“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.”
pandemic
‘I Didn’t Make It’
“Flaviana Decker, a waitress at Walt Disney World and single mother to two daughters, struggles to hold on to her middle-class life amid a pandemic and catastrophic layoff.”
Longreads Best of 2020: Writing on COVID-19
Our top story picks in COVID-19 reporting this year.
The Alarmist: Is One of the Pandemic’s Loudest Scientific Voices Helping or Hurting Public Health?
Meet Eric Feigl-Ding, the town crier of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Quarantine Brain
“Nothing made sense this year — unless you were on the internet.”
What A Time To Be In Decline
“Why, a decade ago, did my father give me the heavy gift of a controversial 100-year-old Oswald Spengler tome? It took a pandemic for me to find out.”
A Box of Meat and $100 For Your Life
“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 Cost of Convenience
“South Korea’s Coupang promised to make e-commerce lightning fast. A Covid-19 outbreak at one of its warehouses shows that its workers paid the price.”
‘No One Is Listening to Us’
“The most precious resource the U.S. health-care system has in the struggle against COVID-19 isn’t some miracle drug. It’s the expertise of its health-care workers—and they are exhausted.”
How We Got Here
“Texas’ health system has been underfunded, understaffed, and unprepared for years. Here, COVID-19 found the perfect place to spread.”
