2020 was the appropriate year to use the Latin expression annus horribilis, since it was a shitty year for almost everyone, something we didn't have for a very long time. Of course the jury's still out in regards to 2021 but we're only now completing the first quarter...
The truth is that in spite of COVID-19 appearing in the of 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus sequencing only occurred in January 2020, it was also during January that it spreaded all over the world and by the end of that month it reached Europe (at least officially; there are reports of people dying from a very similar disease before but only confirmed later when they analysed again the samples collected and stored back then). In February it was also the time I started writing about the epidemic (it wasn't a pandemic at the time), when it started to "explode" in Italy, when the first official COVID death occurred in Europe and when it arrived here in The Netherlands. And in March it arrived in Portugal (my homeland), the first person died here in The Netherlands and when it all began for me and for real, the whole trifecta of pandemic/isolation/quarantine.
