Pandemic Data Are Stalling Out

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. As expected, our picture of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in the past week is muddied by incomplete and delayed data, the result of the Thanksgiving holiday and long weekend. Although cases, tests, and deaths appear...

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The Darkest Stretch of the Pandemic Is Here

Today the United States blew by two grim pandemic milestones. The country recorded a record 195,695 coronavirus cases and reported 100,226 hospitalizations, passing the 100,000 mark for the first time, according to the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. While the 2,733 deaths today did not break the all-time record, this was the first day since...

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The Long Haul of Vaccine Results Is Just Beginning

The first two coronavirus-vaccine trials ran as smoothly as anyone could hope. And when the results from both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna came back with more than 90 percent efficacy, easily surpassing the FDA’s bar of 50 percent, even people like me—who kept telling you to temper your vaccine expectations—reacted with uncharacteristic and unrestrained...

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Sorry to Burst Your Quarantine Bubble

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. Updated at 5:06 p.m. ET on December 2, 2020.Americans’ social lifelines are beginning to fray. As the temperature drops and the gray twilight arrives earlier each day, comfortably mingling outside during the pandemic is getting...

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Dry Ice Is Hotter Than Ever

At 4:30 a.m. on the Monday before Thanksgiving, the dry-ice manufacturing floor at Noble Gas Solutions in Albany, New York, was hopping. The machine that compresses carbon-dioxide gas into dry ice was cranking out pellets of the stuff—1,500 pounds an hour—and Noble’s staff was racing to fill hundreds of bags so that a mission-critical product could...

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Pandemic Data Is About to Go Sideways

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. Recently, over the course of just one week, the Houston Health Department received more than 110,000 lab reports of COVID-19 test results. In a city of 2.3 million people, “it’s quite a high volume,” says Beau J. Mitts, the department’s...

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A Tragic Beginning to the Holiday Season

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. As the week before Thanksgiving brings thousands of Americans through airports and travel stations and into multigenerational indoor gatherings, U.S. states have reported more than 1.2 million cases of COVID-19. The seven-day average...

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Paging Dr. Hamblin: Should I See My Therapist In Person?

Editor’s Note: On Wednesdays, James Hamblin takes questions from readers about health-related curiosities, concerns, and obsessions. Have one? Email him at paging.dr.hamblin@theatlantic.com.Dear Dr. Hamblin,I need to see my therapist, but she isn’t doing teletherapy due to her hearing. She says she’s opening windows on both sides of her office, leaving...

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The Logic of Pandemic Restrictions Is Falling Apart

Two weeks ago, I staged a reluctant intervention via Instagram direct message. The subject was a longtime friend, Josh, who had been sharing photos of himself and his fiancé occasionally dining indoors at restaurants since New York City, where we both live, had reopened them in late September. At first, I hadn’t said anything. Preliminary research suggests...

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Answers to Every Possible Pandemic-Thanksgiving Question

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. Most years, in the anxious days before Thanksgiving, I write a health-related FAQ. It’s meant to be fun, reminding us of the timeless risks that spike every year around this day, such as Salmonella poisoning and fires from exploding...

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