Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.KATIE MARTIN / THE ATLANTICWelcome to vaccine purgatory.“We’ve spent 2020 adjusting to a pandemic normal, and now a strange, new period is upon us,” my colleague Sarah Zhang, who covers vaccines, notes in her latest.Thus the waiting begins.

The pandemic ravaged America’s big cities first, and now its countryside. The public-health and economic repercussions have been felt everywhere. But they have been hardest on the smallest businesses, and the most vulnerable families.This is an update, following a report last month, on plans to repair the damage now being done.

This has been a year like no other, and moments of joy were difficult to come by. The few happy events that took place did so despite harrowing circumstances—or, in many cases, as a response to overwhelming adversity. Health-care workers took on enormous burdens, saved countless lives, and earned the gratitude and admiration of millions. Celebrations and public events were modified for safety, but many still took place. And new vaccines against COVID-19 are starting to roll out.

When he decided to write a memoir, the journalist Jose Antonio Vargas faced an overwhelming challenge: crafting a story that was particular to him while knowing that some might believe it represented a much broader narrative about immigration. In Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, he makes clear that he speaks only for himself. But he also fills the book with reporting on the many challenges other undocumented people face.

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. With the FDA’s emergency authorization of the first COVID-19 vaccine imminent, the biggest and most complex vaccination campaign in the nation’s history is gearing into action. Planes are ferrying vaccines around the country, hospitals are readying ultracold freezers, and the very first people outside of clinical trials will soon get shots in their arms.