Whoever\u2019s in charge of writing the script for 2020 is dumping all their ideas in at once, as if they know there\u2019s not going to be enough money left in the budget for a 2021.<\/p>\n
Remember how happy and relieved we were when 2019 ended? From this disastrous remove\u2014precisely halfway through 2020\u2014the previous year has a suddenly nostalgic warm and cozy feel to it. No big surprises, just the usual scriptwriter\u2019s tropes of hurricanes, wildfires, plane crashes, terrorist attacks, cyclones and tornadoes along with a bad winter and a non-shocking impeachment of Donald Trump<\/a> that wasn\u2019t exactly a cliffhanger because anyone could see how that would end.<\/p>\n And the Senate\u2019s vote in early February to keep him in office<\/a> was one of the early signs that things were going to go seriously hay-wire with 2020.<\/p>\n The year started with a continuation of wildfires raging like mad in Australia<\/a>, killing more than a billion animals and destroying an area the size of Portugal and more than 14 times the area that burned in California in 2018, another year everyone was glad to be shut off when it mercifully ended. Now, we\u2019d gladly take back 2018, too. Just pick any year that didn\u2019t have the Black Plague or Spanish Inquisitions in it.<\/p>\n If anyone had had 20\/20 foresight last year, they wouldn\u2019t have shown up this year, in which the coronavirus<\/a> and protests over the killings by police of George Floyd<\/a> and other Black people, marked with occasional riots and other violence, have been viciously battling one another for the front-page headlines, though other subjects that would\u2019ve ruined plenty of other years managed to sneak into the news when they had a chance.<\/p>\n COVID-19 came early, with the World Health Organization christening it with its name<\/a> on Feb. 11, a month that saw Trump do pretty much nothing at all to prevent its spread in the U.S. In fact, the day before the coronavirus got its name, Trump waved it away by assuring Americans that by April, \u201cyou know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re just now joining us, it didn\u2019t go away, nor did things get any better in America, which has led the world in the number of cases and deaths for much of the second quarter of this year.<\/p>\n If we can brush coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths blithely aside for a moment, the outbreak forced schools to close<\/a>, from major universities to tiny tot day care centers. It\u2019s ruined the economy<\/a>, probably for years to come, it\u2019s shuttered businesses<\/a>, closed down travel, resulted in the banishment of the still-fledgling \u201cLA hug,\u201d left millions jobless<\/a>, ruined restaurants and bars, separated families (though just as bad sometimes, forced families to lock themselves together in the house).<\/p>\n The good news: With factories closed and cars off the road, it helped clean up the air<\/a> worldwide.<\/p>\n The bad news returns: The virus created thousands of tons of additional plastic waste<\/a>. We\u2019ll generously call it a push for the environment.<\/p>\n The half-year has seen the tragic and sad death of Kobe Bryant<\/a> and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna.<\/p>\n In the past six months there\u2019s been a pair of dams burst<\/a> in Michigan covering Midland under 9 feet of water and causing the evacuation of 10,000 people.<\/p>\n Harvey Weinstein<\/a> got tossed in prison where he quickly contracted COVID<\/a> en route to serving a 23-year term for criminal assault and rape.<\/p>\n A couple of words: Murder hornets<\/a>.<\/p>\n And now, this: Swarms and swarms of Old Testament-style locusts<\/a> have already totally devoured crops in East Africa and the Red Sea region, a plague made worse by atypical weather patterns made further worse\u00a0 by climate change. And now, those swarms\u2019 offspring are continuing the work of their forebears in Kenya\u2019s poorest region. The fledgling locusts are eating everything in sight, and when their wings mature the swarms will be able to travel up to 80 miles in a day in a region where 20 million people struggle for food.<\/p>\n And as we embark on 2020 Part II, the confluence of the young year\u2019s disasters and woes have prompted many conversationalists to wonder, while knocking madly on wood, what calamity can next get thrown into the mix.<\/p>\n