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Four stabs: this is how COVID kills companies
During the first phase of the COVID crisis, the focus was on health issues. Virologists have dominated the media, as experts on duty. They have become familiar faces, entering our homes through our TV, laptop, or tablet screens. We have avidly listened to all their theories, their experiments, their contradictions.
We are now transitioning in many Western countries in the so-called Phase 2, when — together with lockdowns easing — there is a gradual restart of the productive activity. But I continue to see only virologists on air, and only a few economists. So I go first.
Some of the Western leaders hail: ‘Go back to Work’, accompanying their predicaments with gratifying images of a resurgent economy. Corporations finally unlocking factories gates. Employees rushing to re-take controls of machines. Production accelerating overnight. Trucks, containerships, plane, filled to capacity with the variety of goods we all have missed so much.
Maybe in another world.
We all know that businesses have already suffered enormously in the first half of the year. A lot of them will not be able to open gates at all. Those who do will fight to see another day, month, year.
Let me dig deeper than ‘it is going to be though’ and describe in what follows how COVID has changed the world…
