The life of a hotel front-desk clerk in a red state can tell you a lot about America’s COVID-19 failures. He doesn’t want to be identified, because he is worried about being fired, but I can tell you this: He doesn’t have paid sick days or health insurance. About a month ago, he got COVID and took four days off, using three of his seven vacation days and going a day without pay. Last week, one of his kids tested positive for COVID, and he thinks he has it again.

“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.You wanted it and you worked for it, but all your effort was for naught.Maybe your relationship collapsed, your company went under, or you got fired.

In Boris Johnson’s office at 10 Downing Street, a vista of London hangs above the fireplace. The work was painted by his mother, Charlotte Wahl, who died four months ago at the age of 79, having lived long enough to see her son become prime minister and then win an election by such a margin that it seemed to have ushered in a new era in British politics: the Johnson era.

The wedding ceremony held in November on a verdant farm in the Philippines was for the daughter of a senator. Most of the guests’ attention, though, was paid not to the bride and the groom but to another duo in attendance.Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the country’s late dictator, escorted Sara Duterte-Carpio, the daughter of the current president, Rodrigo Duterte, past guests sitting in white trellis-backed chairs.

For weeks, the watchword on Omicron in much of America has been some form of phew. A flurry of reports has encouraged a relatively rosy view of the variant, compared with some of its predecessors. Omicron appears to somewhat spare the lungs. Infected laboratory mice and hamsters seem to handily fight it off. Proportionally, fewer of the people who catch it wind up hospitalized or dead. All of this has allowed a deceptively reassuring narrative to take root and grow: Omicron is mild.

Sign up for Conor’s newsletter here.Greetings! Before tackling today’s main subject, a prompt for an issue I hope to air later this week.What are the proper roles of parents and teachers, respectively, in the education of children? What conflict between a parent and a teacher would leave you most torn about how to resolve it? If you’ve experienced a parent-teacher conflict, describe it, how you approached it, and how things ended. My email address is conor@theatlantic.com.