Early in Taffy Brodesser-Akner's 2019 novel Fleishman Is in Trouble, there's a scene in which a man recently separated from his wife is interrogated by another parent in his child's class.
It was a familiar pattern: "Had things been hard for long?" "Had you tried therapy? "Did you guys have a regular date night?"
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has asked cities and towns not to release the number of cases of coronavirus in their community, citing the privacy of patients.
A spokesman later clarified that it wasn't an order, but some local public health officials thought it was, citing what they heard on a conference call last week, according to the Brockton Enterprise.
