2020年7月22日星期三美東時間5:01，《紐約時報》評論版發表北京首都醫科大學校長饒毅評論文章：《新冠去世的叔叔和肺科醫生的父親》。
中文的8因其音似「發」而被視為幸運的數字、444似「死」為壞數字, 520 似「我愛你」。
向來討厭迷信的我，非常難過地於5月20日下午4:44分收到微信：紐約皇后區的叔叔厚華（Eric）逝於新冠病毒，他74歲。
厚華是藥劑師，很可能從取藥的病人傳來。三月感染後，他病了兩個多月，曾用呼吸機，但最後十天被認為不可治癒後，呼吸機用於救助其他病人。
我家與醫藥關係不淺，我自己現在北京任職有19個附屬醫院的醫科大學。我學醫是因為我有肺科醫生的父親。父親學醫是因為他13歲時，他的母親因簡單的感染而去世。父親沒有預料到，比自己年輕15歲的弟弟逝於自己專科的疾病（呼吸系統疾病）。
父親和厚華第一次分開是1947年。父親那年17歲，留在江西南昌繼續學業，兩歲的厚華、其他弟弟和一個姐姐與其父母從上海渡臺灣。
父親在南昌完成醫學教育、其後還在上海隨最好的肺科醫生獲得研究生教育。但1960年代的文革使他下放到縣城、最後到僅他一個醫生的村莊。1972年，父親到南昌一個主要醫院工作。
1970年代中期，祖父經由斐濟用一個信封含了兩封信寄到父親以前工作過的一個醫院，外面那封信寫：
敬啟者：犬子饒緯華曾在貴院工作，後去農村，能否轉此信給他。
裡面那封是祖父致父親的信。居然真轉到了我父親。那時我已十幾歲，現在還記得祖父的用詞和父親讀信時淚流滿面的情形。
很快，厚華成為他們之間的主要信使。
厚華是我家第一位美國公民，他於1970年代後期到舊金山，被美國的發達所吸引，與他成長的臺灣有天壤之別。
1982年，分離35年後的厚華與我父親兄弟倆重逢。父親在舊金山加州大學（UCSF）醫學院心血管研究所進修一年，跟Norman Staub博士做肺水腫的動物實驗，後在舊金山總醫院隨呼吸病和重症醫學的權威John Murray博士見習臨床和ICU數月。
回南昌後，父親建立了全省第一個、全國較早的ICU之一。他還建立了分子醫學研究所，是中國最早的之一、如果不是第一的話。
1985年，我跟隨父親和叔叔們（那時叔叔Tim/興華也移民加州）的腳步，到UCSF念研究生。幾年後我弟弟也赴美留學。
厚華從未返中國大陸。
至2005年他於75歲退休前，父親治療了很多呼吸病和ICU的病人。SARS在父親退休前的2002-2003年發生，他預計SARS或類似的病毒還會發生。我和父親還在爭論此次新冠病毒算不算證明了其預計。
新冠病毒流行後，父親經常給我寄如何治療新冠肺炎的建議，讓我轉給其他醫生，包括此次協調早些時候流行中心武漢抗疫的醫學領袖。
我們家在武漢有12位親戚、大部分是母親家的，紐約有6位親戚、大部分是父親家的。在武漢的親戚皆安然無恙，而紐約的厚華去世——去世於當今世界軍事上最強大、經濟上最富裕、醫學上最先進的國家。
美國有兩個月甚至更多時間可以汲取中國的新冠病毒流行經驗，本可以做更多努力降低感染率和病死率。父親很難接受弟弟去世的部分原因是認為自己就可以救助弟弟——厚華如果在中國也許就被治癒了。
在他一生大部分時間，父親的家庭長期分離。如今，父親和叔叔再度分離。（作者饒毅為中國北京首都醫科大學校長、北京大學講席教授、北京腦科學中心主任。）
《紐約時報》原稿摘錄如下：
My Uncle Died of Covid-19 in America. In China, Would He
Have Lived?
My father, a Chinese pulmonologist, believes his brother could have been saved.
By Yi Rao
Dr. Rao is a molecular neurobiologist in China.
July 22, 2020, 5:01 a.m. ET
BEIJING — Eight is thought to be a lucky number in China because in Chinese it sounds like the word for 「fortune」; 444 is a bad number because it rings like 「death」; 520 sounds like 「I love you.」
Having always disliked superstition, I was dismayed to receive a message by WeChat at 4:44 p.m. on May 20, Beijing time, informing me that my uncle Eric, who lived in New York, had died from Covid-19. He was 74.
Uncle Eric was a pharmacist, so presumably he contracted the virus from a patient who had visited his shop in Queens. Infected in March, he was sick for more than two months. He was kept on a ventilator until his last 10 days: By then, he was deemed incurable and the ventilator was redirected to other patients who might be saved.
The medical trade runs in my family. I now preside over a medical university in Beijing with 19 affiliated hospitals. I studied medicine because my father was a doctor, a pulmonary physician. He decided to study medicine after losing his mother to a minor infection when he was 13. My father did not expect to lose a brother 15 years his junior to a disease in his own specialty: the respiratory system.
My father (Weihua) and Eric (Houhua) were first separated in 1947. My father, then 17, stayed behind in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi Province, in central-southern China, to finish his education, while Eric, age 2, and other brothers and a sister sailed to Taiwan with their parents.
My father completed his medical education in Nanchang and had graduate training with one of the top respiratory physicians in Shanghai, but in the 1960s the Cultural Revolution then took him to a small town and after that to a village, where he was the sole doctor. He moved back to a major hospital in Nanchang in 1972.
In the mid-1970s, my grandfather sent him — by way of Fiji — a letter at a previous address, and miraculously it arrived.
Soon, Uncle Eric became their emissary.
Uncle Eric was the first member of my family to become an American citizen. He arrived in San Francisco in the late 1970s, drawn to an economic powerhouse of a country, so starkly different from what he had grown up with in Taiwan.
It was 35 years before the brothers met again, in 1982. My father was a visiting scholar for a year at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, where he conducted research on pulmonary edema, and he received a few months of clinical training in the intensive care unit at what is now called the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.
He brought his American training back to Nanchang to establish the first I.C.U. in Jiangxi Province and one of the first I.C.U.s in China. He also established one of the first — if not the very first — institute of molecular medicine in China.
In 1985, I followed in his footsteps and in those of my uncles — Uncle Tim (Xinghua) had immigrated to California as well: I went to San Francisco to study for my Ph.D., also at U.C.S.F. My younger brother moved to the United States a few years later.
Uncle Eric never returned to mainland China.
By the time my father retired in 2005, at 75, he had treated countless respiratory and I.C.U. patients in China. He had worked through the SARS epidemic in 2002-3, issuing dark predictions that the virus, or something like it, would come back. He and I debate whether the new coronavirus proves his prediction right.
As Covid-19 began to spread earlier this year, my father, now 90 and long retired, would send me advice about how to treat the disease so that I could relay it to other doctors, including the one leading response efforts in the city of Wuhan, the pandemic’s epicenter early on.
Our family has 12 members in Wuhan, mostly on my mother’s side, and six in New York, mostly on my father’s side. All my relatives in Wuhan are safe. Uncle Eric died in New York after the pandemic had moved to the United States — the world’s strongest country militarily, the richest economically and the most advanced medically.
The United States had two months or more to learn from China’s experience with this coronavirus, and it could have done much more to lower infection rates and fatalities. My father is struggling to accept his brother’s death partly, too, because he believes that he could have treated Uncle Eric — that in China Uncle Eric would have been saved.
My father’s family has been divided for most of his life, Now, my father and Uncle Eric have been separated once again.
Yi Rao is the president of Capital Medical University, a chair professor at Peking University and the director of the Chinese Institute for Brain Research, in Beijing.