A 64-year-old woman weeps, hugging her husband as he lay dying in the COVID-19 unit of a California hospital. A crowded refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, engulfed in flames, disgorges a string of migrants fleeing this hell on Earth. Rain-swept protesters, enraged by the death of George Floyd in police custody, rail against the system and the heavens.
And, in every corner of that world, the coronavirus.
There are the living: Women cover themselves head to toe with chadors, protective clothing and gas masks to prepare a body for burial in Iran. An octogenarian couple kiss through plastic in Spain.
(With AP inputs)
Agustina Canamero, 81, and Pascual Perez, 84, hug and kiss through a plastic film screen to avoid contracting the coronavirus at a nursing home in Barcelona, Spain, on June 22, 2020.
Josefa Ribas, 86, who is bedridden and suffers from dementia, is attended to by nurse Laura Valdes during a home care visit in Barcelona, Spain, on April 7, 2020. Ribas' husband, Jose Marcos, fears what will happen if the coronavirus enters their home and infects them. "I survived the post-war period (of mass hunger). I hope I survive this pandemic," he said.
Cuban singer Cimafunk hugs a woman during a music conga through the streets of Cuba's Old Havana neighborhood during the 35th Havana International Jazz Festival on Jan. 15, 2020.
A woman wearing a mask to protect against infection from COVID-19 is reflected in a tinted chapel window, along with a metal casing said to contain the remains of St. Dimitrie of Basarabov, the patron saint of the Romanian capital, in Bucharest, Romania on Oct. 25, 2020. The feast of St. Dimitrie of Basarabov, which usually lasts for a week and draws up to 100,000 people, was cut way back this year due to the coronavirus.
Protesters storm the San Francisco de Borja church, which belongs to the Carabineros, Chile's national police force, in Santiago, Chile, on Oct. 18, 2020, the first anniversary of the start of anti-government mass protests over inequality.
One-year-old Yazan has his oxygen mask removed after heart surgery at the Tajoura National Heart Center in Tripoli, Libya, on Feb. 27, 2020. Yazan's perilous trek from his small desert hometown culminated in a five-hour surgery. He is one of 1,000 children treated by Dr. William Novick's group since it first came to Libya after the 2011 uprising.
President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he stands outside St. John's Church across Lafayette Park from the White House in Washington on June 1, 2020, after law enforcement officers used tear gas and other riot control tactics to forcefully clear peaceful protesters from the area.
Sneakers and a Los Angeles Lakers jersey with the number 8 worn by NBA star Kobe Bryant hang at a memorial for Bryant in Los Angeles on Feb. 2, 2020, a week after he was killed in a helicopter crash.
A child wearing a mask to protect against the coronavirus rests on the bank of the Yangtze River in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province on April 16, 2020.
People stand in their balconies during a nationwide confinement to counter the coronavirus in Barcelona, Spain on March 29, 2020.
South African National Defense Forces patrol the Men's Hostel in the densely populated Alexandra township east of Johannesburg on March 28, 2020, enforcing a strict lockdown in an effort to control the spread of the coronavirus.
Rescue workers and local residents search for survivors in the wreckage of a plane that crashed with nearly 100 people onboard in a residential area of Karachi, Pakistan, on May 22, 2020.
A protester carries a U.S. flag upside down as he walks past a burning building in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020, during a protest over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into his neck for several minutes.
Workers move a coffin with the body of a victim of COVID-19 as other coffins are stored waiting for burial or cremation at the Collserola morgue in Barcelona, Spain, on April 2, 2020.
Martina Papponetti, 25, a nurse at the Humanitas Gavazzeni Hospital in Bergamo, Italy, poses for a portrait at the end of her shift on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic on March 27, 2020.
A homeless person sits in a wheelchair during rainy weather on Sunset Blvd. in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles on April 6, 2020. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an emergency order in mid-March to spend $150 million to help the homeless during the pandemic.
A family evacuates to safer ground as the Taal Volcano spews ash in Lemery, Batangas, southern Philippines on Jan. 13, 2020
Francisco Espana looks at the Mediterranean sea from a promenade next to the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, Spain, on Sept. 4, 2020. After 52 days in the hospital’s intensive care unit due to the coronavirus, Francisco was allowed by his doctors to spend almost ten minutes at the seaside as part of his recovery therapy.
Balconies are illuminated with candles and torches to mark the country's fight against the coronavirus in Greater Noida, a suburb of New Delhi, India, on Sunday, April 5, 2020.
A protester poses for photos next to a burning police vehicle in Los Angeles on May 30, 2020, during a demonstration over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed a knee into his neck for several minutes.
A woman bangs a pot in support of medical staff who are working on the front lines of the COVID-19 outbreak during a partial lockdown against the spread of the coronavirus in Brussels on March 31, 2020.
A woman waves from a bus carrying passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship as they are transported from the port in Yokohama, near Tokyo on Feb. 20, 2020. The passengers had been quarantined on the cruise ship to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island in the Bronx borough of New York on April 9, 2020. Hart Island is a strip of land in Long Island Sound that has long served as the city’s potter’s field.
A worker wearing protective gear cleans a window as a nurse tends to a patient inside the intensive care unit for people infected with the coronavirus at the 2 de Mayo Hospital in Lima, Peru, on April 17, 2020.
A health worker tends to her colleague, who fainted due to exhaustion at a COVID-19 testing camp in New Delhi, India on April 27, 2020.
A police officer holds a pistol during clashes with protesters near a barricade of burning tires in the Kariobangi slum of Nairobi, Kenya, on May 8, 2020. Hundreds of protesters blocked one of the capital's major highways to protest government demolitions of the homes of more than 7,000 people, causing many to sleep out in the rain and cold because of restrictions on movement due to the coronavirus.
The body of Ricardo Noriega, 77, lies on the floor of his living room in Lima, Peru, on May 4, 2020, after he died of COVID-19. Noriega had great difficulty in breathing, one of the most characteristic symptoms of the disease, and waited for death sitting in an armchair in the living room after he was unable to find a taxi to take him to the hospital that morning.
Thomas Henney, left, and Charles Chavira watch a plume of smoke spread over Healdsburg, Calif., as wildfires burn nearby on Aug. 20, 2020. Deadly wildfires in California more than doubled the previous record for the most land burned in a single year in the state.
Black smoke rises from a warehouse fire at the Port of Beirut, Lebanon, on Sept. 10. 2020, triggering panic among residents traumatized by the massive explosion that killed and injured thousands of people the month before.
Swarms of desert locusts fly into the air from crops in Katitika village in Kenya's Kitui county on Jan. 24, 2020. In the worst outbreak in a quarter-century, hundreds of millions of the insects swarmed into Kenya from Somalia and Ethiopia, destroying farmland and threatening an already vulnerable region.