COVID. Surfside collapse. Haiti unrest. More COVID. Can we get a refund on 2021?
Can we get a refund on 2021?
We didn’t like 2020, either, for obvious reasons — cough, COVID — but we counted on 2021 being so much better with the arrival of not one but three vaccines to combat the novel coronavirus.
Many lined up for shots of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson in ways older folks haven’t done since camping out overnight outside Spec’s Music to buy concert tickets in the ‘80s.
We were going to see shows again.
And we did. Got our Harry Styles tickets for his Capital One Beach Bash at Lummus Park in Miami Beach last week.
Until we learned another letter in the Greek alphabet — omicron, the name given to the latest variant.
The first case of the new omicron variant of the coronavirus was reported in Miami-Dade on Dec. 10, bringing to three the total of known cases of the latest coronavirus strain in Florida. The other two omicron cases in Florida were confirmed earlier that week in Tampa Bay and St. Lucie County.
And then we didn’t need those Styles tickets. The show was canceled, leaving the sound of 2020 echoing in our head. Remember when Styles’ pre-Super Bowl concert in late January 2020 under a party tent on Miami’s Watson Island got canceled at the last moment thanks to a severe thunderstorm? The cheeky Brit singer is going to develop a complex about South Florida.
COVID-19, year two
▪ In April, the Miami Herald took readers “Inside the COVID Unit.” A year after the COVID-19 pandemic pummeled Florida in the spring of 2020, an onslaught of patients threatened to overwhelm South Florida’s medical system. Doctors and nurses at Jackson South started recording what happened inside the COVID unit at Jackson South: “The pain. The determination. The growing realization that this was unlike anything they had ever encountered.”
In December, the Miami Herald won two Suncoast Emmy Awards for “Inside the COVID Unit.”
▪ Centner Academy, a private school with campuses in Miami’s Design District and Edgewater, put South Florida in the national spotlight when it warned its staff in April against taking vaccines that prevent COVID-19, saying it will not employ anyone who has been inoculated. The announcement, first reported by the New York Times, left some parents, teachers and medical experts “aghast because it was presented as fact without citing any scientific evidence,” the Herald reported.
Leila Centner, who co-founded the school with husband David Centner, warned that vaccinated persons “may be transmitting something from their bodies” that could harm others, particularly the “reproductive systems, fertility, and normal growth and development in women and children.”
Centner Academy had also required that students who got vaccinated must quarantine at home for 30 days. But the private school walked back that decision in October after the Florida Department of Education threatened to cut its funding if its attendance policy was found to be against the law.
▪ A Florida woman caught on video coughing on a cancer patient at a Jacksonville Pier 1 store in the early days of the novel coronavirus pandemic in 2020 was sentenced in April by a Duval County Court judge. Debra Hunter was ordered to serve 30 days in jail, pay a $500 fine, serve six months’ probation, cover the costs of the victim’s COVID-19 test and undergo a mental health evaluation along with anger management, The Associated Press reported.
▪ Florida reported 46,923 new COVID cases on Dec. 29, the largest single-day increase of COVID cases since the pandemic began and nearly double the previous peak during the summer, when the deadly delta variant was surging, according to that day’s report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on Miami Herald calculations of CDC data. The state also surpassed four million COVID cases. Dec. 30 brought another record, when the state reported the largest multi-day increase of newly reported cases.
Lines for people seeking COVID tests once again grew to proportions not seen since the introduction of vaccines, which health experts still say is the best defense against serious consequences of catching the virus. Masks are back on, too, at year’s end.
But 2021 wasn’t all about COVID.
Many other things happened in South Florida that makes this such a, well, interesting news town.
Surfside building collapse
▪ We mourn the 98 lives lost when Surfside’s Champlain Towers South collapsed after 1 a.m. on June 24 — the deadliest catastrophic failure of an occupied residential building in modern U.S. history. And for the families of the victims who ranged in age from 1 to 92. And for the hundreds who lost their homes and lifetimes of keepsakes.
▪ One miracle. Only seven of the 105 people who were inside the section of the building that fell survived. One was Jonah Handler, 15, who was spotted in the rubble. He was caught between his mattress and bed frame. A tourist from Phoenix who just happened to be walking his dog nearby saw Jonah and alerted firefighters and rescue crews that someone had survived the fall.
Jonah’s mother, Stacie Fang, 54, with whom he had been sitting in his bedroom just moments earlier inside Unit 1002, did not survive. She died at Aventura Hospital and was the first casualty to be identified.
“He had a guardian angel for sure,” Jonah’s rescuer, tourist Nicholas Balboa told reporters.
▪ The Surfside investigation. “Champlain Towers South was poorly designed, even for the 1970s when the plans were originally drawn and codes were less rigorous, according to an analysis of building plans, applicable building codes and photos of the debris performed by the Miami Herald in consultation with four engineers and a general contractor,” one of several Miami Herald investigative pieces reported.
Another Herald investigation tapped witness accounts, visible damage and a computer model to gain insights into “how a pool deck failure propagated into the catastrophic failure at Champlain Towers.”
Assassination in Haiti, then earthquake
▪ Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated and his wife wounded during an armed attack in the early hours of July 7 at their private residence above the hills of Port-au-Prince. The killing and attack “plunged the Caribbean nation, already in the throes of a political crisis, into fresh uncertainty about its leadership,” the Herald reported.
▪ A 7.2 magnitude earthquake in the southwestern peninsula of Haiti on Aug. 14 destroyed houses, schools and businesses, killed at least 2,248 people and injured 12,763 people, according to an OCHA situation report in September. Search-and-rescue efforts in the hardest-hit areas concluded on Sept. 2; but more than 300 Haitians remained missing.
A couple days after the devastating earthquake, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry told the Miami Herald that there was one significant difference between the August 2021 earthquake in Haiti and the January 2010 one that destroyed parts of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
“It’s how the authorities are approaching it,” Henry said in an interview shortly after arriving from his second visit in two days to the southern region. “For example, of the aid that is coming, we are making sure that it passes through one door of entry.”
“Henry said it’s not that the government wants to stifle aid delivery, but it wants to avoid the waste, losses and uneven distributions that haunted both the January 2010 earthquake response and other disaster responses in Haiti,” the Herald reported.
Pandora Papers investigation
▪ Millions of leaked documents and the biggest journalism partnership in history uncovered financial secrets of 35 current and former world leaders, more than 330 politicians and public officials in more than 91 countries and territories, and a global lineup of fugitives, con artists and murderers, the Herald reported in the Pandora Papers, a December investigative feature.
Among the names: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Brazil’s economic minister, the King of Jordan, the presidents of Ukraine and Ecuador and the prime minister of the Czech Republic. “The files also detail financial activities of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “unofficial minister of propaganda” and more than 130 billionaires from the United States, Russia, India, Mexico and other nations.”
Latin pop music superstar Shakira’s name even was linked on the secret documents to offshore assets.
FBI agents killed
▪ Feb. 2 was the bloodiest day for the FBI since an April 1986 shootout near Suniland Mall in South Miami-Dade that killed two special agents.
In the latest shooting, two veteran agents were shot to death and three others wounded when a gunman opened fire from inside his home as FBI agents attempted to serve a search warrant at an apartment in Sunrise as part of a child-pornography probe.
The murders of agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger left the FBI reeling.
‘Acts of domestic terrorism’
▪ An early Sunday morning shooting on May 30 that killed two people and left 21 others wounded was likely a dispute between two rival groups over things said in rap songs or social media posts, Alfredo Ramirez III, director of the Miami-Dade County Police Department, told reporters.
The May shooting happened shortly after midnight outside of the El Mula Banquet Hall near the Country Club of Miami. Police say three gunmen armed with semi-automatic rifles got out of a Nissan Pathfinder and fired dozens of bullets into the crowd. The deceased were identified as Desmond Owens and Clayton Dillard III. Both were 26.
Cubans on the island demand the end of dictatorship
▪ In an unprecedented display of anger and frustration, thousands of Cuban people took to the streets in July in cities and towns across Cuba, including Havana, to call for the end of the decades-old dictatorship and demand food and vaccines, as shortages of basic necessities have reached crisis proportions and COVID-19 cases have soared.
Carvalho to leave Miami
▪ In December, Miami-Dade Schools’ Superintendent Alberto Carvalho announced he’d be leaving his post here to helm the Los Angeles Unified School District — the second-largest school district in the country with about 450,000 students. Miami-Dade, the fourth largest, has about 335,000 students enrolled, with almost 75,000 students in charter schools.
“It’s a very emotional moment for me,” Carvalho told the Herald.
UM fires its law school dean
▪ University of Miami President Julio Frenk fired UM law school dean Tony Varona in May, setting off outrage among faculty, alums and students.
Supply chain snags, soaring costs
▪ Prices soared in Florida for just about everything: housing, gas, groceries, home repairs. In November, the U.S. government said the consumer price index, which measures the average cost of common goods and services over time, and is the most common measure of inflation, soared 6.2% from October 2020 to October 2021 — the biggest 12-month jump since 1990, according to The Associated Press.
Supply chain disruptions, particularly in Asia, also contributed to rising costs, said John Quelch, dean of the Miami Herbert Business School at the University of Miami.
When births go terribly wrong
▪ Florida parents whose children are born brain damaged are told that Florida’s Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association (NICA) will provide medical care and money. The Miami Herald and ProPublica examined the record. That help “was often delayed, denied or deficient,” the investigation found.
Tom Brady and a superyacht
South Florida real estate mogul Jeffrey Soffer used his superyacht, and his friendship with Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, to get renewed attention from Florida legislators to his long-sought bid for a Miami Beach casino, a Miami Herald subscribers-only exclusive reported in March.
Hurricane season ends, South Florida spared
▪ The end of another record-breaking storm season on Nov. 30 had one bright spot for our region: South Florida went unscathed in 2021.
The rest of the country wasn’t as lucky. Hurricane Ida’s rapidly intensifying major storm winds lashed Louisiana faster than people could evacuate.
Miami broadcast legend dies
▪ Larry King, the iconic CNN talk show host whose career in radio and TV broadcasting began in Miami in the late 1950s on AM radio stations WAHR and WIOD and expanded to local TV outlets like CBS4, died on Jan. 23 in Los Angeles at age 87.
In an interview with the Miami Herald in 2017 when in South Florida for the 60th anniversary of his broadcasting career, King offered his own idea for the headline of his obituary: “Headline: Oldest man who ever lived died today.” He then offered a naughty quip.
Entertainment came back
As COVID ebbed and surged and ebbed some signs of normalcy reemerged.
▪ At Paraiso Swim Week in July, models tried out the latest in fashion at the Faena Forum in Miami Beach.
▪ Art Basel and Miami Art Week came back to Miami Beach and Miami neighborhoods in November.
▪ Regional theater at popular venues like Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre and GableStage at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables offered new productions.
▪ Concerts returned, too, including a major show by hometown favorite Jimmy Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band at the iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach in December.
But now there’s omicron, which is putting some shows and sporting events in question again.
Hey, 2022, can you give us a break?
This story was originally published December 30, 2021 at 2:22 PM.
