PD Editorial: Looking ahead after an unprecedented year

If you’re reading this, the calendar has turned to 2021.

Allow us to salute you for enduring our global annus horribilis and welcome you to a new year that we hope and pray will be healthier and more prosperous for all.

A year ago on this date, our editorial summarized some of California’s new laws, one pundit cataloged his poor prognostications over the prior year, and another offered a not-so-daring prediction that the 2020 presidential campaign would be “even uglier” than the 2016 contest.

There was no mention of the coronavirus, which would be declared a global health crisis 30 days later and overshadow almost everything else for the remainder of the year.

With the arrival of effective vaccines, we begin the new year optimistic that, despite the current spike in infections, life will begin returning to normal within a few months. However, before we put 2020 in the rear-view mirror, let’s take note of some highlights from the past 12 months. Yes, there were a few.

We’ll start with the obvious — the expedited development of vaccines and the dedication of doctors, nurses and others who care for COVID patients, at times risking their own health because masks and other protection was in short supply.

Americans showed ingenuity, while saving many people’s livelihoods and maintaining a semblance of normal life, with adaptations such as curbside pickup from stores and turning streets over to pedestrians and al fresco dining.

And while masks became a new front in the cultural wars, the squabbling didn’t get in the way many examples of human kindness inspired by the pandemic, beginning with volunteer sewing circles that stepped up to help medical personnel when supplies of protective equipment fell short.

There was other news.

A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision protected gay and transgender Americans from employment discrimination.

On May 30, a manned space flight was launched from the United States for the first time since 2011, as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket carried astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the international space station.

Here in Santa Rosa, we celebrated some important milestones in the recovery from the cataclysmic Tubbs fire of 2017.

In Coffey Park, Staff Writer Austin Murphy reported, 92% of the 1,422 homes destroyed have been rebuilt, are under construction or ready to break ground. Russell Ernst, a homeowner in the neighborhood since 2008, described “a camaraderie, an esprit de corps, that wasn’t there before.”

Families are moving into new houses in Fountaingrove, Wikiup and other fire-scarred neighborhoods — a vision of revivals to come for those who lost homes in the Walbridge and Glass fires of 2020.

We are proud of our local tradition of civic engagement, displayed once again in 2020. In a year of record voter participation across the country, more than 20,000 new voters were added to the local roll between the March primary and the November general, when Sonoma County had the largest turnout in the state.

Like so many others, we are pleased that a new president, Joe Biden, will take office in 19  days and is promising a government as diverse as the nation he will lead and to rejoin global efforts to combat climate change.

We’re also pleased that our electoral system withstood President Donald Trump’s unfounded allegations of voter fraud and his baseless postelection lawsuits, setting the stage for Congress to formally accept the results on Wednesday, finally concluding the election cycle.

When we look back 12 months from now, we hope to find that the theme for 2021 is recovery — for our body politic, our economy and our health.

Happy New Year.

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