Five years ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a global pandemic^[1]. The novel coronavirus, dubbed SARS-CoV-2^[2], began as a “cluster of severe pneumonia cases of unknown cause” reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It had spread to 118,000 cases reported in 114 countries by March 11.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general at the time, said in a media...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people unexpectedly needed critical care such as ventilators but were unable to communicate their end-of-life wishes to their loved ones.

Researchers like me, who study death and dying^[1], hoped that such scenes would spur more Americans to embrace end-of-life planning by discussing their wishes with family members and by completing an advance directive^[2], which formalizes those wishes into a...