So 2020 has come to a close, thank God, and we are now into a new, and hopefully better, year. With the Biden administration taking power in the US, the political situation may stabilize somewhat. As vaccinations roll out, the pandemic should subside somewhat. And in four months, it will be warmer.
I am not going to make any specific predictions for the coming year. Rather, here are links to some articles that illuminate some things to pay attention to this year.
First, the pandemic is obviously the biggest story of 2020. It's far from over. What will it be like this year? Ed Yong, The Atlantic's staff reporter who has been writing about the pandemic since it began, looks at what year two of the pandemic might bring.
The pandemic will end not with a declaration, but with a long, protracted exhalation. Even if everything goes according to plan, which is a significant if, the horrors of 2020 will leave lasting legacies. A pummeled health-care system will be reeling, short-staffed, and facing new surges of people with long-haul symptoms or mental-health problems. Social gaps that were widened will be further torn apart. Grief will turn into trauma. And a nation that has begun to return to normal will have to decide whether to remember that normal led to this. “We’re trying to get through this with a vaccine without truly exploring our soul,” said Mike Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.
Social and political divisions have made the pandemic harder to fight. These divisions, heightened by what some call 'toxic individualism', are not going away and may even get worse. NPR looks at what has happened in Kanas.
The virus infecting thousands of Americans a day is also attacking the country's social fabric. The coronavirus has exposed a weakness in many rural communities, where divisive pandemic politics are alienating some of their most critical residents — health care workers.
A wave of departing medical professionals would leave gaping holes in the rural health care system, and small-town economies, triggering a death spiral in some of these areas that may be hard to stop.
The Nashville bombing worries me, not just because it was an act of urban terrorism, but because it reveals how vulnerable our urban and technological infrastructure can be to targetted attacks.
AT&T raced to restore service after the Friday morning explosion, with most of it back online by Sunday night. But according to experts and many who lived through the experience, the bombing revealed systemic weaknesses of the connections that have become increasingly essential infrastructure.
“I think what we’re seeing is just how vulnerable they are,” said Colin P. Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, a nonpartisan think tank, and a scholar on terrorism and national security, “and how much disruption can result when they are effectively targeted.”
The far right has been energized by the four years of the Trump administration. They won't be going quietly into the dark night just because Biden won the election. Here's an article that explores ties between neo-nazis and the anit-vaxxer movement. Expect to see more of this.
This may seem like a truly hairbrained, fringe-of-fringe scheme. But it’s actually representative of an increasingly common set of tactics on the far right. CCN isn’t the only entity promoting this scheme or some variation on it, either. It’s just one link in a chain of about 25 Telegram channels, collectively known as “Terrorgram,” many of which build on each other’s ideas and help to amplify and spread them into the wider world. (Telegram did not respond to a request for comment for this story, and The Daily Beast was not able to reach or identify the individual or individuals behind the CCN channel.)
One channel connected to CCN notably laid out a step-by-step process for readers to use to convince anti-vaxxers to commit to or endorse violent resistance to potential vaccine mandates, “regardless of their current understanding of our worldview.”
I don't have a story to link to about the hacking (apparently by Russia) of the United States' government. Expect to see much, much more about this, although probably not until after the Biden administration takes power. If you want to keep on top of this story, and other computer security news, you should subscribe to the Security Now podcast. I've been listening to this for years, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Finally, despite all the above, I remain hopeful that this will be a better year than the last. Do remember to hug those close to you and keep your eyes open to the beauty that's still around you even in these dark times.
