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“What Happened Here,” our six-part series looking at the last year of the pandemic in Nevada, is, as of yesterday, finally out there in the world. If you didn’t get a chance to read it over the last six weeks, I’m going to try to sum it up — all 58,000 words — in this thread.
It began with this prologue sharing the story of Ronald Pipkins, the first person in the state to test positive for COVID-19. The uncertainty Pipkins’ doctors felt treating him mirrored the uncertainty the state felt in its initial pandemic response. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/what-happened-here-a-year-after-its-first-covid-case-nevada-reflects-on-its-pandemic-response
In the first story, I took a look at how the pandemic laid bare Nevada’s chronic underfunding of public health, a lack of investment in aging state infrastructure, including its unemployment system and continued economic overreliance on tourism. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/what-happened-here-how-a-service-industry-state-struggled-to-find-harmony-between-protecting-the-personal-safety-and-financial-wellbeing-of-its-residents
In the second story, @jackievalley, @michellerindels and I teamed up to look at the economic impact of the pandemic and how the state’s previous attempts to heal — including after 9/11, the Great Recession and 1 October — have only ever been surface deep. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/what-happened-here-a-company-town-turned-ghost-town-during-the-covid-shutdown-begins-the-rebuilding-process
All kudos for the third story go to @jackievalley, who spearheaded this sweeping look at the impact of the pandemic on education. She explored not only the difficulties of the last year but the opportunities for innovation it has afforded. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/what-happened-here-how-covid-threw-learning-in-flux-reshaping-education-for-the-future
In the fourth story, I took a look at how government relationships — federal, state and local — have been strained in the time of the pandemic. I know this sounds like a really wonky story (and it is), but I promise it is worth a read. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/what-happened-here-how-the-battle-born-states-fight-against-the-virus-turned-into-one-against-itself
The pandemic, though, has often taken a human toll. That’s what I explored in the fifth story of the series, which looks at the way that we, individually, have had an impact on the pandemic’s trajectory and how it, in turn, has affected us. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/what-happened-here-how-nevadans-changed-the-course-of-the-pandemic-and-how-it-in-turn-changed-us
(I love all my children equally, but this is probably my favorite story of the series.)
The last story, which published yesterday, looks at the race between the vaccination effort and the variants’ spread. It also offers a glimpse at how, in this uncertain moment, Nevada can begin to heal. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/what-happened-here-facing-a-brighter-though-hazy-future-nevada-grapples-with-vaccines-variants-and-the-road-to-recovery
When I did my first interview for this series way back on Jan. 28, I don’t think I really knew what I was getting myself into. Here we are some 10 weeks, 80 to 90 interviews and 58,000 words later, and I'm really proud of the stories this series has told.
I have to say THANK YOU to a few people: First to my Indy family, including @RalstonReports and @elizthompsn for giving me the time to work on this series and only battling half an eye when I routinely turned in 10k-15k word stories.
Also a big THANK YOU to @jackievalley and @michellerindels for their fantastic work on the second and third stories in this series, and @StasyShipman for her excellent copy edits.
I have to give an extra shout out to @JackieValley for being a sounding board for me during this series, for helping me tighten and polish each story after the editing process before it went out into the world and, above all, for being a fantastic friend and wonderful human.
And thank you to our entire #nvleg team — particularly @MichelleRindels, @RileySnyder and @tabitha_mueller — for holding down the fort, especially on health care-related issues! — while I worked on this series. I am so so appreciative.
