Best of 2020: Writing on COVID-19

A virus has brought the world’s most powerful country to its knees.

The harrowing story of the tourists, crew, and captain trapped on a cruise ship that would become a microcosm of the confusion and panic engulfing the globe.

James Cai’s case was completely new to his doctors. When he grew severely ill, he tapped a network of Chinese and Chinese-American medical colleagues who helped save his life.

Why nursing homes were so ill-prepared for the pandemic.

Jonathan Blitzer reports on the state of funeral homes in Brooklyn, in New York City, as they struggle to keep up with the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic.

Now the Ismael kids — 13, 18, and 20 — are struggling to cope with grief, but also with how to keep a car running, pay bills, be a family

The long read: When he was six, Paul Alexander contracted polio and was paralysed for life. Today he is 74, and one of the last people in the world still using an iron lung. But after surviving one deadly outbreak, he did not expect to find himself threatened by another

It’s not R.

What a devastating Covid-19 outbreak at a California slaughterhouse reveals about the federal government's failed pandemic response.

The first vaccine candidate entered human trials five days after the pandemic was declared. Behind the scenes at Moderna and an unprecedented global sprint.

Relying on tired metaphors to understand an unprecedented crisis is just setting us up for greater suffering.