Do you remember how in 2012, everybody was convinced humanity was going to come to its end? There was even a movie released called ​2012, ​that was all about how the world was going to end that year (granted, it’s only got a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes). Thankfully it didn’t and we’re all still here, but 2020 has really felt like the year the world was going to end. This year’s been rough on all of us, so here’s a list of 10 things that have gone wrong in 2020, in (kind of) chronological order.

1. World War 3 Scare
The United States really decided to start off this year with a bang. On January 2, Trump ordered a drone strike to kill Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian general. The Pentagon said he did this to ‘protect US personnel abroad,’ but it in turn made many Americans feel unsafe. It’s not every day that the leader of your country decides to blow up an army general of another one. It came with great memes on Twitter, but underneath all the jokes was a genuine fear of a third world war. But hey, it hasn’t happened yet, so I guess that’s one good thing that happened (or didn’t) in 2020.

2. Coronavirus!
How could this be a list of bad things that happened in 2020 without the queen herself? On January 7, the World Health Organization was officially notified of Coronavirus, although cases were first reported in November 2019. At the time we thought it only existed in China, and well, we’ve seen how this has turned out. Currently there are about 3.94 million cases worldwide, with 1.32 million in the USA alone, and our economy is struggling.

3. Kobe and Gigi
January 26 was honestly a really sad day for me. Waking up and seeing the news that Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna had both passed away in a helicopter crash really hurt. I’m not a big fan of sports now, but with my whole family being from LA, I grew up watching the Lakers with my dad and cheering on Kobe. My dad only bought Lakers merchandise with Kobe on it. I have ​baby clothes w​ ith Kobe’s number on it. So yeah, January 26 was really unexpected and still hurts to think about.

4. Iowa Caucus Results Delayed
This was more annoying and frustrating than it was upsetting. The Iowa Caucus is basically the first official vote for Americans to support a candidate. It wasn’t completely clear what kind of result we could expect, but we still expected ​something.​ Instead, results were delayed for weeks due to the Iowa Democratic Party saying they performed ‘quality control.’ Whatever that means, it took far too long for us to get the official result.

5. Australia Fires Still Burning
The fires started burning in September of 2019, but they still continued to burn throughout the first two months of 2020. In February, Mountain Ridge had a fundraiser that went towards Australian bushfire relief. On February 15, more than 46 million acres of land were burned. The impact of the bushfires was about $2.4 million USD, and more than a billion animals were estimated to be killed.

6. Social Distancing
Starting around the 2nd week of March for the United States, we started social distancing. Schools closed, many people lost their jobs, events have been cancelled, and we can’t go see our friends. I don’t really know if this can be classified as one of the worst things of 2020, because it’s supposed to help us, but it definitely isn’t fun.

7. Stock Market Drop
On March 16, the Dow dropped 2997 points, which is about 9.7%. This triggered a 15 minute trading halt, which may not sound like much, but in terms of economics, that’s incredibly alarming, especially for a place like the United States. This was due to fears surrounding the Coronavirus, and was the sharpest drop since 1987.

8. Bernie Sanders Dropped Out
Maybe this is too opinionated, but this whole list is my opinion, so I can say that Bernie Sanders dropping out was pretty upsetting to me, personally. Sanders was really the only politician I felt I could trust – he’s been fighting for the people since around 1963, where he was arrested at a civil rights march in Chicago. He’s a real one, but people somehow decided Joe Biden was the better choice.

9. Eastern Africa Locust Swarm
Although we don’t hear about it much, right now, in Eastern Africa, there are deadly locust swarms. They’ve been going on for a few months, but are still just as much of an issue. This was the largest swarm east Africa has seen in 30 years, and 70 years for Kenya specifically. The swarms threaten the food security of around 25 million Africans, and along with this, there was dangerous flooding that just occured there last week.

10. Murder Hornets
Murder Hornets have just recently arrived to the United States! Originally from Asia, these are the biggest hornet species, and the female hornet can grow up to an inch and a half. They’ve been nicknamed as murder hornets because they’re known to go into beehives and rip the heads off of honeybees, whose populations are already struggling. Just another thing to worry about, I guess.
There are plenty of other things that went wrong i. 2020 so far, but we can’t name them allz So, there are just a few more honorable mentions:

– United Kingdom leaving the EU
Brexit has finally happened, and the UK has officially left the European Union. Of course, this is just another political opinion, but a lot of people are afraid of what this will mean for the future of the United Kingdom, now that the country has left the economic and political union.

– 2020 Summer Olympics Postponed
This year, the Summer Olympics were supposed to be held in Tokyo, Japan. Like most other events, this is due to COVID-19. It’s too dangerous to have so many people travelling to one place. For the athletes, it means one more year they’ll have to keep training to compete. The Olympics are supposed to be held on July 23, 2021.

– Celebrities Singing Imagine
Maybe I’m a party pooper. But to me, celebrities making a video of them singing the lyric, ‘imagine no possessions’ while they sit in their million dollar mansions is ​incredibly​ tone deaf. It’s essentially a compilation of rich people saying to the middle and lower class: don’t worry, we’re all in this together! When clearly, we’re not, as lower income communities are the ones that are being hit the hardest by COVID-19. We are not all in the same boat when their money can save them and so many people don’t have the money to take care of themselves. Maybe next time, they should donate to an actual cause instead of singing a song that does nothing; we need solutions, not a song being sung to us like we’re babies.

This year has felt unreal – and not in a good way. I feel like so many unexpected and upsetting things have happened the past 4 months, that nothing will phase me anymore. In fact, I saw a video of a monkey on a motorcycle pulling around a kid, and I felt nearly no shock from it. My mind feels like a battle hardened soldier, honestly. The best thing I can do to get any form of serotonin around here is play Animal Crossing and think about how fun everything will be when social distancing is over. It seems like rock bottom, so we can only go up from here, I guess!