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In a year hornets were murdered Monoliths and Knife made from frozen human feces all made the headlines, for me those Story about a parallel universe in which time runs backwards was what stood out as the most bizarre thing.
When the story hit my (virtual) desk in May, the coronavirus had infected almost every corner of the planet. The cases had just exceeded 5 million. The deaths rose slowly. The idea that NASA had discovered a parallel universe that we could return to by 2019? That seemed perfect.
My editor tossed me a link to the story in Slack and counted down how long it would be before I labeled the story "total bullshit". It took 111 seconds. The headlines were wildly misleading and the story bordered on a complete make-up. I quickly wrote a piece and put the kibosh on it. Sorry, NASA Not discover a parallel universe ...
What I didn't realize at the time was how symbolic this story would be for 2020.
NASA didn't have to discover a parallel universe because we created our own. A pandemic pandemic that we can access at any time of the day. The portal can be found on every single mobile device, one of which is usually in the palm of your hand.
It's a place where the coronavirus doesn't exist. where masks and social distancing don't matter; where public health orders are ignored; where quacks are common; where 5G towers cause viral disease; where vaccines don't work and where science and technology are shunned and shamed.
As our pandemic year went on, the tiny gap between this world and ours was torn. Soon that fault line turned into a gaping schism. Misinformation, disinformation, and harmful lies spread faster and further than the truth.
"We know that every outbreak is accompanied by some kind of tsunami of information," Sylvie Briand, director of infection risk management for the World Health Organization's health emergencies program, told the Lancet in February. "The difference to social media is that this phenomenon is amplified."
The information ecosystem was quickly filling up with numbers, data, articles, and scientific reports. But it was conspiracy theories and coronavirus rejection that were rampant online, sometimes drowning out helpful advice and guidance from experts. Even heads of state were not immune to viral misinformation. Both Donald Trump and Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro said they would take hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 preventive, although there is no evidence of its effectiveness.
They ignored scientists and experts and hid in the upside down pandemic. Both would later become infected with the virus.
On the first day of 2020, Australia, where I live and work, woke up to the fire. On the eastern flanks, bushfires roared through houses, descended on cities, forcing residents to flee to the sea, to band together on the shore, or to band in boats. I will never forget the picture of 11-year-old Finn Marion holding on to the tiller of a motor boat, a curtain of orange smoke over the water behind him, his nose and mouth covered by a white face mask.
34 people were killed directly in the flames, 445 more from smoke inhalation, and many thousands more were hospitalized. Her lungs were hit by smog that settled over the major metropolitan areas of the country. The nightly news reports were nerve-wracking: houses flattened, families broken.
The relationship between fires and climate change is complex, but the scientific consensus is that global warming exacerbated the 2019-2020 fire season in Australia due to record heat and an unprecedented drought.
During the fires, misinformation quickly spread through social media. Then as now, a parallel universe opened up. One conspiracy theory suggested that leftist environmentalists had prevented "burns to reduce hazards" to remove fuel from forest floors. It was wrong. Another arsonist was responsible for the flames. Wrong again. The theories have expanded into the mainstream media. And our political leaders, such as Australian Home Secretary Peter Dutton, quoted these misleading or bogus reports of arson.
Confusion and doubt had arisen in the background of the environmental crisis since September 2019, but when the fires really hit by the end of the year, our guides grabbed the fire hose and turned the valve all the way up. The trickle turned into a flood.
At the end of last year I wrote that the answer was to the climate crisis Not OK. Living in Australia, breathing in the smoke and watching people's whole lives as ash in the wind, that description was probably a little generous.
"Science and technology die of slow death and the belief is undermined by politicians trying to score points over their opposition," I wrote at the time. And it felt like that.
But then something unexpected happened with COVID. In Australia, our guides listened to the scientists they ignored during the bush fire emergency. The response wasn't perfect, but it was completely different from the beginning of 2020. More importantly, the public listened and understood how deadly this disease could be. By the end of the year, Australia's response to the pandemic is considered one of the best in the world. Clusters of new cases have emerged that have been wiped out by strict lockdowns.
Science has helped lead the world through an excruciating year.
Less than 12 months after discovering a new infectious disease, Scientists mobilized and perfected a revolutionary new vaccine technology This is safe and effective. overcoming the logistical challenges of deliverythese vaccines could end the pandemic. A mammoth achievement.
And scientists and researchers have intensified elsewhere as well. Some made the leap from lab resident to online influencer by knocking down bullshit tweets like flies and crushing Facebook conspiracy theories under their feet. You have fought valiantly against the deluge of misinformation. We reached out to them when we knew very little, and they set a course ahead of us. We knew what to do because we listened.
Nevertheless, a climate emergency threatens on the way out of the pandemic. Another type of crisis routinely ignored by executives around the world. Will they keep ignoring science? Or will we learn from this moment?
Misinformation has never been more common than in 2020. While many listened and our faith in science is strong, many turned away completely. They hid in the upside down pandemic, shrouded in conspiracies. Misinformation has broken us, divided us, played us off against each other. We fought over toilet paper and fought in shopping malls. It undermined our trust in science and unnecessarily made our response to the pandemic, driving cases and deaths higher and higher.
NASA may not have discovered a parallel universe this year, but we built our own. To tackle the greatest crisis of our time, it must be closed.
