One of the many devastating turns in the pandemic this year was the profound impact of unvaccinated Covid patients on hospital systems and health care workers in the U.S. “It’s soul-draining,” one physician assistant working in Baton Rouge, La., told STAT in August. Armstrong’s reporting shows the strain on hospitals as cases spiked in counties with low vaccination rates, backed up by clear and helpful data analysis and visualizations from David Ingold and Paul Murray. Suicide has been a significant public health issue for years, and while the U.S. suicide rate dropped by 3% during the first year of the pandemic, the mental health care system is currently under quite a bit of stress.