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...