Editorial: The scary year that was 2020

The Tribune-Review editorial from Jan. 1, 2020, could have been prophecy.

The headline has proven to be an undeniable truth: “2020 promises wild ride.”

“If 2019 seemed like a roller coaster, hurtling to the peak of one local, state, national or global event after another before veering wildly off in a different direction or plunging down to an unsatisfying resolution, well, buckle your seat belts, keep your hands and arms inside the car at all times and, please, no flash photography,” the editorial read.

We then rattled off a number of things on the horizon. That’s where it became less accurate, because 364 days ago, it seemed like the big national topics that loomed over the coming year would be the presidential election, the Olympics and impeachment.

One out of three isn’t bad, right?

No one was really thinking about the disease that was barely a blip on the radar. Although pandemics had been an emergency management and medical boogeyman for years, they always seemed somehow remote here in Pennsylvania. No one will think that again.

In January, editorials hit topics as big as overdose deaths and as local as Hempfield tax assessment. They were as varied as guns and hazing and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

And on Feb. 1, we mentioned the coronavirus for the first time.

For two weeks, we went back to the state budget and littering and school prayer. Then our first use of the term “covid-19” appeared on the opinion page. We were still two weeks away from what would appear to be the first covid deaths in the United States. We later would discover they already had occurred when that second editorial was published.

For the next 10 months, we have not gone 14 days without using the words “coronavirus,” “covid” or “pandemic” in this space.

Sometimes it has been every day, with the disease and its side effects feeling like a spreading and unavoidable stain. It bled into schools and sports, government and free speech, government and law. Even when the editorials weren’t strictly about the pandemic, it crept in like a spider to hang out in the corners.

Covid postponed the Summer Olympics. The disease changed how we voted in the primary and complicated the general election.

Big stories happen. Stories that seem to change everything they touch are not uncommon, but 2020 gave us more than just the wild ride we expected on Jan. 1.

“If 2019 was a roller coaster, 2020 might be more river rapids — a bumpy ride that can swing in circles with unpredictable deluges that leave you gasping for breath, maybe a little giddy and maybe a little scared,” we said in that year-ago editorial.

We got that right.