Hope jostles with fear in US
(China Daily | Jan. 5. 2021) New leader is on the way, but wounds could take time to heal in a polarized nation
The year 2020 has passed into history with a series of cascading events in the United States ranging from racism protests to a traumatic presidential election－all played out against the backdrop of a deadly pandemic.
The past year will make itself felt in 2021 as a more divided country grapples with twin health and economic crises.
The US casualties from the novel coronavirus, which the nation’s scientists now believe first infected people there in mid-December 2019, had surged past 351,000 on the first days of 2021. That’s roughly one of every 1,000 residents, the most in the world for a single nation.
But the pandemic wasn’t the only event that shaped the year.
William Banks, distinguished professor emeritus at Syracuse University College of Law in New York, summed up 2020 in three phrases: COVID-19, racial justice, and democracy threatened.
The pandemic will mark 2020 as equivalent to 1918 when a similar pandemic killed huge numbers of people, Banks said.
“The lessons learned hopefully are preparedness, planning, and leadership,” he told China Daily. “The US lacked all three this year” …