different interpretations of the events” in the media, he said extensive laboratory tests had determined “no microorganisms related to the girl's professional activities were found in her biological samples.” He also said no new employees from the institute had sought medical attention in the past few days.

Rospotrebnadzor, the government body responsible for public health, similarly told state media the institute had not found signs of ​any accidents involving the handling of pathogens in the lab.

Lindmeier said that the WHO’s initial risk assessment, based on the information available to the U.N. agency, “estimates the risk to be moderate to low for Irkutsk, a low risk for the Russian Federation as a whole, and very low for the WHO European region.”

Maxim Modin, the mayor of the Shelekhovsky district in the Irkutsk region, said “comprehensive anti-epidemic measures are being implemented” in the area in response to the incident and that anyone who had contact with the deceased patient is being tested daily. Dozens of people who had been in contact with the lab worker have now been quarantined and are under observation by medical professionals.

Local media also reported last week that the inpatient department at the Shelekhov hospital where the lab worker died has been closed due to a suspected “particularly dangerous infection,” with local residents informed they will be unable to visit family at the facility. This has not been confirmed by public officials.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, in remarks carried by Russian state media outlet TASS, told reporters Rospotrebnadzor should be followed for official updates, “rather than listening to various rumors and speculations.”

TIME has reached out to the Russian Health Ministry, the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia, and Rospotrebnadzor for further comment. 

Amid growing online speculation, some social media users have likened the reports coming out of Russia to those that circulated in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020. 

But Dr. Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, stressed in a statement that it is “important to remember that pneumonic plague is a very different” disease.

“It is caused by bacteria, Yersinia pestis, famous for causing the Black Death, that remains with us today mostly in animals across parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas,” he said. "Pneumonic plague is particularly serious because it means the infection has reached the lungs and is nearly always fatal if not treated promptly. Unlike the bubonic plague which enters the body via infected flea bites, pneumonic plague can spread between people through respiratory droplets during close contact.”

However, unlike many viral respiratory diseases, he said, “plague is caused by bacteria and is generally treatable with antibiotics, if identified quickly.”

Remarking on the unverified reports that a lab worker was exposed to plague via a broken test tube, Clarke again urged caution. “It is not unheard of for pathogens to escape from labs, but an awful lot must have gone wrong for a lab worker to be infected by a broken test tube,” he said.

Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, agrees. "When someone is working with a dangerous pathogen in a lab, there are certain protocols that would be in place for the very realistic scenario that an accident could happen," she says. "One would expect that that person would have been treated with antibiotics immediately after the exposure to prevent the person from becoming ill and certainly to prevent the person from dying. If this is plague, I don't understand why that didn't happen." 

She finds it notable that this rather standard biosafety procedure does not appear to feature in reports from the Russian authorities. "For a variety of reasons, the situation in Siberia doesn’t strike me as a plague outbreak," she says. It might be another pathogen, from which we have fewer protections. "For that reason, I'm not calling it a plague. I'm calling it a pneumonia of unknown etiology," she says. 

It might also turn out to be a case where the authorities overreacted to something more common—but even that would not be a reason to stop surveilling the situation. "Absent information, all of this makes me think we should be looking harder and asking more questions, and we should be getting more answers," Nuzzo says. "They should have a full sequence by now," she says, meaning the pathogen should be identified.

Rubio urges Russia to share more information

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday called for Russian authorities to release more details about the lab worker's death.

“I think it's incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world. That's what they should do, that's what we hope they will do,” Rubio told reporters during a press briefing in Iceland.

He added that the U.S. is watching the situation “very closely, hour by hour” and has “measures” available to help Russia, if needed.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told TIME: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is monitoring the situation closely with the State Department and our other interagency partners. The safety and security of U.S. citizens is our highest priority.”

Rubio previously said that while he doesn’t think the situation is cause for alarm, he does consider it to be “cause for focus.”

Relaying what the U.S. is aware of at this stage, he said it “seems there was a worker at the lab that was infected” and “there’s concern that could have spread, at least internally, so you’ve seen them do quarantines.”

He continued: “There’s very limited travel between the U.S and Russia, obviously, but like anything else, something like that gets out and it could quickly spread.”

President Donald Trump on Monday also emphasized a strong U.S. interest in the matter and pledged to “help [Russia] as much as we can.”

As the situation in Siberia continues to unfold, here’s what to know about the plague:

What is the plague?

The bacterium Yersinia pestis has a long, dark history with the human race; it was this pathogen, spread by flea bites, that killed more than 25 million Europeans during the Black Death of the 14th century. There are three different forms, all caused by the same bacterium but affecting different tissues: bubonic, which can cause dark swellings in the groin and armpits; septicemic plague, in which the pathogen enters the bloodstream; and pneumonic plague, which attacks the lungs. The pathogen can be spread by the bites of infected fleas, by contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, or by breathing in airborne particles that contain it. 

What is pneumonic plague?

Pneumonic plague occurs when the pathogen infects the lungs. This can happen when the bacterium spreads to the lungs of someone with another form, or after someone breathes in particles containing the pathogen. It’s the only form that spreads easily between humans. 

The symptoms include fever, weakness, rapidly progressing pneumonia, and cough. Pneumonic plague has a very short incubation period—as short as one day. If untreated, this form is almost always fatal. Even with treatment, about 30% of infected people die.  

Can you treat plague?

When given early, antibiotics work well against all forms of plague. When a case is suspected, government guidance suggests acting quickly to treat with oral or intravenous antibiotics rather than waiting for a precise identification from a lab result.

Where is plague endemic?

Natural reservoirs of the bacterium exist on all inhabited continents except Oceania, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.S., cases are concentrated in the West; visitors to Yosemite National Park, for instance, are warned against feeding ground squirrels and chipmunks, creatures that can carry fleas containing Yersinia pestis. Every year, a handful of people in the American West, usually campers and hikers who have come into contact with rodents, test positive for plague.

A recent paper records a lethal case of pneumonic plague in Arizona that occurred in 2025. The patient in that case is thought to have acquired the bacterium from professional exposure to two cats with respiratory symptoms that may have been pneumonic plague.

Globally, plague is most common in Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar, according to the WHO.

Could the plague bacteria cause outbreaks?

Yes. In fact, there are often annual outbreaks in Madagascar, from September to April, and some of these outbreaks have been of the particularly dangerous pneumonic form, which can spread through the air.  

That’s why public-health monitoring to prevent initial cases from spreading is an important way to guard against wider spread. In its general guidelines for managing plague, the WHO calls pneumonic plague “of particular concern because of the high risk of triggering epidemics.” Any cases of plague, especially pneumonic form, are important to contain quickly, WHO says.