A Better Year

Let us be honest. Year 2020 was absolutely horrible. For many people in this nation and around the world it might have been the worst year of their life.
However, not that it will make anyone feel any better, 2020 was not even close to the worst year ever for the U.S. or the world. According to 28 historians from Yale, Oxford, Stanford and other major universities, 2020 was the sixth worst year in history. It is hard to top the worst year ever, 1348, which was the height of the Black Death that claimed the lives of 200 million people. That is the equivalent of 65% of the U.S. population. The Holocaust in 1944 ranked second. Historians called 1816, when a volcano in Indonesia blocked out the sun, starving millions of people, the third worst year ever.
For the U.S., 1862, which was the grimmest year of the Civil War, was deemed the worst year ever. The 1929 stock market crash that heralded in the Great Depression was ranked second. The Trail of Tears in 1838, the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic and the 1968 riots and assassinations were deemed worse than 2020, as was 1962, when the Cuban missile crisis occurred and everyone was terrified of the prospect of a a nuclear war.
Make no mistake though, 2020 was a very bad year in many ways. The Covid-19 pandemic, unleashed by China, swept the globe, killing more than 1.7 million people (so far), including more than 337,000 (so far) in the United States. Due to government imposed restrictions, the economy took a colossal nosedive and many people lost their jobs and their businesses. Depending on who you ask, the government lockdowns were and still are far worse than the disease itself.
However, there are things to be thankful for and plenty of reason to believe that 2021 will be a much better year for everybody. We should be very glad that many “experts” were unbelievably wrong in their predictions. Many “experts” predicted over 20 million casualties from Covid-19 just here in the United States.
The important thing isn’t what a person or a country has been through, but how they respond in the future. There are two companies mass producing Covid-19 vaccines and people all over our nation are now receiving vaccines. Creating a vaccine for a deadly previously unknown virus this quickly was an incredible accomplishment of modern technology. There are two other companies that are on the verge of having an effective vaccine, which will greatly speed up how quickly people get the vaccine and the nation arrives at herd immunity.
Many medical experts are predicting our nation will have Covid-19 under control by this summer. In the interim, the best thing to do is stay positive, stay safe, not fall victim to vaccine hysteria and get vaccinated as soon as you are allowed to do so. If we all do our part then hopefully by October the only time anyone will be wearing a mask will be on Halloween.
-Kernersville News Editorial