For weeks now, American consumers and businesses – everyone everywhere, really – have been desperate for the answers to three questions:
- Are we flattening the curve?
- When can we reopen the economy?
- What will life look like once we do?
Answering the first two questions is the single-minded focus of some of the world’s most brilliant researchers, scientists, epidemiologists, doctors, healthcare experts, economists, regulators, governments and policymakers the world over. Collectively, they are balancing the trade-offs, nearly in real time, between keeping the economy closed and keeping people safe from a highly contagious virus for which there is currently no treatment, nor any vaccine, nor enough large-scale testing to assess its level of spread. Answering the third question will increasingly become the single-minded focus of the consumers, all of whom must be convinced that those brilliant minds have created a reopening plan that reduces their personal risk of getting sick, or worse.
The New Normal: Health Before Wealth