As I sit here in front of the fire I think of how 2020 flew by. It went by like a bolt of lighting we had during the summer storms. I think it was the pandemic that made it go by so fast. I vividly remember at Christmas 2019 hearing how the Virus which started in Wuhan, China was already spreading all around their country. As 2020 started rolling around, and the months were passing the virus finally made it to the states. It seems like overnight this country changed. Everyone was now wearing a mask and keeping 6 ft. apart to not get the virus. Working in the retail field as an essential worker I was around a lot of people everyday. I didn’t know if the next day I would be falling ill from Covid 19 and not being able to go to work to make money to feed my family. To be truthful I was scared and very nervous but I’m sure there were a lot of people that were in my shoes. It is just human to be scared of something that your not familiar with. The first few weeks the stores were so busy with people buying loads of food. Some of the items the customers were buying and hoarding were baking goods such as flour and sugar, a variety of canned foods and toilet paper to name a few. There was actually a shortage of the toilet paper and for weeks we had empty shelves. Some essentials during those days were hand sanitizer, masks, gloves and other personal safety devices. Kids stopped attending in person school and switched to virtual school via Zoom and Google Classroom. Businesses also had their workers work from home to help combat the spread of the virus. Suddenly stores like Best Buy were running low on such things as Laptops, Chromebooks, printers and other home office equipment due to the influx of the work from home. Most non essential store you couldn’t even go into or they closed down altogether. Online shopping had a boom with their sales increasing, delivery services like UPS and Fed Ex were all working extra hard delivering the the goods. The media was telling us we were in this for the long haul so we all just had to get used to it if we liked it or not. We got used to seeing familiar faces like the Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert on the tv telling us updated information on the virus and how we are going to combat it. One fun fact that I heard on the radio was that one of the leading Pornography sites on the Internet were giving free memberships at a point in the spring due to people not being able to go out and get laid. President Trump also initiated Operation Hyper-Speed to get a vaccine out ASAP. We are now in February and the vaccine is out and the numbers of infections have seem to level out. It still amazes me how they came out with the vaccine so fast and AIDS and other diseases have been around for decades and there is no vaccine for them.
Spring came around and it seemed like every week you heard there was another African American getting beaten by a white police officer. Names such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were known around the country. These “people” were going out in the streets of major cities demonstrating and rioting about the treatment of these individuals. They caused the destruction of cities and even killed a few innocent citizens. Sure they had a right to protest but they didn’t need to destroy neighborhoods. BLM(Black Lives Matter) became famous overnight. One group of Anarchists took over a 6 block neighborhood in Seattle and named it Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. The demonstrators also took over a police precinct in Minneapolis. Minneapolis was the city where the white officer Derek Chauvin choked to death George Floyd. What are your feelings on this incident. Did the officer go to far by laying his leg over the neck of George Floyd? There were reports that he had done the same to 6 other people during demonstrations.
Another event that really was in the minds of the locals were the fires that raged in the Santa Cruz Mountains. These fires were started by a dry lightning storm we had on August 16, 2020. The fires started out as many small fires that were scattered throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains ranging from up the coast in San Mateo County to the Bonny Doon area to Boulder Creek. They ended up burning into a bigger fire causing people to lose their houses and having to evacuate and take everything they had including their Farm animals. My family ended up adopting 2 goats due to the evacuations. For weeks we didn’t see the sun due to the smoke filled skies. Due to the skies being filled with smoke, there were many days in which it was to unhealthy for the population to venture out of the house. Adding to the local fires, there were also fires raging in Santa Clara County and up in Napa county that was adding to the unhealthy air quality. Due to the fires burning all over the state and the wind conditions it actually got dark as if it was 9 in the evening at 4:30 in the afternoon. I vividly remember seeing this and wondering what the hell was going on with this world. Remember we were in the middle of Summer and these were supposed to be some of the longest days of the year. It was truly very weird and eerie. It took firefighters over a month to have the fire at 100% containment. We are very thankful for the emergency workers who helped with the fires. If it wasn’t for them we would of probably still be burning. Totals from the fire included 86,509 acres burned, 1,490 structures destroyed(some historical buildings). There was also 1 fatality and no major injuries. It wasn’t until Dec 23 2020 that Cal Fire said the fire was controlled and there were no chances of it reigniting.
The rest of the year went by as a blur. During the pre election day time, the word was to get out and vote. Everyone was tired of having Donald Trump in the White House and they wanted him replaced by Biden. He was claiming that there was voter fraud during the election and that he was the real winner. We will never know if that is the truth. He is also getting impeached due to another claim that he incited the riot at the US Capital in which Trump supporter stormed the Capital and tried to take it over. None of this worked and Joe Biden was sweared in on Inauguration day. Lets see if he improves the Country. I highly doubt it!!
There were also lots of events that took to the news in 2020 including many Hurricanes around the world, fires in Australia, a new era of spaceflight from SpaceX, the shutting down of the 2020 Olympics in Japan due to Covid and a drone strike killed a top Iranian general in Iraq.
Tell me about your your in review and how it affected you.
Till Later
Joe
AverageGuySpeaks 