The Year That Stopped the World: A Look Back at 2020 Much of the world spent its time indoors and isolated from each other for the majority of 2020 as a new, highly transmissible virus swept into every corner of everyday life Published December 16, 2020 • Updated on December 23, 2020 at 9:31 am Published December 16, 2020 • Updated on December 23, 2020 at 9:31 am On the last day of 2019, a year so filled with news of Jeffrey Epstein, raging wildfires scorching the Amazon basin and the third presidential impeachment in United States history that most were ready to shake the dust off for a fresh start, the World Health Organization reported new, mysterious cases of pneumonia discovered in China’s Wuhan City.