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Living in the Age of Coronavirus has most of us speaking in ways – and with terms – we likely never have before.
- COVID-19
- Zoom
- Flatten the Curve
- Webinar
- Safer at Home
- Social Distancing
- Tiger King
- CARES Act
- Quarantine
- Dr. Anthony Fauci
- Pandemic
- Virtual
These 12 words or phrases have recently invaded our daily speak and are on pace to be the most used terms in the English language in 2020. Some of them were never part of our lexicon before until the pandemic that arrived at the dawn of the new decade. Now, they are all we talk about and they have come to define everything we now know about the local business community and the new normal of American commerce.
Well, maybe not Tiger King, but that is a reality docudrama phenomenon all its own in the Netflix “stream-o-sphere” and if you aren’t following Joe Exotic (or his current husband Dillon Passage) on Instagram, then you are already an entire month behind and likely will never catch up.
As I think about COVID-19 and the havoc it has wreaked on our local economy, I am concerned. It has kept me up at night, added to my stress eating and caused me to shed a few tears. Our Chamber has been working around the clock since the initial pivot to take-out/delivery for our restaurants, then through the latest delineation of essential businesses operating, wearing masks, social distancing and a curfew order in the City Beautiful. We have become experts on the CARES Act/Paycheck Protection Program, Bridge Loans and the SBA’s EIDL Loans so that we can educate our members.
We spend most of the day Zooming in and out of webinars (many hosted by us and curated by our members), committee meetings, creative conversations, expert sessions, updates with elected officials and collaborations with partner organizations.
Yet, through it all, the US Chamber still predicts that without substantial support from the federal government (such as the CARES Act and Paycheck Protection Program as noted above), nearly one-quarter of small businesses will likely close for good. Given that small businesses create two out of every three jobs in America, that is a frightening statistic. Help is on the way, but will it be enough? Will it be in time? Will the recovery begin in May or June or when?
Coral Gables at its core is a small business community and our Chamber has served this formidable constituency for nearly 95 years. We have been through a world war together, a depression on top of recessions on top of countless real estate bubbles. And, I have lost track of the number of hurricanes we have been impacted by dating back to 1925.
But through it all, it has been our daily goal to serve, educate, advocate, communicate and – at times – pontificate, and we have always been able to re-open for business and recover even after the most horrific of downturns. I was here in 2008-2010, as well as for Irma in 2018, and again today. This pandemic is both mysterious and merciless, a bully and a battlefield, an unyielding menace and an unspeakable monster. COVID-19 is relentless.
And through it all, we have worked together to be more socially distant – while still being socially connected – as we attempt to flatten the curve. We have seen industries devastated, especially our hospitality partners, and the restaurants we love are struggling each day to stay open and keep their employees on the payroll.
And still, we tell ourselves it is working, even while the daily reports of Dr. Anthony Fauci are daunting yet improving. We appreciate his sage advice – he cut his teeth during the AIDS epidemic more than 30 years ago – but his words are without editorial, as they are based in science. We are indeed Safer at Home, but our natural proclivities, and the freedoms we have enjoyed since the earliest days of this country’s founding, are incongruous with quarantine. And thus, the local talk turns to re-opening.
But, for us to get back to business, they are necessary and when they are not possible, every single precaution is needed. I shake a lot of hands in this job, hug a lot of people and air kiss like a champion. But maybe that is going to be a greeting of the past. Maybe business will be done in a more emotionally remote way – not just via the virtual nature of Zoom, but with little physical contact and personal connectivity. I just don’t know, but we will find out soon enough – and hopefully sooner.
If this is the new normal, then, I prefer the abnormal. But, I also know we may simply have no other choice in the name of good health and hygiene. It may be a matter of survival – for us and our local businesses.
