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Hello {First Name},

A happy, healthy, and safe New Year to all. As in every season, we thank those who will work through the holiday, and thank and remember all of you who worked those shifts in years past.  

The curators try here to offer less gloom and some uplift in this socially distant New Year (and only partially succeed). We are not posting the data as we believe you (and we) need a break. If you are interested in the ever increasing statistical gloom, you can turn to our go-to sources Worldometers and The New York Times. Sadly, yesterday there were 1,966 deaths and 186,391 new cases; the U.S. will exceed 20 million total cases before the ball drops in Times Square. And because we are living in and through it, The Los Angeles Times gives us: “L.A. was far more vulnerable to an extreme crisis from the coronavirus than nearly anywhere else in the nation.”

Vaccines continue as the scientific success story of 2020. 
And before we look back at the best of the best from this newsletter, here is today’s vaccine resource page from The New York Times.
Revitalize: The EVERY-ISSUE list for 2020
Our first issue of Revitalize came June 4 and with it one of the great physician writers in The New Yorker, Siddhartha Mukherjee. The other two physician writers are found on their author pages at The New Yorker and are Atul Guwamde and Dhruv Khullar, all providing nuanced reports that aided our understanding of the Covid-19.

Best podcasts?
Our favorites this year include: John Heilemann’s Hell and High Water. Laurie Garrett appears and while you are there, a holiday Hell and High Water grabs Rich Eisen to offer us his insights into Covid 19’s impact on sports. A companion is the Heilemann team’s TV Show that looks at all sides in politics: The Circus. And, not an escape from reality but a needed look at it, we offer the Curators' other go-to podcasts: The New York Times’ The Daily, Political and Culture Gabfest from long-time podcasters at Slate, Fresh Air, Al Hunt and James Carville's The Political War Room, Jaque Pépin (who is the Revitalize chef), and to offer insights into how others cope and act responsibly, Krista Tibbett’s On Being.
 
Best films on the Covid-19 crisis?
"Totally Under Control," reviewed in The Atlantic. (More non-Covid films below.)

Best writing?
The best includes many great long-form journalism articles in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Politico, Harpers, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the LA Times. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal for the most part allowed only subscribers to access, yet we also include links to key pages in those publications. The curators sampler can be found at the Seelig+Cussigh News page here.

StatNews was our go to Science and medicine explainer.   

The Wall Street Journal limits, yet those of you with digital access check the Covid page any day.

Posted from the soon-to-be-in-the-mailbox The New Yorker's Jan. 4 and 11 issue: Lawrence Wright offers a belated gift in "The Plague Year."

And for a true break from the persistent grief?
Relax into fiction, like the "Medicare Entitlement Booklet," or the medically minded and gorgeous "Transcendent Kingdom" by Yaa Gyaasi. Ayard Aktar's "Homeland Elegies" is our novel of the year; what is yours? A film not Covid-related that reunites Sophia Coppola and Bill Murray: On the Rocks. And this year two great hits from Broadway that you can both sing along and dance to made it to your living room: Get in that room with Hamilton and stop making sense with David Byrne's American Utopia.

Eyes tired from too much screen time? Take a walk outside with your new canine family member or hit the home gym. Perhaps rest for you is a binge/guilty pleasure like "Borgen," "Better Call Saul," "Vikings," "The Crown," "Schitt's Creek," or "Game of Thrones." Need to escape and use your high school French – binge on seven seasons of "Spiral" (the French "Law and Order") and the five seasons of the French spy series "The Bureau." (Both great reminders of what it was like to dress for the office and dine in a real restaurant).

However you unwind, we hope you are safe this holiday season and enjoy a New Year full of reflection and revelatory joys. Thank you for opening the newsletter and the kind words in support; we look forward to what we hope will be far better news in the year to come. As our reporters and curators prepare for their ZOOM celebrations, we offer you the Dec. 30, 2020 Revitalize.
6.4
What the Coronavirus reveals about American medicine.

6.10
The Financial Times offers some Covid coverage available to all; on June 10, we posted on race factors and Covid. The Wall Street Journal limits content to non-subscribers, yet anyone can access the Covid page.

6.24 
Politico U.S. vs. Italy.

7.15
The Atlantic "Vigilance has a shelf life."

The Financial Times' review on three great Coronavirus books.

8.5
We first linked to The Atlantic's gifted and prolific Ed Yong. Here is a link to all of his articles, the most recent of which, “Where year two of the pandemic will take us — As vaccines roll out, the U.S. will face a choice about what to learn and what to forget."
 
8.12
Peter Hessler: Here is a link to all of his work.
Throughout the year:
StatNews was our go to science and medicine explainer.   

9.2 
What happened in the room, the great long-form reporting in the Sunday LA Times on first Skilled Nursing Facility outbreak at Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington.

10.28
Vox looked at the Dakotas – a prediction of what was to come nationally and perhaps why.
Jerry Seelig, CEO
LA Office: 310-841-2549
Fax: 310-841-2842