It's been almost a year since we started hunkering down in our homes waiting for the virus to go away. In times of uncertainty we turn to the news for reassurances about the future, and it's not the messenger's fault if those reassurances don't arrive as readily as we want them to. We still pay attention, and here are some things that caught my attention in 2020:
Media story of the year: Public response to COVID-19
When trying to explain why Japan has not suffered the same disastrous rates of coronavirus infection and attendant fatalities seen in Europe and the United States, domestic media have sometimes overreached for cultural indicators. Masks? Hardly uniquely Japanese. A spoken language with fewer plosives? Give me a break. "Mindo"? Does anyone really know what that means? The best they've come up with is a Japanese tendency to think that what's good for your neighbor is good for yourself. Again, such a tendency is not distinctly Japanese, but it's as good a cultural explanation as you're going to get.