2020 WAS NOT THE WORST YEAR EVER

Again, no Trump nor COVID-19, but I should comment on the Georgia Senate runoffs, with voting day being a week away on January 5.  

• About a third of the voters have cast early ballots, similar to the general election. 
• Voters so far in Georgia are 55 percent non-Hispanic white, 32 percent non-Hispanic Black and 13 percent of other races (or of unknown race). 
• My early viewpoint was that both Republicans would win, and the betting odds then favored them.  Today, still the same, although there has been a small trend in the Democratic direction.  Still, the two Republicans (with David Perdue even more so) remain solid favorites in the -150 to +150 range, meaning 60% chance for the Republican candidate and 40% for Democrat candidate.
• Here are some of the latest odds from bookmakers across the globe, as betting on elections is not allowed within the United States at legal wagering outlets. There is an exception domestically for sites such as PredictIt, which are exempted by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, but cap wagers at $850 per person.  

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  PredictIt is an online prediction market from New Zealand operated by Victoria University of Wellington.
• Democrats need to win both seats to regain control of the Senate, with Vice President Harris having the deciding vote.

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  As more Democrats tend to vote early than Republicans, the only hope for Democrats at this time is if there is a blizzard in Georgia on January 5.  There was one in 2014.
• Also, President Donald Trump is expected to campaign in Georgia on January 4.  If he comes, one wonders if he will do more harm than good for the Republican candidates.  (Shucks, I did mention him.)

TIME magazine's cover issue this past week said the WORST YEAR EVER.  2020 indeed was a terrible year, but not close to being the worst.

I would nominate the year 70,000 BC...or so:

• Mind you, this is controversial if it ever happened.
• Mount Toba in Indonesia erupted, 12 times larger than anything recent, cooled the surface of Earth by 3-5 C, and there is speculation that Homo sapiens dropped down to perhaps 40 breeding pairs.  If they had died, we would not be here today.

Those are a lot of lost lives, but keep in mind that today, there are around 140 million births/year, with "only" 55 million deaths.  We need 85 million more of them each year for zero population growth.

On other fronts, medieval scholar Michael McCormick nominates the year 536 because of another volcanic eruption, this one in Iceland, again cooling the planet.  A dense fog plunged most of the globe into darkness all year, into the next.

From Business Insider:

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  In 1348 the Black Death killed up to 200 million, when the total world population was only around 475 million.
• In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella killed half a million Muslim inhabitants in Spain and expelled its Jewish population.  She subsidized the voyage of Christopher Columbus, bringing diseases to the indigenous population, resulting in the demise of 90% the native American population.

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  Some say 1918, but it was 1919, after World War I, when in the USA Prohibition was introduced, bloody racial riots erupted across the country, with strikes crippling the county, and the nation was poised for a revolution.  More so, the Spanish Flu, beginning in 1918 and through 1920, infected 1/3 the population of the world and killed up to 100 million.  With more than four times that population, COVID-19 has only killed 1.8 million people.  Incidentally, the Asian Flu of 1957, which nobody remembers, with nearly 1/3 the population of today, killed more than a million.

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  World War II has to be on this list, and, perhaps 1943 might have been the worst of all.  Hitler was close to winning all of Europe, having killed off more than 1.3 million Jews by then, with the potential for an Atomic Bomb and missiles to carry them.  A famine just in the Bengal province killed 3 million that year.  In the Summer of 1943 there were 240 reports of interracial battles in cities and military bases in the U.S.  In all, when the war was over, 75 million had died.

What makes the COVID-19 Pandemic so serious was the worldwide economic collapse.  Too many suffered too much for too long.  Propitiously, humanity has a way of surviving, leading to several vaccines that appear to be the solution.  The Year 2020 did not turn out to be what I expected, but for me, an almost enjoyable period of security and comfort in a safe cocoon.  2021 is less than three days away, and should be even better.  Make that much better.

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