Tea with 2020

🍵 Though it's still not over , 2 more days are yet to go by I decided to do this today. *Serves tea*

Welcome to an exclusive interview with the most scandalous year. 2020!

Me: So much hatred and toxicity , being titled as the worst year, a cancelled year , the one that took away lives. 2020…! How have you been so far?

2020 : **sips tea nervously without making an eye contact*. I started off with Australian bushfire or black summer. It took as many as 500 million animal lives in Australian continent.

In few days Persian gulf crisis resulted in killing of 176 people on Ukraine international flight 752 by Iran's armed forces mistakenly.

On jan 18 Yemeni civil war took lives of 111 soldiers and 5 civilians in a drone and missile attack.

By this time I was already showing the symptoms of possible serial killer. But these were year to year events. The lives of people around me was almost unstirred and undisturbed.. I was welcomed as the end of a remarkable decade and people were excited for me.

It was the end of this first month that The World Health Organization (WHO) declares the outbreak of a disease as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the sixth time that this measure has been invoked since 2009. Imagine being this lucky to be picked. I had heard from my seniors (Mr.2000s and Mrs.1990s and Miss 1980s) that how such events keep coming and going. I recalled the events my colleagues told me about , the year 1981 with HIV, year 2002 with SARS-Cov and 2009-2010 with H1N1 flu. I wondered whom I'll be with. The World Health Organization (WHO) named the disease COVID-19. This is where it all begins. The crumbling of my existence and of stock market. The end of February saw the worst week of index since 2008 market crash.

Meanwhile in India , Riots were reported in parts of Delhi, leading to 53 deaths and over 200 injuries. Over 2,000 people were arrested as a result. Syrian civil war kills 33 Turkish soldiers and NATO meeting is called to give solidarity. U.S. to begin gradually withdrawing troops from Afghanistan on March 10 after treaty with Taliban.

Italy places 16 million people in quarantine, more than a quarter of its population, in a bid to stop the spread of COVID-19. A day later, the quarantine is expanded to cover the entire country.

As if this was not enough. The economy too starts failing people. International share prices fall sharply in response to a Russo-Saudi oil price war and the impact of COVID-19. The World Health Organization declares the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on march 11.The worldwide death toll from COVID-19 surpasses 10,000 as the total number of cases reaches a quarter of a million on 20th.

Me: *amazed by how precisely 2020 remembers everything* You seem to have memorized it all.

2020: Oh no I just like to reflect on my actions by visiting my Wikipedia page once in while. *Chuckles*

Me: I am having a vague memory of mid march when my college classes were dismissed. I was so excited as my exams were approaching and they too got cancelled.

2020: You see I wasn't as bad as people made me in the beginning. The Blame-Game was yet to start. After India went into complete lockdown. The 2020 Japan Olympics were suspended. Global COVID-19 cases reached 500,000 with 23000 deaths confirmed. US surpassed China and Italy in total no. of cases.

And when this was not enough, China reports 130 asymptomatic cases of COVID-19, its first reported asymptomatic cases. Japan declares state of emergency. Ebola is reported again in Congo.

People were so free they started relation covid with 5G in conspiracy theories . YouTube announced it will suspend any videos claiming the above mentioned. Now was the time people wished me to end soon. To go back, to pass by fast. And then came alien theories. The Pentagon formally releases three videos of "unidentified aerial phenomena" encountered by U.S. Navy pilots.

In the first half global death toll from COVID-19 exceeded 300,000.

Me: We will be right back with the second half of the interview.

*Commercial break*

Ad: *shows sanitizers *

Ad: *shows masks*