This is my second of three installments related to the pandemic. I know everyone is suffering from Covid-19 News Fatigue, but I hope to provide a different take on Our World on Hold. Last week I said that I thought the loosening of the lockdowns and the return to semi-normal would take months, not weeks. Here’s why.
Lockdowns, social distancing and sporadic testing are crude methods for dealing with a pandemic, but they’re all we’ve got at this point. We’ve seen some success in other countries and we’ve seen limited success in this country, the Pacific Northwest being a case-in-point.
But make no mistake, a vaccine is the only real solution. While these viruses, especially RNA viruses like this one, mutate rapidly, it seems like the development of an effective vaccine is possible. A lot of people and organizations are working on this, including the Gates Foundation. Bill Gates says, despite the effort and the speed of this quest, we’re 18 to 24 months away from the vaccine providing us with protection. A number of potential vaccines are under development, they will need to be tested, then mass produced, mass distributed and mass applied to billions of people. We’re talking sometime in 2022 before we are effectively protected from this virus.
For the next year and a half to two years, we will need to utilize the crude tools and incorporate improved, and wide-spread testing. (I only know one person who has actually been tested and she has been tested five times. Three tests were negative and two were positive. That’s about like flipping a coin.) Localities will loosen up restrictions, there will be flare ups to be tamped down and we’ll continue to play a game of Whack-a-Virus while trying to not destroy our economy and our lives at the same time.
During this time, I think we’ll see schools and most workplaces reopen. Social distancing and masks will continue to help but there will still be localized flare ups. Many public places may require temperature screening to enter. This is because millions of people have the virus without knowing it and will continue to unwittingly spread it. Improved testing should make this manageable, if and when better tests are made widely available.
Restaurants, bars, health clubs and retail should be able to open during this time but with new restrictions. But large gatherings? I think those would be unwise and will probably be prohibited by the authorities. If I’m right, that would mean no concerts, theater or spectator sporting events. We could have the next two years’ sporting events played in front of empty stadiums. They would become television content but no one will attend the games except the players, coaches, trainers and officials. All of these participants would probably be tested for the virus prior to participating in the game, but with some strict rules that the leagues would have to agree upon. Concerts and theater might go the same route, with testing of the participants and the concert or theater event being televised. Auto racing, the Olympics, the list goes on, could end up the same way.
Eventually, in 2022, we’d have most of the world vaccinated and large group gatherings would be safe again. There will still be the anti-vaxxers, but those of us who want to be protected, would be protected. Then we’d be able to go back to our BC (Before Covid-19) lives, if we want to. At that point, we would have had two years of a different sort of life, formed new habits and may not want to change back to the way we were. That’s the topic of next week’s final installment.
Most business owner/operators are the type of people who, when faced with a challenge, work harder, work smarter and muscle their way through. They are achievers, used to overcoming challenges. But this challenge is different, largely out of our control and not something to be simply muscled through. Our normal approach isn’t sustainable. I hear people complaining about the fatigue from back-to-back Zoom calls. Friends, we’re near the beginning of this, not near the end.
I think we’re going to have to approach this differently. We will need to take a longer, more measured approach. We’re going to have to be almost Zen-like and accept that there are things we can’t control We need to accept our situation.
The Stockdale Paradox, named after James Stockdale and prominently featured in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, seems appropriate. Stockdale was a prisoner of war for years in North Vietnam. The Stockdale Paradox is that you must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
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