David Lat—a graduate of Yale Law School and a former federal prosecutor, founder of the Above the Law legal blog, and today a widely known legal recruiter and speaker—lies on a stark white hospital bed in Manhattan, clear soft oxygen tubes in his nostrils, “isolated” in a room that uses “negative pressure” to keep his germs inside.

Battling hour over hour with the novel coronavirus, he says he’s experienced intermittent fevers, joint aches, chills, fatigue and coughing for about 12 days, and, since last Sunday, has been pushing through labored breathing that barely allows him to walk from his hospital bed to a bathroom five or 10 feet away.