This week, just briefly, we got a glimpse of Nicola Sturgeon’s personal anguish faced with this vicious pandemic.

The First Minister seemed to fight back tears while answering a question at Holyrood from Labour’s Neil Findlay about care home deaths.

Sounding exhausted, her voice trembling, she stated that there could be no one who did not find it a “deeply and profoundly upsetting situation”. She then took a moment to compose herself before continuing with her usual poise, the curtains to her soul pulled tight shut again, the spectacle over.

It was sort of horrifying. Not the display of emotion – no, not that.

It used to be that visible distress in political leaders was sneered at, particularly coming from women, but thankfully not any more. Empathy with the suffering of others, combined with determination and competence, is a now rightly regarded as a strength.

No; it was horrifying because it reinforced just how dangerous the virus still is, how much grief it is leaving in its wake and how very hard it is for politicians to control it even with all the might of the state at their disposal.

In theory we know this, but seeing the First Minister almost in tears about it makes us feel it.

Nicola Sturgeon has been a reassuring presence during this difficult period. In normal times, she can posture with the best of them, but she’s pitched her response to Covid-19 well above all that. Her approval ratings are high not least because she’s so sensitive to tone.

How strange to think, then, that in 12 months’ time she may be vacating Bute House to make way for a new First Minister.

A year from now, at the end of the first week in May, 2021, we will have awakened to the results of the Holyrood election. Prior

to the crisis, most commentators were predicting a strong showing for the SNP and seven weeks in that still looks likely, on a superficial reading. Seventy one per cent of Scots gave her the thumbs up in a You Gov poll earlier this week (compared to 40 per cent for Boris Johnson) and three quarters of voters approve of the Scottish Government’s handling of the crisis (including, crucially, an overwhelming majority of Labour and Tory voters).

The SNP is also riding high when it comes to next year’s voting intentions, with 54 per cent backing the party in the Holyrood constituency vote.  

On one reading of the situation, you might conclude it will stay like that. After all, certain thorny problems for the Scottish Government are receding. Pre-crisis, opposition MSPs were making ministers squirm about faltering attainment in schools, missed waiting time targets and late-running trains, among other things, but the pandemic has largely spiked their guns.

John Swinney the education secretary insisted in February that a fall of two per cent last year in the Higher pass rate was a statistical blip, but the credibility of this line depended on the pass rate stabilising or increasing this year. With no exams taking place at all, the question will remain unresolved.

Waiting times targets in key areas of the health service were being repeatedly missed pre-crisis but the NHS shake-up caused by Covid will cast waiting times in a different light.

Meanwhile, Scotrail punctuality figures have improved remarkably since the service has no longer been inconvenienced by passengers.

But for every problem that diminishes, another will take its place as the Scottish Government faces the judgment that will inevitably come over their handling of coronavirus.

Some of that judgment will be positive, for sure, but some of it may not and that makes the election impossible to call.

We just don’t know what further tragedies and hardships might have unfolded by May 2021, but what we can say is that these crucial 12 months will decide the fate of this government.

This week the UK earned the ignominious distinction of becoming the country with the highest coronavirus death rate in Europe. Comparisons with other countries come with huge caveats – how reliable are each nation’s figures? how big are their populations? what if further waves of the virus change the numbers? – but eventually, probably sooner rather than later, a meaningful analysis will emerge and questions will be asked about how Scotland’s death rate compares to that of other nations.

Questions will also arise about the funding and management of social care going into the emergency, as well as the inadequate funding of mental health services.

And of course by next May, ministers will be judged on how well they are doing at reviving the wrecked economy. With the Bank of England predicting that this year will herald the most dramatic economic shrinkage in the UK since 1706; with charities watching their income dry to a trickle and businesses facing imminent collapse; and with unemployment set to double, there is misery ahead.

Opportunities for young people will narrow and those who were just getting by before all this will be caught in the vice of a contracting economy. The benefits bill will rise. The Scottish Government must offer hope but it must do more than that – it must offer practical help and progress back to normality too, and that’s much harder.

Against this backdrop, there will be recrimination. Arguments will start to play out over who is more to blame for the sorry state of things – the Scottish Government or Westminster. Nicola Sturgeon will be judged: was she willing to diverge from the UK strategy in Scotland’s interests? Or perhaps: why did she diverge from the UK line, against Scotland’s interests? Entrenched views will shape opinions.

If we jump over the Brexit cliff in December, piling turmoil on top of turmoil - and it’s still a very big if - that will change the whole debate and reignite dormant anger in Scotland over Brexit, anger that can only increase support for the SNP. 

But much is likely to rest on whether people feel a continuing affinity with the woman who was in charge during the crisis that blindsided the world. She will continue to benefit from comparisons with Boris Johnson but that alone cannot guarantee her return to power.

When we switch on the radio, bleary eyed, in one year’s time, anything might have happened.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald