2020 year in review: The 10 positive things of an annus horribilis
It was a year we want to forget but will always remember. Still strip out things like massive bushfires and the plague, 2020 did have some good points. Seriously.
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So, what do we make of that then? A year like no other. 366 days of bafflement and confusion, with regular forays into fear and terror. 527,040 minutes of … whatever the hell that was.
It’s fair to say 2020 started badly and never really improved. Which was a bit of a shame. It promised so much did 2020. Two twos, two zeros. There was a nice symmetry about it. A certain elegance maybe. It was the nicest year to roll around in the mouth since 2000. In the end, it will leave nothing but a bad taste.
It started with Australia ablaze. The warnings had been obvious at the tail end of 2019. Fires on the Yorke Peninsula and in the Adelaide Hills were terrifying in themselves. Then Kangaroo Island caught fire. Large chunks of Victoria and New South Wales went up as well. A nation struggled to breathe, wrapped in bushfire smoke and temperatures that never seemed to fall below 40C. The world watched as Australia burned. They saw homes destroyed, of people being forced out to sea to escape the fires and be rescued by the navy, of the darkness of night in the middle of the day. Australia started to look like the first act of the apocalypse.
Then the plague rode into town. The first murmurings were heard in January. A mysterious new virus had been detected in the Chinese city Wuhan. Wuhan was not a city many had heard of, but it was home to 11 million habitants. Soon it was being closed down. People were being welded into their homes by the Chinese authorities. Could it be contained? You know the answer to that already.
What happened next caused the biggest disruption to conventional society since the end of the last world war. Australia, as did more or less every other nation, went into some form of lockdown. With little time to prepare, everyone who could was abruptly working from home. New words were entering the language – COVID itself, social distancing, the rona. Old words were new. Quarantine, self-isolate. The most technologically deficient had to catch up fast – Zoom, Teams, Hangouts. How did you do that? Is my mic on?
Cities became ghost towns. Business collapsed. Many became jobless as unemployment soared. With restrictions on travel, on gatherings, families were ruptured, loneliness became another plague. Mental health and quality of life plummeted for many.
Globally almost 70 million people have been infected by COVID-19. More than 1.5 million have died. The disease caused untold trauma across Europe, in India and China, in South America, the United Kingdom and the United States.
A lack of leadership in countries such as the UK and the US, and an unwillingness to take the virus seriously only added to the problem. Australia teetered on the edge for some time. The debacle of the Ruby Princess cruise ship and then later the incompetence of the Victorian quarantine system stoked fears Australia would be hit as hard as the rest of the world.
That we escaped the worst was the product of many factors. Our size and isolation helped. State premiers that brought down the border barriers and stopped people travelling across the nation was also important. The fact that so many Australians acquiesced to so many new rules and restrictions without too much complaint was a blessing for authorities as well. Except when it came to buying toilet paper. Soon, the final zero in 2020 will tip over and 2021 will be with us. It’s a given that we all hope next year is better. The thought that it could be any worse is not one for any contemplation.
But, before we go, can we find any good in 2020? Is there any way to move from Cassandra to Pollyanna?
1 THE GOOD DOCTOR
A year ago no one outside her family circle, a few friends and some health department wonks had heard of Nicola Spurrier. Now, she is a contender for the title of South Australia’s most recognisable figure. And if she can’t beat out Port coach Ken Hinkley for that honour, she would certainly take the chockies as SA’s most trusted individual. Spurrier has been front and centre for the state’s health response during the coronavirus.
For months she fronted daily press conferences to pass on the latest COVID numbers, to give us advice on how to stay as safe as possible and give words of encouragement when we deserved it.
Spurrier’s endearing style was not so much doctor but more your favourite ever teacher at primary school. Spurrier was helped along by Police Commissioner Grant Stevens, but as most South Australians, even the innocent ones, tend to feel a little nervous around the cops, Spurrier was the one they listened to in difficult times.
Premier Steven Marshall did his bit as well, which was mainly to turn over the decision-making to the public servants. The trio were generally regarded as not having a foot wrong until they said a guy at the Woodville Pizza Bar had turned things upside down. Whether the response which sent the state into a severe lockdown for three days was justified or the actions of the panic-stricken will be debated for some time to come yet.
2 WORKING FROM HOME
Who hasn’t dreamt of having a working life free from stiff suits or careful make-up and well-coiffed hair? Who hasn’t dreamt of a life free from the morning or afternoon commute? Who hasn’t dreamt of the ability to mute their boss at will?
Although, on the other hand, who has pined for homeschooling the kids, while trying to keep that same boss happy and convinced you are working hard?
For years, we have all heard words like “flexibility” and “work-life balance”. It was always something of a con, very few workplaces moved beyond the buzz words and put the theory into action. COVID-19 changed all that as office-based workplaces all over the nation moved to home offices, kitchen tables and hastily rearranged back sheds. Both workers and bosses became used to the new world, and many found it could work for them without a loss in productivity. A new army of tracksuited workers has been born. But there is still the question of whether this new world will mark a drastic change in direction for business or whether all will swing back to normal when the threat of the virus eventually retreats.
3 SCIENCE
This year has been all sorts of confusing. We have seen the best and the worst of people and institutions. We have also seen the smartest and stupidest society has to offer. From the ranks of the stupid we have seen all sorts of mad conspiracy theories, from 5G being responsible for the spread of the coronavirus to billionaire computer guy Bill Gates starting the pandemic so he could eventually put microchips into all of us. Then there is the QAnon mob, who apparently believe Donald Trump is some kind of genius, and if that wasn’t warped enough, believe the world is run by child-eating paedophile Satanists.
Happily, there are enough others who can help retain faith in humanity. The speed at which the world’s scientists have (hopefully) developed a vaccine to combat coronavirus has been staggering. Processes which normally take years and years have been compressed to months. The brain power and work ethic that has gone into the global response to COVID-19 from the world’s scientists is a reminder that anything is possible. With the small caveat that the bloody thing actually works, has no nasty side-effects and reaches poor as well as rich people and countries.
4 SPACE
A year in which it was unwise, at times, to leave the house, saw a lot of activity in that black space beyond our atmosphere. Maybe it was just the nagging feeling that the time had come to leave this planet. The US Department of Defense certainly wanted to start the idea that there was life out there somewhere when it released footage taken by US navy pilots that were immediately tagged as “UFO videos”. Maybe it was just to give us hope that somehow, somewhere in the universe there was a worse leader than the US president.
The Department of Defense didn’t use the UFO term but in a statement said “the aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterised as ‘unidentified’.” Spooky. NASA also discovered water molecules on the moon then revealed a planet it gave the exciting name TOI 700 d, was a potentially habitable outpost only 100 light years away from Earth. We’d better get a move on if we want to get there before dark. Elon Musk’s SpaceX company put people in space for the first time, taking a crew to the International Space Station.
South Australia is also making inroads and Woomera was the landing spot for a Japanese space capsule that had been on a 5 billion kilometre journey to collect dust samples from an asteroid. We’d better be careful with those asteroids, though. Asteroid 52768, another catchy title, passed close to Earth in April. That’s in space terms anyway. The 2km-wide hunk of rock zoomed past around 8 million kilometres from Earth. Still, it’s scheduled to be only 1.8 million kilometres away next time it comes round these parts in 2079. As a point of comparison, the moon is around 385,000km distant.
5 PETROL
Not that we could drive anywhere too far for much of the year but, when we did, petrol was a lot cheaper than it had been for a long time. As the global economy tanked so did oil prices. Something to do with supply and demand. At times in 2020, motorists were able to fill up for less than $1 a litre, prices not seen regularly since around 2004. Of course, there were still wild swings up and down. If you ran empty on the wrong day, you could still be looking at north of $1.45 a litre. It was a mistake that could cost you more than $20 if you had to fill up the tank.
6 SPORT
The fact we had any sport at all after March is still something to be grateful for. In the middle of the first lockdown, it didn’t seem like any professional or amateur sport would be played in 2020. The AFL halted its season after the first round. If the season hadn’t resumed, Crows fans would have been delighted, although their cutlery drawer would have been short of one wooden spoon.
Port fans, though, would have missed a thrilling ride that took them all the way to a preliminary final before falling to eventual premiers Richmond. Still, with a host of young stars on the rise, Port fans will be even more unbearable than usual next year.
The sporting highlight of the year though was the Australian women’s cricket team winning the T20 World Cup against India at the MCG. The Australians dominated the final in front of 86,174 fans, the largest crowd to watch a women’s sporting event in Australia and the biggest crowd to watch a women’s cricket match anywhere.
7 WINTER WONDER
It was looking a bit grim for the state’s farmers in July. It was a very dry month and some were staring at their paddocks fearing the worst. But the rains came in August and a cool and wet spring has turbocharged the state’s vital agricultural sector.
Latest predictions are that SA will produce around 8.8 million tonnes of grain, the fourth largest crop on record and with a predicted value of $2.4 billion. There are hopes more rain is on the way, with the Bureau of Meteorology calling a La Nina in the Pacific Ocean, which typically means more rainfall and cooler temperatures. Not that we should get too carried away. Last month was the driest November in 30 years. It was also the warmest November on record.
8 END OF TRUMP
There has never been any sense that the United States of America has ever been a normal country. Its outsized self-importance and grandiose egocentricity mark it out among the global community of nations. Still, the US has generally been a stabilising influence and a force for good. The election of real estate developer Donald Trump marked a change of direction. America retreated into itself, consumed by the daily soap opera of the bloke sitting in the Oval office. From day one, when he lied about the size of his inauguration crowd, the untruths were relentless and ridiculous.
A large proportion of people who worked for him during the election campaign ended up on charges or in prison. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, after a clumsy and obvious attempt to strongarm Ukraine into gathering dirt on Joe Biden, then acquitted by the Senate. He has stood idly by as more than 300,000 of his fellow Americans died from COVID-19. Then, with the election run and won by Biden, he claimed he had been robbed. A more whiny, needy, petulant, thin-skinned individual is hard to imagine. Biden is hardly inspiring, but provides the opportunity for the US to reclaim a little respect.
9 POLIO
The wild polio virus has officially been eradicated from Africa. It is only the second disease, after smallpox, to have been eradicated from the continent. The African Regional Certification Commission for Polio Eradication made the proclamation in August after four years of no new cases of the waterborne disease. It’s a remarkable effort and tribute to years of dedicated vaccination efforts. Polio used to paralyse around 75,000 children a year in Africa. Although there is still some polio in Africa, from a vaccine-related weakened strain of the disease which can pass through under-immunised populations and mutate.
10 POLLUTION
Smell that? No. Maybe not too surprising. It’s fresh air. If we are looking for any positives from a long, draining, damaging year, it’s that we have a cleaner environment. When business stopped, when travel was curtailed, the atmosphere didn’t have to deal with quite as many pollutants. Those clever boffins at NASA in the US did the sums and, since February, pandemic restrictions had reduced global nitrogen dioxide concentrations by almost 20 per cent. In case you are wondering, nitrogen dioxide is an air pollutant that is primarily produced by the combustion of fossil fuels used by industry and transportation. And they weren’t just looking at the US example. NASA looked at 61 cities around the world and found pollution had dropped between 20 per cent and 50 per cent in 50 of them.
BUT WE’VE HAD IT MUCH WORSE
Michael McGuire
It’s been a bad year. There is no doubt about that. And, while it’s not advisable to become competitive about who has had worseyears, a bit of history never hurt either. The modern form of human has been around for about 200,000 years, so that givesa fair few years to choose from.
Let’s go in reverse chronological order.
According to Melbourne University earth sciences researcher Hayden Dalton, 74,000 years ago was a bad time to be alive. Theblame, as it will be for other years, was a volcanic eruption. This one was the eruption of Toba in Sumatra that was so big,ash was found 8000km away in Africa and an estimated 7 trillion tonnes of debris was ejected into the atmosphere. The effecton the climate was catastrophic with temperatures falling between 4C and 8C across the world.
Fast forward a few millennia. The year is 536. This is the period of time known as the “Dark Ages”. This is not some kindof metaphor. It was literally dark. There was another volcanic eruption. This one could have come from either El Salvadoror Iceland and is thought to have been even bigger than Toba. So big, it dulled the sun, causing global temperatures to plungeand crops across the world to fail and people to starve. There was a lot happening around that time. More eruptions followed,then in 542 the bubonic plague arrived and the following pandemic killed 25 million people.
There are now doubts about whether the bubonic plague also caused the Black Death in 1347 as had been widely thought. Whichis slightly worrying. It means we don’t know what caused the deaths of something like 30 million people. Could it come back?It is estimated anything up to 50 per cent of the population of Europe died from the plague.
If you were a Native American, 1492 was a pretty awful year. That was the year explorer Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlanticto “discover” the new world. It is estimated 90 per cent of the continent’s Indigenous population died by the start of the16th century. That same year Spain’s Catholic rulers conquered the last piece of the country still under Muslim rule. Overthe next few years 3 million Muslims were expelled or left to live in North Africa. Some of those consequences are still beingfelt today.
Our old friend the volcano caused the “year without a summer” in 1816. The previous year Mt Tambora in Indonesia had exploded,killing tens of thousands on the island of Sumbawa. The outpouring of sulphur dioxide spread around the world and global temperaturesfell, making it the coldest year in 250 years. Crop failures and mass starvation naturally followed. There was one upside.The weather was so bad holidaying friends in Switzerland decided to hold a scary story competition. Out of that came MaryShelley’s Frankenstein.
Wars had never been unusual in Europe but the conflict that started in 1914 was something else again and started modern warfarewith its capacity to kill and injure millions. Sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, World War I wouldclaim around 20 million military and civilian lives, with around the same number again wounded. It was followed by the Spanishflu pandemic, which would kill another 50 million. The eventual World War I armistice signed in 1919 would then lay the groundworkfor the second world war just 20 years later as some Germans, including World War I infantryman Adolf Hitler, nursed a senseof grievance about the loss. More than 70 million military personnel and civilians would die.
Many more bad years would follow. The famine in Ethiopia in 1984 killed a million people. The terror attack of 2001, whichcaused New York’s Twin Towers to collapse, sparked a war that continues in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2020 will certainly take its place among the worst of years, but it has plenty of company in that regard.
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