In 2020, a social crisis, unprecedented in our modern society for its rapid and wholesale impact, descended upon the World, inflicting its force in nearly every corner of the globe, causing widespread loss of life and threatening the economic welfare of every community. We might have rationally thought that advances in medicine, technology, and communication would make us immune to an out-of-control virus. Perhaps we should be able to control the outbreak of a disease, no matter how aggressive. But the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that much of this control is in retrospect, when we realize how extensively we were caught off guard, how we didn’t act when we should have. No longer able to anticipate and pre-empt, we can only react, taking the knowledge we have and amassing our understanding to minimize further social and economic damage. It was too early, in the spring of 2020, to think about the lessons we would take forward, but there will be lessons.
The social and economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic have been viewed, by some, as tradeoffs. Do we accept some deaths as perhaps inevitable or, at the very least, a cost we must endure to avoid the economic consequences? Or do we avoid human loss at all costs, particularly when it is a family member, close friend, or a medical professional that risked their life to save others? Fundamentally, though, we recognize that we cannot have a functioning economy with an unrestrained health crisis. Nonetheless, we have to fight the social battle with all our might while recognizing that the economic fallout could have devastating results for society. Recognizing that entrepreneurs and business owners are critical to the functioning of every economy, most policy makers realize that small business has to be part of this conversation (Read more…).
