NPR

'What Real Friends Do': How to Navigate Tough Conversations About COVID-19

With a spike in COVID-19 cases colliding with cold weather and the holidays, many Americans are facing difficult decisions about whether and how to socialize.
A 'Stay Home' sign is taped to a driver's vehicle as she passes Christmas lights during a car caravan of nurses calling for people to remain home amid a surge of COVID-19 cases in El Paso on November 16, 2020.

As it gets colder, and harder to gather outdoors, some of Kenzie Billings' conversations with her loved ones are feeling a bit more fraught.

"It's felt frustrating at times. You know, you can feel energy from people in terms of wanting to be together," she said.

A 'push and pull' of competing concerns

Billings, 29, lives in Portland, Oregon. Her pregnant sister has been taking social distancing rules , she said, but others in the family are more eager

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