First half of 2020 year in review

We regret to inform you that 2020 is only halfway over, even though it feels like it’s been going on for half a century.

Every year typically has a few defining moments, but the past six months have contained so many world-changing, paradigm-shifting developments that it’s getting hard to believe we’re not in a simulation that’s running every possible scenario at once.

But there’s no time to be exhausted: With a pandemic still raging, waves of social change swelling around the globe, and a whole presidential campaign going on, there’s still a lot of history left to be made in 2020.

Think you won’t be able to handle six more months of this? Take a look back at what we’ve already weathered.

January felt like such a simpler time. All we had to worry about was whether the killing of an Iranian general in a US drone strike would lead to World War III. The death of Qasem Soleimani on January 3 led to days of terrifying tension between the United States and Iran, with massive protests, threats of war and Iran’s retaliatory attack on Iraqi bases housing US troops.

The first week of the year set the pace of what was to come. Next: The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, the culmination of years of hearings and painful political acrimony, began on January 16. Speaking of years of painful political acrimony, Brexit finally happened after years of delays and false starts.

Meanwhile in China, a strange new virus began to spread, its presence a silent clock counting down to the time it would bring the world to its knees.

Trump was acquitted in early February, and the political event that had hung heavy over his office in the previous six months was over in less than three weeks. But 2020 is an election year, and the political wheels kept turning.

The first round of primary elections quickly divided the Democratic field, and major candidates began to fall. By February, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris were already out. Andrew Yang soon followed. Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren limped through, but it soon became clear their time was running out.

In between the slowly unfolding dramas, a bolt of shock struck the sports world when NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash. The memorial took place in late February.

And finally, the virus making its way through China started to spark fear throughout the world. For many, the word “coronavirus” was still unfamiliar and the threat seemed far off.

In March, all hell broke loose. But under the shadow of a pandemic, hell isn’t a clattering sturm und drang. It’s eerie silence and empty spaces. It’s people dying alone in quarantined hospital beds. Global markets shuddered, sputtered and crashed, foreshadowing months of economic suffering.

As shutdowns rolled across the globe, life as we knew it seemed to grind to a halt overnight: Empty flights, deserted city centers, and cruise ships floating listlessly though the open water, their trapped passengers hoping in vain for a place to port.

On March 11, the World Health Organization called the coronavirus what it is and what it will remain for months: A pandemic. For weeks afterward, little else seems to matter.

People — and economies — can’t stay locked down forever. In April, widespread coronavirus restrictions began to chafe, and groups of Americans took to the streets in protest, demanding a return to normalcy.

But normal was already long gone. Face masks became a familiar sight, and social distancing became a way of life.

Worldwide coronavirus cases hit 1 million at the beginning of the month. By the end of April there were 1 million cases in the United States alone, and more than 62,000 deaths worldwide. Federal social-distancing guidelines also expired, leaving states to chart their own path forward despite clear signs that the threat was far from over.

In May, rumblings of a different kind of unrest began to surface in the Georgia town of Brunswick, where a Black man named Ahmaud Arbery had been shot and killed while jogging in a neighborhood in February. The case echoed painful memories of other unarmed Black men who had died at the hands of police or, in Arbery’s case, men allegedly pursuing some form of vigilante justice.

One racial crisis was quickly compounded with another when George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed during an encounter with police in Minneapolis later that month — an encounter that was caught on video as an officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Suddenly, the floodgates were opened. Streets left barren during weeks of coronavirus lockdowns were filled night after night with thousands of protesters calling for justice, police accountability and reform. Clashes between demonstrators and police only added to the tensions, and before the month was over, it was clear a reckoning was going to come.

All the while, the specter of the coronavirus still hung over the world. Countries began tentatively reopening. For the first time since December, China recorded its first day without a new case. However, the reprieve was to be short-lived.

In the United States, there was barely a reprieve at all. On May 27, the US recorded its 100,000th coronavirus death.

The protests sparked by George Floyd’s death roared into June and went global. Demonstrators filled city centers in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Brazil, Australia, South Africa and countless other countries, uniting under one refrain: Black Lives Matter.

In the United States, talks of police reform rippled through Congress. Cities slashed police department budgets and tightened police accountability. People also took change into their own hands, toppling statues of men who once championed or traded in slavery. Confederate flags and other symbols of racial enmity came down, too.

With the 2020 election mere months away, President Trump returned to the campaign trail, hosting one of his signature rallies in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

After a few weeks of optimism, coronavirus cases came roaring back across the globe. In the United States, experts warned premature reopenings may have sent the country hurtling toward another round of calamity and death.

As the first half of the year came to a close, the future seemed to hold nothing but uncertainty — about the pandemic, about November’s election, about the future of the country and the world.

Looking back to the beginning of the year, the events of 2020 have defied prediction.

What the rest of the year holds is anyone’s guess.