Positive Looks at 2020

For most people, a list of the best news stories in 2020 would be extremely short. But even in a year marked by much grief and countless sorrows, there have been terrific examples of great changes for the better. Chief among these is the success of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s vaccine-development project. Few predicted that one, much less two, pioneering vaccines would result so quickly from this vast outpouring of effort and government funding to the private sector. The remarkable all-hands-on-deck explosion of ventilator production that began last...

It was an eventful year to say the least. It began with a historic impeachment, and then the global pandemic, a reckoning around racial injustice, a tumultuous election and even more unlikely news.

The events of 2020, however significant, had an effect on everyone. NPR's Morning Edition wanted to know what helped get people through the tough times — and hundreds responded on Twitter.

Some said they turned to writing letters, creating art or starting a new hobby. Others relied on friends and family and mindless escapist TV shows. And...

In spite of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a surprising amount of positive news to celebrate this past year. Let’s start with the obvious: 2020 was a massively disappointing year, right from the jump. In January, we learned that 162 billionaires have the same wealth as half of humanity, and that we’d just muddled through the hottest decade on record. Then, February came and the coronavirus pandemic began to touch all of us.

The losses piled on after that: the death of more than 1.7 million people worldwide from COVID-19,...