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Was 2020 the worst year ever? Historians weigh in.

InternationalDec 31. 2020Twenty thousand chairs, each representing 10 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, are lined up on the Ellipse south of the White House. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Katherine Frey.

By The Washington Post · Michael S. Rosenwald

So, just to recap, the following events occurred in 2020:

– The coronavirus pandemic swept the globe, killing more than 1.7 million people (so far), including more than 337,000 (so far) in the United States.

– The president of the United States was tried and acquitted, after being impeached at the end of 2019.

– Protests stemming from several police killings of unarmed Black Americans erupted throughout the country, including just outside the White House, where federal law enforcement officers used tear gas on U.S. citizens.

– Wildfires devastated the U.S. West Coast and Australia.

– The president of the United States contracted the coronavirus and then dismissed it.

– Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter died in a helicopter crash.

The president of the United States disputed the valid results of a peaceful election. (He lost.)

– Alex Trebek died.

– Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, broke up with the royal family.

– Murder hornets arrived.

As the year finally, mercifully, comes to a close, the above events – and more – have inspired the Internet’s meme machine to declare that 2020 is the worst year ever.

But it’s not just the Internet meme machine that thinks 2020 was the worst year ever.

Earlier this month, Time magazine ran an extraordinary cover image with a big red X drawn over the number 2020. “THE WORST YEAR EVER,” the cover line read. Time certainly wasn’t alone. A recent headline from the Hill: “Why 2020 really was the worst year ever.” Even the York Daily Record of Pennsylvania wondered: “Was 2020 the worst year ever? With pandemic, social unrest, election chaos, it’s in the running.”

Historians demur.

In a clever bit of marketing, the self-therapy app Bloom recently asked 28 historians from Yale, Oxford, Stanford and other major universities to choose the worst year in history – or, as they put it, the most stressful. British historian Philip Parker led the effort. Following a depressing dive down the rabbit hole of historical misery, Parker compiled a list of the top worst/most stressful years in world, British and U.S. history. Then the historians made their picks.

The worst year in world history wasn’t even a close contest.

It was 1348, the height of the Black Death, during which as many as 200 million people died. That would be like wiping out about 65% of the U.S. population. The Holocaust in 1944 ranked second, followed by 1816, when a volcano eruption in Indonesia blocked out the sun, starving millions. 2020 ranked sixth.

In U.S. history, 2020 was well down the list at No. 8, just behind the 2001 terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the tumult of 1968’s riots and assassinations, the 1918 flu pandemic, the Trail of Tears of 1838, the 1929 stock market crash marking the beginning of the Great Depression, and at the very, very top, 1862.

That was, most historians say, the grimmest year of the Civil War, when the country’s total collapse seemed imminent.

“It’s a symbol of a time when the nation almost broke apart,” Parker said in an interview, “and that, really, goes to the essence of what it is to be a country and a society. It’s almost like a dagger to the heart of the country.”

In many ways, Parker said, we’re still too close to 2020 to understand what its real ranking will be, seen through the lens of time passed.

“As Chairman Mao is reputed to have said about the French Revolution,” Parker said, “it’s a little too early to say.”

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Samsung heir faces nine years in jail as bribery trial wraps

InternationalDec 31. 2020Jay Y. Lee, center, arrives at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, on Dec. 30, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by SeongJoo Cho.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Sohee Kim, Heesu Lee, Shinhye Kang

South Korean prosecutors requested a nine-year prison term for Samsung Electronics Co.’s Jay Y. Lee, seeking to put the heir apparent back in jail in a bribery case that rocked the nation and ignited a backlash against its most powerful conglomerates.

Special prosecutors proposed the sentence during a Wednesday hearing at the Seoul High Court, which will make its ruling on the billionaire’s fate Jan. 18. “There’s no denying that it has made a lot of positive impact on our society,” according to a transcript of closing arguments from prosecutors, referring to Samsung. “But just because there’s been an economic contribution, there should be no hesitation in legal enforcement based on the rule of law.”

The 52-year-old billionaire is fighting allegations of graft in a retrial of a case that started four years ago and led to his imprisonment and the ouster of former President Park Geun-hye. The outcome of the case could snarl succession at Samsung, just as Lee is expected to formally take the helm of the mobile and electronics giant after the death of his father in October.

The executive stands accused of making gifts to cement his control over the world’s largest smartphone maker and smooth his ascension. Lee served a year in jail before his release in 2018 after an initial five-year prison term was halved and suspended by an appeals court. But in August, the Supreme Court voided that decision, thrusting the executive back before a judge. Lee faced a tougher sentence this time — a minimum of five years — because the amount of alleged bribery acknowledged by the top court increased.

Yet experts viewed a decreasing chance of imprisonment as the trial drew to a close. Judges at the high court asked Samsung and Lee to impose measures to prevent illegal activity and improve credibility among the group. Lee responded by setting up an independent compliance committee and issuing a personal apology in May over past wrongdoings related to the succession process. He also pledged publicly not to hand down leadership of the Korea’s largest conglomerate to his children. The compliance committee’s activities will be factored into Lee’s eventual sentencing.

“Even though it’s tough and difficult, I’ll walk on the right path,” the billionaire said Wednesday in prepared remarks before the court. “I promise that I’ll create a company with the highest level of transparency and morality.”

“I will make sure, again, my children will not be mentioned in relation to the succession of the company. Samsung will never get into controversy over these related matters,” he added.

The bribery allegations stem from a controversial merger in 2015 between two Samsung units, which helped Lee gain control over the group. Prosecutors argued that Samsung offered horses and financial contributions, via an intermediary, to a confidante of former president Park to try and win the government’s support for the deal.

Lee, who stepped down from an internal director post, remains the tech company’s vice chairman and de facto leader. Although his father and chairman Lee Kun-hee died in October, the Samsung scion has not been immediately crowned his successor. Samsung is likely to hold off on naming Lee to that role at least until the trial is completed.

Separately, Lee is embroiled in another case related to the controversial 2015 merger, with allegations ranging from violation of capital market laws to breach of duty. Prosecutors indicted Lee in September and hearings are set to resume on Jan. 14.

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Swedish PM slammed for shopping tour amid latest covid surge

InternationalDec 31. 2020Stefan Lofven, Sweden’s prime minister, at a European Union leaders summit in Brussels on Dec. 10, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Rafaela Lindeberg

A number of the most senior members of Sweden’s government, including the prime minister, have been caught apparently ignoring their own covid guidelines.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and Justice Minister Morgan Johansson were among those named in Swedish media this week for seeming to flout restrictions they insist must be followed if the country is to rein in the coronavirus.

Lofven went Christmas shopping in a mall without a face mask after explicitly appealing to Swedes to avoid such excursions ahead of the festive season. His spokesman has acknowledged the trip took place, which he says was “carefully planned” to avoid unnecessary risks.

The development adds a layer of potential embarrassment to Sweden’s handling of the covid crisis. The country initially defended its no-lockdown strategy, before backtracking in recent weeks amid a resurgence of cases that threatens to overwhelm its health-care system. Lofven is now trying to persuade parliament to give him the power to impose a full lockdown.

The government has already seen confidence in its covid strategy sink, with even King Carl XVI Gustaf delivering a rare rebuke for Sweden’s failure to contain the death toll. About 8,500 Swedes have died of covid-19, roughly seven times as many as in neighboring Denmark.

Lofven’s shopping trip lit up Twitter, with several of Sweden’s best known political commentators warning that the incident risks denting his credibility among voters.

“Who should follow the rules if not even the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice do so?” Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s biggest morning newspaper, wrote in an editorial published Tuesday evening.

Other government members have also reportedly engaged in conduct that breached covid guidelines, including Sweden’s Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson, Aftonbladet reported on Wednesday. According to the newspaper, she was seen in a ski rental shop in the popular Swedish winter resort of Salen, which is on the list of destinations the National Health Authority has warned against visiting.

With infection rates spreading since the fall, Lofven has had to step up his rhetoric entreating his countrymen to “refrain from staying in indoor environments such as shops, shopping centers.” Last month, he reminded Swedes “how dangerous” such conduct is.

At a briefing this month, Lofven said, “I hope and I think that everyone in Sweden understands the seriousness” of the situation.

A spokesman for Lofven said his Christmas shopping tours included purchases of alcohol and a present for his wife. He also visited a shop that fixes watches and looked for spare parts for his razor. His most recent known shopping trip was on Dec. 23.

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Germany’s new virus deaths surpass 1,000 for the first time

InternationalDec 31. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Daniel Schaefer, Raymond Colitt

Germany’s daily coronavirus deaths surpassed 1,000 for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, underscoring the urgency facing Europe’s leaders to slow the spread and roll out vaccines.

There were 1,122 fatalities in the 24 hours through Wednesday morning, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Along with the mounting death toll, the number of Covid-19 patients in German intensive care units has risen steadily, prompting warnings that the health-care system could become overburdened.

Germany joined its European Union partners in rolling out vaccinations last weekend, but officials have said it will take months for the program to have a tangible impact on contagion rates. Europe’s largest economy has so far inoculated almost 42,000 people, according to data from the RKI public health institute.

On Tuesday, the EU agreed to trigger an option to buy an extra 100 million doses of the shot developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE. Vaccines from other producers will follow once they’ve been approved, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter.

Europe has become an epicenter of the pandemic, with more than 400,000 coronavirus-related deaths and 16.2 million infections.

The rise in Germany’s fatalities comes as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government considers extending a hard shutdown that was imposed in December. Schools and non-essential stores remain shuttered until Jan. 10, but senior politicians have urged prolonging at least some of the measures.

Karl Lauterbach, a health expert for the ruling Social Democrats, on Wednesday warned that if the virus numbers aren’t slashed to around 25 per 100,000 people over 7 days, the risks will multiply. The current figure is 141.

If the situation doesn’t improve, “we’ll go from one lockdown to the next and then we have the risk of mutations against which vaccines may not work perfectly,” Lauterbach said on ZDF television.

While some countries in the region are gradually relaxing measures to contain the virus, others are still tightening curbs. Ireland’s government is set to announce new restrictions on Wednesday. Among the measures under consideration are the closure of non-essential retail and the reintroduction of a five-kilometer (three-mile) limit on travel from home. Bars and restaurants have already been shuttered.

Authorities are also grappling with ways to ensure widespread uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine. In Italy, where restrictions were severely tightened for most of the Christmas period, cases and deaths have declined sharply from the highs recorded in November. However, concerns are growing over delays and mishaps in the vaccination campaign.

Around 8,000 people have received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine so far, and the country is behind schedule in hiring personnel and preparing the logistics for mass inoculation.

France is having even less success in the face of strong anti-vaccination sentiment across the country. Less than 100 people have been given a shot, according to the government. It’s target is to administer 1 million doses by the end of February, Health Minister Olivier Veran said late Tuesday.

On Monday, Spain became the fourth European country to record more than 50,000 coronavirus deaths. An initiative to track people who refuse to get inoculated could help the hard-hit country regain trust in its tourism sector, which was linked to the spread of the coronavirus after rules were relaxed in the summer.

For its part, Germany has recorded just over 32,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic. In the 24 hours through Wednesday morning, the number of infections rose by another 19,466, bringing the total to more than 1.69 million.

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Britain grants emergency approval to coronavirus vaccine by Oxford and AstraZeneca

InternationalDec 31. 2020

By The Washington Post · William Booth, Karla Adam

LONDON – Britain on Wednesday became the first country to grant approval for a homegrown coronavirus vaccine from the University of Oxford and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, adding a second shot to the fight against a surging outbreak, driven here by a new, highly infectious variant of the virus.

British Health Minister Matt Hancock said clinical trials have proved the new vaccine is safe and effective, but he did not say how effective.

Although Hancock called the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine a “game-changer,” Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which approved the vaccine for distribution, did not immediately present its data.

Researchers from the Oxford-AstraZeneca team earlier this month published interim results from clinical trials that showed their vaccine was 62% effective for volunteers who were given two full doses and 90% effective for a smaller subgroup who received a half dose followed by a full dose.

Doubts have been raised over how robust the half-dose data is. The Oxford scientists said they were studying why the different regimens produced such different results.

Britain badly needs another vaccine to meet its ambitious goal to inoculate most of the country’s population by the spring.

With the virus spreading rapidly, and two-thirds of Britain now in near-lockdown, Hancock said Wednesday that the goal is to inject as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, with the first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine. A second dose will be given later, within three months. The idea is that the first dose provides enough protection to warrant waiting longer than the usual 21 days between shots.

“In the data, the scientists and the regulators have found the immunity comes from around two weeks after the first dose, and then the second dose should be taken up to 12 weeks later to give you that long-term protection,” Hancock said.

“This means we can spend the first three months vaccinating people with the first doses, getting them that immunity, getting people protection quicker than we possibly could have done otherwise,” he said.

Hancock said having two vaccines means the government now has “a very high degree of confidence that we can be out of this by spring.”

Britain earlier this month approved the coronavirus vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German company BioNTech, becoming the first Western country to authorize mass inoculations.

The United Kingdom has injected some 600,000 people with the Pfizer vaccine, but experts say the government must ramp up quickly, to inoculate 2 million people a week – 10 times the current rate – if it wants to beat back the pandemic quickly.

Britain has ordered 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The company says it can deliver 40 million doses by the end of March, with a million doses arriving almost immediately.

The government plans to start inoculating people with the AstraZeneca vaccine on Monday, with residents of nursing homes, health-care workers and people over 80 at the front of the line. There are plans to deliver the vaccine in mass immunization centers, such as sporting arenas and convention halls.

“Today is an important day for millions of people in the U.K. who will get access to this new vaccine,” said Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca. “It has been shown to be effective, well-tolerated, simple to administer and is supplied by AstraZeneca at no profit.”

Soriot told BBC Radio that his company can deliver 2 million doses a week and that the vaccine produces a “good level of protection” after the first of two doses.

If Britain gives the second dose two to three months after the first, “that enables us to protect many more people,” Soriot said.

He said scientists believe the AstraZeneca vaccine will be effective against the new variant detected in Britain. Clinical trials, however, were carried out before new mutation was established in the population.

Public health officials say there is much to recommend the new vaccine, as it costs as little as $3 a dose, is relatively easy to manufacture at huge scale and does not require special handling or deep freezers to store or transport.

The Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective but requires special handling and must be kept in special freezers and dry ice at extremely low temperatures.

The health secretary conceded that the need to keep the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in special freezers has “made it more challenging to get out, especially to some of the smaller care homes, and those limitations aren’t there for this Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the approval of the new vaccine was “truly fantastic news – and a triumph for British science,” adding that “we will now move to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible.”

The news comes amid a spike in coronavirus cases driven by the new variant of the virus, which appears to be 50% more transmissible. British hospitals currently have more coronavirus patients than they did when the first wave gripped the country in April.

On Tuesday, Britain recorded more than 53,000 cases – the highest in a single day. Over 40% of the population is living under the highest tier of restrictions, and the government is expected to announce new restrictions later in the day.

Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told the BBC that the pandemic this year was “like being in a blizzard.”

“We’ve been really struggling uphill through snow drifts with this icy wind in our faces, and I think this morning we do have some respite with this good news and the warmth that that brings,” he said.

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Earthquake aftershocks rock Croatia as teams search for survivors

InternationalDec 31. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jasmina Kuzmanovic, Jan Bratanic

Rescuers raced to search for survivors amid strong aftershocks after Croatia’s worst earthquake in 140 years killed seven people and devastated cities and towns in one of the nation’s poorest regions.

The 6.3-magnitude tremor on Tuesday damaged most of the buildings near its epicenter in Petrinja, a town of 25,000 people, rendering them unusable and their inhabitants homeless, authorities said.

The victims included a 13-year-old girl and a father and son who died together. Twenty-six people were injured, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said.

The temblor, which rattled Europeans as far away as Rome and Vienna, was more powerful than both a 5.2 quake on Monday and a similar-sized tremor that caused $6 billion in damage when it hit the capital of Zagreb in March.

Aftershocks, including two measuring 4.8 and 4.6, hit the area before dawn on Wednesday, according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre.

“This morning we were hit by the third, if not the fourth earthquake,” Petrinja Mayor Darinko Dumbovic said on state TV’s Good Morning show. “Everything that has not yet fallen is falling from the ruins of Petrinja.”

The disaster adds to an already difficult year for the Adriatic European Union member state, which is still busy repairing the 20,000 buildings damaged during the March quake while also tackling one of the bloc’s worst surges in coronavirus cases and a record economic recession.

Plenkovic vowed the government will repair the damage, the extent of which hasn’t been estimated yet. While the government abolished a virus-triggered ban on movement between counties so those whose homes were destroyed could stay with relatives, he urged people to continue following social-distancing guidelines.

“We are appealing to people to stick to epidemiological measures,” Plenkovic told reporters. “We still have a problem with the coronavirus pandemic.”

Authorities evacuated the damaged hospital in the nearby city of Sisak, the region’s largest, taking patients to Zagreb. Buildings were also damaged in the capital, about 50-kilometers away.

Petrinja was demolished in the 1991-1995 war for independence from former Yugoslavia. The damage on Tuesday resulted in collapsed facades and caved-in roofs that resembled the damage from the war, as many citizens spent the night by open fires outside.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the temblor was the nation’s strongest since the advent of modern seismic instrumentation, which began to gain prevalence in the 1880s.

The government set aside an initial 120 million kuna ($19.4 million) in relief funds, Plenkovic said. Both Hungary and Slovenia said they were sending support, while Janez Lenarcic, the EU’s commissioner for disaster relief, will arrive in Croatia on Wednesday. He said the bloc was sending help today including winter tents, electric heaters, sleeping bags, and pre-made housing.

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Coronavirus vaccine from China’s Sinopharm is 79% effective, company says

InternationalDec 31. 2020

A coronavirus model is displayed next to boxes for vaccines at an exhibit by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinopharm in Beijing on Sept. 5. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)

By The Washington Post · Lily Kuo

TAIPEI, Taiwan – A coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese drugmaker Sinopharm is 79.3% effective in protecting people from covid-19, according to interim data released by the company on Wednesday, paving the way for millions of Chinese vaccines to enter the global market.

China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a subsidiary of state-owned Sinopharm, said the results were based on interim analysis from Phase 3 trials. In a brief statement posted on the website of the CNBG unit, Beijing Institute of Biological Products, the company did not give key details, including the sample size tested or number of infections in the trial.

The company said the two-shot vaccine proved “safe” and that those who received it produced a high level of antibodies against the virus.

As coronavirus cases continue to surge globally, a massive emergency vaccination drive is underway with drug developers and governments racing to get their vaccines approved. On Wednesday, the British government said its regulator had approved a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca for emergency use.

The Sinopharm vaccine appears to be less effective than those developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, which have shown an efficacy rate of 95%. The rate announced by Sinopharm is also lower than the 86% efficacy reported by officials in the United Arab Emirates after clinical trials of the vaccine conducted there.

The development bolsters China’s public health diplomacy drive. China has held up its vaccines as a key part of its partnerships with developing countries, many of which have struggled to buy supplies of other newly released vaccines.

“China’s attention is not on ‘vaccine race,’ let alone so-called ‘vaccine diplomacy,’ but on the common interests of all humanity,” the state-run Global Times said in a Dec. 14 editorial.

The Sinopharm vaccine uses an inactivated version of the virus to trigger an immune response, unlike the mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna that use new technology. It does not need to be frozen, making for easier storage and distribution.

Sinopharm has another vaccine in late-stage trials. Despite the lack of regulatory approval, its vaccines have already been used on hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens under an emergency use program for high-risk groups since July.

Officials plan to vaccinate 50 million people in the country by the middle of next month, before the Lunar Near Year holiday when hundreds of millions crisscross the country.

Chinese state media reported last week that drug regulators had formally accepted an application from the company for use of its vaccine among the general public. Sinopharm submitted an application for regulatory approval in November.