Page 1 - COVID pandemic will end, and businesses should plan for it 11.24.20

12/3/2020

November 24, 2020 05:04 PM

Yes, the pandemic will end. It's not too early to start planning for it.

JOE CAHILL On Business

The only thing worse than suffering the economic agony of the pandemic would be missing out on the
ensuing recovery. Remarkably promising COVID-19 vaccines pose a new challenge for companies that

have spent the past eight months enduring the virus' impact on commerce.

Soon, they'll have to shift from survival mode to preparing for a likely surge in demand when vaccines

become widely available sometime around the middle of next year. Just as the arrival of a global
pandemic triggered an unprecedented economic free-fall, its end is likely to ignite a sudden and dramatic
ascent.

Y es, it will take some time to get large numbers of people immunized. Vaccines, some of which require

ultra-cold storage, must be distributed around the world. Resistance to vaccination in some quarters will
have to be overcome. There may be glitches and delays. But vaccine trial results showing extraordinarily
high success rates of more than 90 percent instill confidence, and medical supply chains have the

capabilities to clear logistical hurdles.

Over the next several months, more and more people will get vaccinated, immunity will spread, fears of
COVID will ebb, and government restrictions on economic activity will fall. That might seem like a long
way off, as the viral siege that started in March intensifies again. Yet it doesn't give companies a lot of

time to prepare for an epic spending binge.

By midyear, people will have spent a year in forced economic isolation, many of them building up
savings not because they wanted to, but because they haven't been able to spend. As a result, they're

sitting on a lot of cash and plenty of deferred desires. When a vaccine opens the gates, those dollars will
flood the marketplace. "There's a lot of pent-up demand that will be unleashed when we achieve
some sense of normalcy," says Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago.

I don't buy predictions that the pandemic will permanently alter consumer behavior or usher in a
new age of cautious, isolated living. Outside of a few sectors of the economy—Tannenbaum points

to the retail and office segments of commercial real estate—people will resume old patterns as soon
as it's safe to do so.

Continued on following page...