With vaccines on the horizon, here’s how business leaders can plan ahead

‘Vaccine announcements get the globe closer to eradicating the virus, but questions still remain. Business leaders will need to consider a range of potential scenarios for access and distribution to adjust to the changes still ahead. For business planning only, Salesforce Future Lab developed a selection of hypothetical scenarios in discussions with leading experts to help leaders understand the range of scenarios for which they might need to plan.’

Hypothetical Scenario 1: “Zero Hurdles” -- In this scenario, business leaders could look forward to the crisis ending as quickly and evenly as possible around the world. In-person work and consumer confidence could come back close to pre-crisis levels over the summer and fall of 2021, though masking, distancing, and ventilation would still be necessary for many more months.

Hypothetical Scenario 2: “Sprint and Stumble” -- In this scenario, many business leaders might initially make investments betting on a rapid re-emergence from crisis conditions, only to be surprised as optimism evaporates. As the crisis stretched on, those who recognized the continuing risk would likely be in the best position, but even they would still face stiff economic headwinds.

Hypothetical Scenario 3: “Long March” -- In this scenario, business leaders could be increasingly challenged to maintain the safety of their staff and customers before the vaccine arrives, as the public becomes less willing to adhere to public health guidance. But after its arrival, the impact is similar to “Zero Hurdles” above, with a relatively rapid return to workplace safety and consumer confidence.

Read here (World Economic Forum, Nov 25, 2020) 

Expert report predicts up to two more years of pandemic misery

‘The new coronavirus is likely to keep spreading for at least another 18 months to two years—until 60% to 70% of the population has been infected, a team of longstanding pandemic experts predicted in a report released Thursday. They recommended that the US prepare for a worst-case scenario that includes a second big wave of coronavirus infections in the fall and winter. Even in a best-case scenario, people will continue to die from the virus, they predicted.’

Read here (CNN, May 2, 2020)

The post-pandemic future of work

‘Some work must be done to keep society functioning—the work, as social reproduction theorists have it, of life-making and sustaining—but what are the conditions under which people do it? If everyone had the right to live, to a home and health care regardless of whether or how much they worked, what would the incentives be for people to take up that socially necessary work? Would we distribute it equally, perhaps, rather than deciding that certain people are “essential” workers and the rest of us something else entirely? This moment, this crisis, is showing the brutality inherent in so many kinds of labor, and showing how unnecessary other work is. Perhaps it can also be an opportunity to question our most basic assumption: that work itself should be at the center of our lives.’

Read here (The New Republic, May 1, 2020)

Three potential futures for Covid-19: recurring small outbreaks, a monster wave, or a persistent crisis

‘What all three scenarios agree on is this: There is virtually no chance Covid-19 will end when the world bids good riddance to a calamitous 2020. The reason is the same as why the disease has taken such a toll its first time through: No one had immunity to the new coronavirus.

“This pandemic is not going to settle down until there is sufficient population immunity,” slightly above 50%, epidemiologist Gabriel Leung of the University of Hong Kong told a New York Academy of Sciences briefing.

‘Since the world “is far from that level of immunity,” said Osterholm (he estimates that no more than 5% of the world population is immune to the new coronavirus as a result of surviving their infection), “this virus is going to keep finding people. It’s going to keep spreading through the population.” And that, he said, “means we’re in for a long haul”.’

Read here (STAT News, May 1, 2020)

Genomic study points to natural origin of COVID-19, says NIH Director’s blog. Two scenarios suggested

‘In the first scenario, as the new coronavirus evolved in its natural hosts, possibly bats or pangolins, its spike proteins mutated to bind to molecules similar in structure to the human ACE2 protein, thereby enabling it to infect human cells. This scenario seems to fit other recent outbreaks of coronavirus-caused disease in humans, such as SARS, which arose from cat-like civets; and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which arose from camels.

‘The second scenario is that the new coronavirus crossed from animals into humans before it became capable of causing human disease. Then, as a result of gradual evolutionary changes over years or perhaps decades, the virus eventually gained the ability to spread from human-to-human and cause serious, often life-threatening disease.

‘Either way, this study leaves little room to refute a natural origin for COVID-19. And that’s a good thing because it helps us keep focused on what really matters: observing good hygiene, practicing social distancing, and supporting the efforts of all the dedicated health-care professionals and researchers who are working so hard to address this major public health challenge.’

Read here (NIH Director’s Blog, March 26, 2020)

Read here too on ‘The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2’ (Nature Medicine, March 17, 2020)

How will the Covid-19 pandemic end?

This long article discusses the near-term effects, end-game and aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis in the US. It concludes that the lessons that America draws from this experience are hard to predict but there could be two extreme scenarios, with many variations in between. As the most powerful socio-economic and political entity in the world, whichever path it takes, it will affect the entire world. 

NEGATIVE ENGAGEMENT: ‘One could easily conceive of a world in which most of the nation believes that America defeated COVID-19. Despite his many lapses, Trump’s approval rating has surged. Imagine that he succeeds in diverting blame for the crisis to China, casting it as the villain and America as the resilient hero. During the second term of his presidency, the U.S. turns further inward and pulls out of NATO and other international alliances, builds actual and figurative walls, and disinvests in other nations. As Gen C grows up, foreign plagues replace communists and terrorists as the new generational threat.’

POSITIVE ENGAGEMENT: ‘One could also envisage a future in which America learns a different lesson. A communal spirit, ironically born through social distancing, causes people to turn outward, to neighbours both foreign and domestic. The election of November 2020 becomes a repudiation of “America first” politics. The nation pivots, as it did after World War II, from isolationism to international cooperation. Buoyed by steady investments and an influx of the brightest minds, the health-care workforce surges. Gen C kids write school essays about growing up to be epidemiologists. Public health becomes the centerpiece of foreign policy. The US leads a new global partnership focused on solving challenges like pandemics and climate change.’

Read here (The Atlantic, March 25, 2020)