‘I will survive’
2020 slinks off into history as fireworks light deserted streets
FIREWORKS soared into the sky above the Sydney Opera House, but the harbour below was a deserted ghost town, a fittingly creepy send-off for a year that will not be missed.
No light show illuminated Beijing from the top of the TV tower. St Peter’s in Rome was nearly empty for vespers. London’s Trafalgar Square, Moscow’s Red Square, Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and New York’s Times Square were all barricaded off.
Good riddance, 2020. Hello, 2021.
While some cities would launch fireworks over empty streets, others, such as London and Singapore, called their displays off. Paris, Rome and Istanbul were under curfew.
New York’s countdown ball was set to drop on Broadway. But in place of hundreds of thousands of people jammed shoulder-to-shoulder in Times Square, the audience would be a few dozen preselected key workers –– including nurses, doctors, a grocery store worker and a pizza delivery man –– their families kept six feet (2m) apart in socially distanced pens.
Organisers booked Gloria Gaynor to sing her disco classic I Will Survive. (Lyrics: You think I’d crumble? You think I’d lay down and die? Oh no, not I!)
“It’s going to be actually, arguably, the most special, the most poignant, the most moving New Year’s Eve,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, who will push the button to start the crystal’s ball descent, told reporters.
“In 2021, we’re going to show people what it looks like to recover, to come back.”
With more than 1.7 million people dead and 82 million infected around the globe since last New Year’s Eve –– yet hope emerging that new vaccines can help tame the pandemic –– the year ended unlike any other in memory.
Angela Merkel, in her 16th New Year’s Eve address as German chancellor, said as much: “I think I am not exaggerating when I say: never in the last 15 years have we found the old year so heavy. And never have we, despite all the worries and some scepticism, looked forward to the new one with so much hope.”
China’s President Xi Jinping said the year’s extraordinary hardship had allowed people to demonstrate their resilience: “Only in hard times can courage and perseverance be manifested. Only after polishing can a piece of jade be finer”.