As seen from Earth, the planets Jupiter and Saturn will be close in the sky on the December solstice, closer than they have been for 400 years; an apt astrological coda, for a year of great change. Closer to home, Japanese probe Hayabusa2 brought back mineral samples from near-earth asteroid Ryugu, and Chinese probe Chang'e-5 brought back soil and rock from the near side of the moon. On Earth itself, the northern hemisphere winter has produced new waves of coronavirus, from Japan and South Korea to Europe and North America; but vaccines are now on the march too.
India, the world's leading vaccine manufacturer and the only country other than the USA with over 10 million recorded cases of coronavirus, apparently plans to vaccinate all 250 million of its over-50s. It will be mass-producing Russia's Sputnik V vaccine and AstraZeneca's "Oxford vaccine", among others. Half of the latter will be for India, half for poor countries.
In the wealthy countries, Pfizer's mRNA-based vaccine is the most popular choice, but currently requires expensive refrigerated storage. China's Sinovac vaccine is easier to distribute, with buyers in south-east Asia and the Middle East, and will also be made in Brazil.
Along with their often severe economic consequences, the coronavirus lockdowns had political consequences too. It's plausible that without coronavirus, Trump would have had a second term in the USA (Pfizer delayed the announcement of successful tests until after the election; whether this affected the outcome, I can't say). In Ethiopia, elections were officially delayed but the Tigray region, formerly dominant in Ethiopian politics, held a vote anyway, leading to the occupation of Tigray by the Ethiopian national army. In Brazil, support for president Bolsonaro actually rose among the poor, thanks to an emergency voucher program.
The world began to prepare for the restoration of Democratic Party rule in the USA. The RCEP economic treaty went ahead with China and without India. One of the architects of Brexit, Dominic Cummings, lost his position as adviser to the UK's prime minister. With the prospect of Obama's Iran nuclear deal being revived, the leader of Iran's nuclear program was assassinated.
Turkey continued its new activism in old Ottoman territories, this time helping Azerbaijan to reclaim Armenian territories in a short war ended by the deployment of Russian peacekeepers. Along with allies Malaysia and Pakistan, Turkey also protested Macron's new campaign against Islamic radicalism inside France.
In China, the 14th Five Year Plan (2021-2025) was unveiled, promoting a long-anticipated shift in economic strategy from exports to internal development. The Communist Party curbed the power of tech tycoon Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba (China's Amazon), cancelling the stock market listing of his online payment platform, and raising the issue of Chinese youth getting into debt with online lenders. In India, Arnab Goswami, a top pro-Modi TV journalist, was briefly arrested in a power play by the Shiv Sena, a Hindu party with influence in Bollywood; and Sikh farmers from Punjab blockaded the national capital, to protest an agricultural reform bill.
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