“a lot of branded material had already been produced.” The same considerations no
doubt apply to Expo 2020 and the 2020 Olympics.
A sense of déjà vu is already setting in, and 2021 has not even started yet. In July 20 19
Tokyo held a celebration to mark the one-year countdown to its big Olympic moment.
There were fireworks, celebrities and an unveiling of the medals to be awarded at the
games the following year. But the only thing that happened 366 days later was a 15-
minute event in an empty stadium to mark, well, another year to the 2020 Olympics.
Call it a twice-in-a-lifetime experience.
In cricket, the 2020 Twenty20 World Cup has been moved to 2021, causing anguish to
fans of linguistic reduplication everywhere (Twenty20 is a shortened form of the game
involving 20 overs for each team). Worse still, the original 2020 Twenty20, which was
to have been played in Australia, will be held in India instead—whereas the 2021 series,
to have been played in India, will occur in Australia in 2022. It is almost as confusing as
the rules of cricket. Almost.
Live music has been affected, too. Among the many stars who have had to postpone
tours by a year are Pearl Jam, Green Day and Alanis Morissette, on her “Jagged Little Pill”
25th-anniversary tour. As if switching between 2020 and 2021 were not taxing enough,
it is strange to be reminded that some people still live in 1995. Meanwhile, on the Isle of
Wight, a quirky English holiday spot and festival venue, the “Experience 1970 Festival”
was postponed, too—proving that time travel never quite works out as intended.
It is not just fun stuff that has been put off to a later date. The 2nd Global Policy Forum
on Memory of the World, which was originally scheduled for May 2020, has been
postponed—no one can say until when. An interdisciplinary conference on “Confronting
Evil”, planned for June 2020, is “under review”.
Then there is politics, which never stops. Londoners who had hoped to ignore the 2020
mayoral elections will now have to extend their apathy for a further year. Hong Kongers
preparing to vote in the city’s legislative-council elections will have had a particularly
rough 12 months in which to make up their minds. And Somalis, having gone 51 years
without elections based on the universal franchise, will have to wait yet another year.
No doubt 2020 will be chiefly remembered for the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. Yet
here, too, the year gets short shrift. Like the absent father whose only contribution is
one night of transmission and a surname, 2019 escaped the consequences, but left
behind its legacy: covid-19 is so named because it was brought to the World Health
Organisation’s attention on the last day of that year.
Let’s try that again
Even the very name of the virus evokes déjà vu. Back in 2002-03 the world confronted
severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. It was confined to fewer than 9,000 cases
by 2004, and has happily not been heard of again. The virus that causes covid-19 is
SARS-CoV- 2 —one of those unpopular sequels that nobody asked for.
Yet that also offers some reason for cheer. Humanity has already beaten a deadly
coronavirus once. It can surely do so again, albeit on a bigger budget and with more