Putting together this issue of Significance has been perhaps the most challenging of any magazine I have ever worked on. My professional difficulties pale in comparison to the hardships faced by those put out of work by the coronavirus pandemic, or indeed those having to toil on what we might call the “frontline”: in hospitals, saving lives, and in supermarkets, helping to keep people fed. Being “stuck” at home, safe, surrounded by my family is – frankly – a blessing. But, still, it is hard seeing your best laid plans scuppered by events outside your control. The issue you should have been reading right now was meant to be a celebration of statistics and sport. There was the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship to look forward to, and we had an article lined up about that – until the competition was postponed by a year on 17 March. The 2020 Summer Olympics were also on the horizon, and remained so for quite some time, even as the coronavirus outbreak worsened. But the Games were eventually delayed. With our summer of sport cancelled, our sports articles inevitably went out the window. There was, however, plenty else to think and write about. After a couple of days wasted in what might be called a “social media spiral” – clicking link after link, reading news story after news story about coronavirus, chasing answers to questions for which there weren't any – I contacted the editorial board and we set to work on a call for contributors to a series of articles about the pandemic. Honestly, I was overwhelmed and humbled by the response. I am sure that every person who responded could tell you a story about how Covid-19 had reshaped their world – whether by forcing them to work from home for the first time, to prepare lessons to be taught online, to balance childcare and employment, or seeing their working hours cut. And yet they wanted to help, to share what knowledge they could, to address just some of the many questions that coronavirus has left us with. You can find our coronavirus coverage on pages 4–5 and pages 12–20 of this issue. But several other articles touch on the pandemic in some way. For example, on pages 22–27, Ronald D. Fricker, Jr and Steven E. Rigdon find parallels with the current crisis while telling the story of medical researchers in the late nineteenth century who discovered the cause of yellow fever. And on pages 42–44, David J. Hand explains that missing counts of Covid-19 cases are just one of many examples of “dark data”, which can lead to misunderstandings, poor predictions, and incorrect conclusions. While this isn't the issue I had planned for you to read, I hope it is the issue you need right now. My thanks go to all the contributors who made this issue possible. Photo: Elyse Marks Imaging/RSS While this isn't the issue I had planned for you to read, I hope it is the issue you need right now