Living with the COVID-19 pandemic for a year, it's hard to process the numbers. What we know is that nearly 500,000 Americans have lost their lives, and that Black, Latino, and Indigenous people are worst impacted.

But behind the statistics are stories, and on the latest episode of The Dose, we listen to one of those stories. Our guest, Dr. Magdala Chery, is a primary care physician and Commonwealth Fund Fellow in Minority Health Policy.

Magdala is also a daughter, and she experienced firsthand the racial inequities of our health care system when she lost both her parents to COVID-19 last spring. Magdala speaks of her personal tragedy without rancor: she believes that sharing stories like hers will help us see the people of color affected by COVID-19 not as case numbers and fatalities, but as lives.