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Covid fatigue is real, but policymakers and policy influencers need to wake up to something important: Post-pandemic polarization threatens to lock our memories into attractive, untrue conclusions that will leave us unprotected next time.

When Covid-19 first arrived, there was little historical experience to guide response. After watching catastrophic results and stress on the health care systems in China, Italy, and Iran, American states rapidly invoked many measures simultaneously to combat a virus with proven destructive power: masks, social distancing, and school and business closures. They turned to the 1918 flu pandemic to understand the importance of rapid and society-wide response.

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Where is it? Lake Skadar, Montenegro and Albania [ 42.201087364, 19.303135741 ]

What's in the photo? A giant, milky-green swirl on the lake's surface

Who took the photo? An unnamed astronaut on board the International Space Station

When was it taken? Feb. 21, 2020

This eye-catching astronaut photo shows a cloud of sediment swirling into a giant, milky-green vortex in one of Europe's largest lakes.

Lake Skadar (also known as Shkodër, Shkodra or Scutari) is the largest lake in Southern Europe, with a surface area between 140 and 200 square miles (360 to 520 square kilometers), depending on the time of year. It is situated on the border between Montenegro, which surrounds the western half of the lake (left in the photo), and Albania, which encircles the lake's eastern shore. The body of water is split 65% to 35% in Montenegro's favor.

The lake's main water source is the Morača River, to the northwest, and its biggest outlets are the Bojana and Drin rivers, which start at the lake's easternmost point and eventually drain into the Adriatic Sea, which is partially visible in the bottom left of the photo. Skadar's southern shore is also hugged by a lofty mountain range, known as the Dinaric Alps.

During late winter and early spring, the lake's water level rises, and it usually fills with a milky-green substance that often gets whipped into a vortex by a combination of wind-driven surface currents and the natural flow of water between the lake's major inlets and outlets.

The swirling material looks very similar to blooming algae , but it is actually made of sediments — predominantly limestone and dolomite — that wash into the lake from the Dinaric Alps and other nearby mountains as the snow melts.

Lake Skadar formed millions of years ago and was once connected to the Adriatic Sea (visible in the background of this image). (Image credit: Wikimedia) Skadar is a karst lake, meaning it was once a cave system that flooded and eventually collapsed, likely because the caves were made from the same easily erodible rocks that now swirl on the lake's surface, according to NASA's Earth Observatory . The lake is a "cryptodepression" because most of the lake's floor is below sea level.

The lake originally formed during the Cenozoic Era (66 million years ago to the present), according to the International Lake Environment Committee Foundation's World Lake Database . It is home to several small islands, some of which can be seen in the photo along the lake's southern shore. These include Beška, which is home to a pair of 600-year-old churches, and Grmožur, where the remains of a 19th-century fortification loom above the lake's surface.

The shipwreck of a paddle steamboat, named Skanderbeg , lies along the lake's western shore. Local partisans sank the vessel in 1942 after Italian soldiers commandeered it during the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia in World War II. When the lake's water levels are at their lowest, part of the shipwreck rises above the surface.

Skadar Lake is a biodiversity hotspot and has protected wildlife status on both sides of the Montenegro-Albania border. It is a particularly important site for birds; more than 280 avian species call it home, including the Dalmatian pelican ( Pelecanus crispus ) and several endemic species, according to BirdLife International .

The lake also hosts around 50 freshwater snail species ‪—‬ more than any other lake on Earth, according to a 2013 study .

Toxic bloom in 'Pyramid Lake'

A 2024 satellite photo shows an unusually active bloom of toxic cyanobacteria swirling in the water of Nevada's Pyramid Lake.

Mystery swirls in Baltic Sea

This 2018 satellite photo shows an unknown substance swirling across the Gulf of Gdańsk in Poland. Scientists were shocked to later discover what it really was.

Milky plumes in giant 'soda lake'

A 2016 astronaut photo shows surprising plumes of milky material swirling in the waters of Turkey's Lake Van, the largest alkaline lake on Earth.

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Before the first Molotov cocktail reached us, before the crowd with knives and machetes and wooden clubs arrived, it was a large rock that invaded our lunch table. It went past my left ear and bounced on our table, spilling food all over before hitting the restaurant’s glass window in front of me. It happened so fast that I initially thought it was a bug, like a praying mantis that had buzzed past. But the sound of glass shattering, followed by the cries of the restaurant workers, made our hearts beat fast—what we had been avoiding the past few weeks was here. The riot was at our doorstep. Minti and I had decided to go off campus to the Easy Go departmental store for groceries, and as we headed back with our driver, Satpal, a young man in his late twenties, we stopped at a roadside dhaba owned by one of his friends. We were just so tired of eating at the campus eatery. With the curfew in place, and the violence happening outside the campus gates, we had been locked up inside the thirty-acre university campus for two weeks and spent the time mostly inside our apartments, waiting for normalcy to return. The spring break had been extended indefinitely, and the university had advised students not to return to campus until further notice.

It wasn’t my idea to go there for lunch. I wanted to get to safety immediately, but Minti said it should be fine; Satpal knew the owner, and the media, the university authorities, the University Campus Safety Office, and her colleagues had all assured her that the violence on the streets was controlled and law and order restored.

More rocks followed the first, arriving like hailstones. In seconds, the windshields of four cars shattered into pieces. Our own car stood intact a few feet away, and I looked at Minti helplessly—we might have to run. One nearby family, who had just started eating, dragged themselves toward their small car. The man hugged a bag, the woman shouted and flailed her arms, and the young teenage boy pulled at his sister, who seemed stupefied.

“Rohit, watch your head!” Minti screamed.

I immediately covered myself with a steel dish to protect myself from a flying rock, letting the rice scatter on the concrete floor of the restaurant’s courtyard. “Run!” I shouted, and we headed toward our car.

Then we heard the screaming. A rock had broken through the family’s rear windshield where the woman and little girl sat. Minti started toward them but stopped short when a bottle swished through the space left by the crumbled window and erupted into flames.

“Get some water!” Minti shouted, pointing toward the jug on our table, and ran toward it.

But the car took off, barreling away down the street as the smoke and the screams of the family mingled. I didn’t have time to think if they would make it, if their car would explode into flames in the middle of the road. I turned away, saw the abandoned shiny leather and pink duffel bags that belonged to the family, and felt something tug at my heart. Did they do the right thing? What was the right thing to do in this situation? Should we run to our car?

The sounds of the angry crowd were coming closer—as if an entire marketplace, shouting and bargaining, was marching toward us like a swarm of bees.

Satpal suddenly came rushing out of the building that housed the dhaba, yelling, “Madam, we have to go.”

“What happened, Satpal?” Minti stood next to our table holding a fork, a piece of chicken still hanging from it.

“I saw from the terrace! They are armed!”

Satpal dragged us back to the building through a heavy iron door, leading to a storage room, followed by four fleets of stairs, up to the terrace of the dhaba. It was full of broken chairs, clotheslines, and a rotting mattress leaning against the waist-high wall that marked the boundary of the terrace. Near the roof’s edge, there was a giant water tank. It looked like an enormous hippopotamus sitting verti-cally on the wall, defying gravity. A ladder leaned against it.

“Where will we hide?” I asked.

Persuaded by a weeping Satpal, we climbed into the water tank using the ladder. Then Satpal covered it with the massive concrete lid sending us into a darkness so black that I couldn’t see my palms. The first thing I felt was the ice-cold winter water. We were knee-deep and enveloped in an eerie, cool stillness. I didn’t know how long we were inside; it was hard to hear what was happen-ing on the streets and ground floor. I heard a noise from outside. But it was just din: the din of people panicked, worried, screaming for help. It felt as though all that din, all that cumulative din, was coming from far; very far away. As if the cold-water tank had trans-ported us to another dimension.

“Minti, are we going to die here?” I whispered. “Rohit, nothing will happen to us. We will be fine.”

We heard a male voice on the terrace. “Look there, under that rotting mattress!”

Minti covered my mouth. I pulled out my phone from my back pocket. In the dim light produced by the phone, I could see the whites of her eyes widen.

My legs ached from the icy water. They turned numb as if they had melted into the water, and I was just floating; it felt like nothing existed beyond my thighs. My legs started to burn. It was then I felt it: something warm, cutting through the icy water. Fresh water was entering the tank. Had one of the vandals entered the kitchen downstairs and switched on the motor? It felt so lovely. The warm freshwater was moving up inch by inch toward my thighs, then to my waist, then to my chin. My legs came back to life. The ache from the icy water was gone.

Is this how it feels to drown?

I shouldn’t have come back home. Everyone had told me to accept the job I was offered in rural Minnesota. But I would never have fallen in love if I had not returned to India. I had just started my life. And in turn, my heart had shattered. I deserved to get some time to mend it. I deserved to experience the heaviness of a broken heart.

Is this how a life ends?

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From How to Date a Fanatic by Aruni Kashyap and reprinted with permission from HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2026.

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The Trump administration is centralizing and politicizing science grantmaking to an unprecedented degree. Most recently, the Office of Management and Budget proposed a rule to require political appointees to review grants and ensure the projects they fund “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities” and do not “facilitate” any “initiatives that … promote anti-American values.” If the new rule takes effect, the government will be able to terminate a grant if it no longer “effectuate[s] … the national interest” — in other words, if it’s no longer to the president’s liking.

The comment period on the proposed rule ended July 13. Before it can take effect, the OMB must still finalize the rule , which the agency aims to do by the end of August .

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