“The world is not normal right now, and it’s hard growing up in a not-normal world,” says Ariel Wasserstein, a 16-year-old junior at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md. The coronavirus pandemic swept away his spring in a blink, taking with it his in-person class, his baseball season, and his time with friends.
“I was crushed,” he recalls. “It all happened so fast.”
He made sure to follow Maryland’s stay-at-home orders to do his part in keeping the virus from spreading, and he says many of his friends did, too. But Wasserstein wanted to do more to help both the people suffering from COVID-19 and the front-line health care staff working to treat them. He decided to make a donation to relief efforts and chose Johns Hopkins, where he’s been treated for Crohn’s Disease over the past year.
“They really helped me a lot and got me on the right path for my treatment,” Wasserstein says.
“I trust Johns Hopkins, and I trust that they’re doing really good research about this to help understand the virus more. The fastest way for the world to come back to normal, or even partially normal, is to help the people who are trying to help us.”
Topics: Friends of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Promote and Protect Health