 Dear Readers, It is a milestone that was unfathomable at the start of the pandemic in early 2020, and one that deserves our contemplation: More than 1 million deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S., and many times more around the globe. No news organization can fully capture the weight of this devastation, but at STAT we’ve tried to make some sense of what this moment means, and if there are any science, health, or life lessons for all of us: - In a new video today, senior infectious disease reporter Helen Branswell, who was one of the earliest journalists to sound the alarm about a new respiratory virus, grapples with the toll of deaths and tries to put it in perspective. “I knew it was going to be bad,” she says, “but I don’t think I would have ever thought that the United States would have suffered a million deaths.”
- After sifting through oceans of public health data, J. Emory Parker, our data project manager, makes the case with visualizations that we’ve actually endured five often starkly different pandemics — depending on when and where you lived, and who you were.
- In a deeply personal essay, reporter Eric Boodman reflects on some of the losses he covered during the pandemic, and how he tries to comprehend. “Faced with that vast statistic,” he writes, “my mind conjures up the lost in the shape of people I know. It does this automatically, instinctively, like an animal nosing its way back to a favorite burrow — though the affection I feel is tinged with nausea.”
- Covid hasn’t given up all its secrets. Five of our reporters identified six mysteries that experts hope to unravel, from how will the virus evolve next to how, exactly, the virus transmits from person to person.
For all the staggering loss, it is worth mentioning how much worse it could have been without vaccines. Or, as Helen put it more bluntly, how vaccines “are a freaking miracle.” We are, of course, mindful that this pandemic is far from over. Our reporters remain on the case, delivering authoritative stories about what we know — and don’t know — about the twists and turns ahead. Thanks, as always, for reading STAT. We’re especially grateful to our subscribers to STAT+, whose support gives us the resources to cover the pandemic and other vital stories. Please email me if you have any suggestions or feedback. I’m at rick.berke@statnews.com or @rickberke on Twitter. Stay safe,  Richard L. Berke
Co-founder & Executive Editor | 
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