2020 Review

Few people would contest 2020 has been an easy year. We have undergone almost all the disasters a person could think of: we have gone from pandemics to explosions in Turkey. This year has shaken our lives and I would like to look back to the beginning of this year and analyze what has happened since then.

January: in January, we were already off to a rough start. Memes of World War II started to spread across the Internet on account of the tweets Donald Trump would write. For weeks, this rumor kept going until it vanished a few weeks later. Nonetheless, it was not the only issue I could highlight. The Australian fires destroyed thousands of hectares, bringing down many houses and habitats where lots of animals used to live. The number of animals that died during the fire was uncountable and, throughout all the weeks animals and Australians had to go through this suffering, people from all over the world, like us, were watching these events on the TV.

February: February can not be said to be the month where the coronavirus pandemic out broke, yet, this disease was already being talked and many countries were taking a closer look at the rapid spread of the virus. In addition to this, the fires in Australia kept going, and a plague of locust infested Africa. Regarding this last event, it has not been broadcasted a lot on television nor the news. However, it lasted long months until things finally calmed down.

March: March of 2020 has been a turning point in our lives. It will be remembered as the month where the whole world fell apart simultaneously. The first two weeks of March can be recalled as the last weeks where we were truly free. Freedom is a topic we gave for granted and, since we were put in a lockdown, we have never seen clearer how lucky we were to breathe on the street without having to wear a face-mask everywhere, or just hanging out with friends.

April and May: two important events stand out: the apparent death of Kim Jong-UN and the Black Lives Matter movement. The none apparition of Kim Jong-UN in the inauguration of a monument led to the thought that he may have been infected and that he had died. This rumor was dismissed a couple of weeks after when we made his first appearance since the report was created. Apart from this, police brutality made people rebel against them. An African American man, George Floyd, died because of a policeman that choked him to death without George even resisting the arrest. His death was recorded in video and uploaded to the Internet, where people decided it was time to do something about it. Taking advantage of the easing of the restrictions, many people started doing demonstrations against this kind of acts that had been happening for a long period of time.

June, July, August: there were more riots on account of Black Lives Matter and against Donald Trump, it was claimed Tik Tok was being used to hack into the person’s account and extract information out of their phones and, as a consequence, the American government was going to ban the application. In the end, they have not done anything about it. Added to all of this, in Beirut, there was a horrible explosion whose consequences were destruction and death.

September and October: these months have been marked by the disorganization in the educational system and by Halloween and the changes that went with it. Going back to schools, high schools, and universities have created many problems of logistics: there was no enough space in the classes, scholar facilities had to hire more teachers, sanitizers had to be put in the facilities, and many other aspects that were discussed during September. Apart from this, Halloween as we have known it until now has completely changed. There were no parties, no get-togethers, nothing that meant meeting together.

November: the month where the elections of America led all headlines for weeks. First, Kanye West presented his candidature for president of the USA, but he had no repercussion over the elections. The fight for the presidency was between Biden and Trump and, as we now know, Biden finally won the elections.

December: so far, December hasn’t brought any negative aspects. If anything, the vaccine for the virus has been released and, luckily, everything will start to become normal sometime soon.