I wanted to know. Was COVID-19 going to kill as many people as experts predicted? Were drastic government actions really what was required to flatten the curve? What should I do to keep myself and my family safe? As a statistician, I was committed to following coronavirus by the numbers. In early May 2020, I published the first edition of Viral Spiral. A year later, I now address new questions, such as: . Were the statistical conclusions in the first edition accurate? . Which state did the best at handling COVID? . What were the costs and benefits of the restrictions and mandates? . What could we have done differently to save lives in 2020? Fortunately, most of these questions can be answered numerically. This book will reach statistical conclusions with a substantial degree of certainty. But at the start of the outbreak, things were much less clear.