| "How do you measure a year?" sings the cast of the musical "Rent," which is set during the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Exactly 525,600 minutes after the World Health Organization first declared Covid-19 a pandemic, we find ourselves asking the same question. There's no shortage of numbers from the past 12 months. More than 117 million people infected and over 2.6 million dead around the world, including more than 520,000 fatalities in the U.S. Millions of people unemployed and millions more working from home—if they're lucky. Some new numbers offer at least a bit of respite from the grim toll of the past year: More than 326 million vaccine doses administered to date, including 95.7 million doses in the U.S. across 18.8% of the population. Then there are the stories from 365 days of life as we've never known it. Going from never wearing a mask to amassing small, soft piles of them. The now-familiar squelch of hand sanitizer from a pump. How initially the changes to daily life were swift and overwhelming; then how, as the months dragged on, they slowed, even stalled.  Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organization, which declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Photographer: FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP The safety measures intended to keep us safe also kept us faceless and apart. Each day resembled the last and the next. Each room became merely the backdrop for a video call. Each in-person shift carried a risk of infection. In the process, we reinvented how we eat, mourn, work, cope, dress and entertain ourselves. We've spent the past months speaking with people across the U.S. to tell the story of this unprecedented year. Among the tales we heard were from a funeral director in California who grappled with her own personal losses; a scientist who worked on mRNA drug technology for decades without recognition or renown; a celebrated chef forced to close one of his restaurants; and a psychiatrist who witnessed first-hand how a year of isolation and grief affected her patients. We hope you'll take some time to reflect on the past year by reading and listening to their stories here.—Emma Court | 
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