Tag: pandemic

Drowning out a pandemic with alcohol.

From fantasylands to unique cartographers (including one that’s non-human), here are five stories about maps.

Seven longreads on the communal pastime of puzzles, games, and crosswords.

“There’s another population of people who came and never left: those freed by COVID from cubicles and work commutes.”

On vaccine privilege in America and COVID-19 inequities in India.

“As marriages go, ours is an infant. Soft-skulled and milk-breathed. We’ve been married for two years, together for five.”

The quest to save the American chestnut tree.

How scientists developed a COVID-19 vaccine in record time.

“Gilliam does believe that the end of society may soon be upon us. The question for him is: What shape will the new one take?”

At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, cruise companies “went to great lengths to repatriate vacationers.” But for crew members, it was a different story.

Nothing made sense in 2020 — unless you were on the internet.

“The first one I saw was on the path outside my house: a single white plastic glove, the fingers curled inward like a sleeping animal.”

Our top story picks in COVID-19 reporting this year.

Meet Eric Feigl-Ding, the town crier of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Workers who worked Monday through Saturday without missing a day were given a bonus of $50, later raised to $100, which was accompanied by a box of meat valued at $200 to $300.”

“The structural conditions shaping care work are highly exploitative—and are profoundly linked to the high degree of COVID-19’s spread within both long-term care facilities and the communities that supply their labor force.”

“There’s no Dropbox plan that will let us upload body and soul to the cloud. We are still here on the ground, with the same people and on the same planet we are being encouraged to leave behind.”

“In general, I try to expect nothing and hope that everything is possible. I want the courage to need very little and demand a lot.”

Cities were vibrant, culturally rich places to live before the pandemic. We can only speculate about how cities will be after.

“…the ship…provided the world’s best data set on the virus, confirming crucial facts about how the disease spread, especially through asymptomatic carriers.”

You don’t know what day it is, do you? Robert Burke Warren digs into ‘the Oddball Effect’ and fascinating brain data that may help explain why.

Coronavirus inspires Sari Botton to reach out to family and friends she’s fallen out with.

In the midst of a pandemic, nature reminds Susan Krawitz that miracles are possible.

I will become power-mad and lock my boyfriend inside forever!

For wealthy Americans, a dystopian future includes underground golfing in South Dakota.

Our stories matter. And they are our legacies for future generations. (Plus: some free writing resources.)

One Republican offers a ray of light during these dark times: That this pandemic will end the Trump presidency.

Steven Bedard, a former field biologist, travels around Bangladesh with a team of public health investigators studying Nipah, a bat-borne virus with the potential to become the next pandemic.