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Without specific guidance around whether — and how — to travel, some find themselves playing a game of risk roulette.

Part of The Home Issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.

Mariusz Wiecheć last visited his home country of Poland in September 2019, and in hindsight, he regrets staying for only a week. It was barely enough time to adjust his sleep schedule and catch up with family and old friends, but Wiecheć was resigned, he said, to the fact that “America doesn’t have enough vacation days.” Like many others, he hadn’t accounted for a dangerous virus that would send the world into lockdown and keep him from his family for nearly a year.

Six months into the pandemic, Wiecheć, who lives in Philadelphia and holds an American green