Dear Reader,

In 1939, the British government created a motivational poster to mentally prepare for World War II. Even now, “Keep calm and carry on” conveys images of stoic Britons stiff-upper-lipping their way into bomb shelters, then emerging at the all-clear to continue on about their day.

Though a colossal failure in its day (the campaign was deemed a gross miscalculation of popular sentiment), it has re-emerged to become the meme of our times.

Twitter twits aside, we have been remarkably calm throughout this two-year Covid plague. Most people have accepted and abided by the measures put in place to protect society at large: masks, physical distancing, hand washing, sanitizing, vaccinations, boosters. At the end of 2020, we thought 2021’s vaccines would save us. And while things indeed curved towards normal for a time, the accelerated contagion of the Omicron variant at the end of last year meant we are again greeting a New Year less than enthusiastically.

Still, we remain (for the most part) calm. What we aren’t doing is carrying on.

Schools are closing. People aren’t working. Depression is increasing. Businesses are failing. The shut-down model worked as an emergency crisis response, but it is not how we should be reacting almost 24 months later.

I do not, nor would I ever, put economics ahead of public safety. At the same time, we can’t just put our heads in the sand, pretending that work from home and takeout will save us all.

Make no mistake: we are at war, and we have no idea when it will end. This virus isn’t going away any time soon. Which means we must find a way to live with it and the more people we have working on those solutions, the better.

Send me your ideas for how we could “Covid on” and I’ll publish them in the March issue of Atlantic Business Magazine.

 

Dawn Chafe Executive editor & co-owner [email protected]