February 19, 2021 In late January, a close friend from Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar, sent out a message over Viber: “The Event” was about to occur. That was the code word for what we’d been dreading—a military coup d’état unfolding in the country of my birth. A few hours later, many of my close friends now working in diverse fields confirmed the worst: the military had taken over all three branches of government for “emergency reasons,” with State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint placed under house arrest. I myself am an interventional cardiologist now, at Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, TX. But for all these old colleagues and friends—now professors and consultants, entrepreneurs, a music producer, a photographer—calling and messaging in a panic to confirm what was going on, this was déjà vu. We all went to the Institute of Medicine in Rangoon, Burma, in the 1980s and witnessed firsthand the military takeover of 1988.