View As Webpage

The Nett Report - May 1, 2020

202003 Header for Nett Report 600 px.jpg

Welcome to the third 2020 edition of The Nett Report. Given the uncertainty of the coronavirus crisis, we are publishing this report to provide value to our clients and friends. We hope to provide new perspectives and insights in hopes of stimulating your creative thinking in the weeks and months to come. Feel free to forward to friendsLinks to the first two 2020 reports can be found below. 


How Will What Your Business Does Today Be Remembered?

Fortune’s CEO Daily, one of my favorite daily reads, shared a paragraph from a Fortune essay on April 24 that’s worth sharing. “The business of business can no longer just be business. Everything is now personal; the business of business is therefore society. Mission and margin, profit and principle, success and significance are now inextricably linked. In the fused world, how we behave, how we operate, how we govern, and how we relate to people and communities matters more than ever. Going forward, businesses are going to compete on trust, on responsibility, and on creating and maintaining deep relationships with their stakeholders rooted in shared truths and values.”

And in a similar vein from sustainablebrands.com: “It’s during moments of great difficulty that our authentic selves shine through — and the same is true for companies. Long after the COVID-19 crisis passes, the world won’t forget the values-driven companies that led with a conscience. The time is now to decide: How will your brand be remembered?”


The World in 2021 According to Forbes

Forbes Publisher Rich Kaarlgard has made five predictions for how the world will look when the coronavirus crisis is over in spring 2021, a year from now.

  1. Global growth will be 4 percent, and Covid-19 will accelerate a rebalancing of global supply chains away from China and toward Brazil, India, Mexico and Southeast Asia. The U.S. will rebound to 3 percent growth but inflation will reappear.
  2. Global travel will have fully resumed.
  3. Unicorn startups will become an endangered species. The vast majority of unicorns burn far more cash than they generate. In falling stock markets, investor horizons quickly shrink. So will the unicorn herd.
  4. Left wing politics will become more extreme, including both the U.S. and U.K.
  5. Inflation returns. Even though the economy got its monetary jolt, it also got inflation not seen for two decades. And that became the business story of 2021.

Of course, another Forbes article offered “10 Ways to Prepare for A Post-Coronavirus Recession.” I will leave it to readers to decide whether there will be a recession or healthy growth in 2021.


Working at Home and Business Travel in a Time of Change

In another tidbit from the Fortune’s CEO Daily on April 27, it appears that working from home will gain greater acceptance in the future. One CEO said 60 to 70 percent of his workforce will work from home for the rest of the year and as much as 50 percent might become the new norm. The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago estimated that 37 percent of the jobs in the U.S. can be performed entirely at home.

Another CEO interviewed by Fortune believes the lockdown will change the thinking of business leaders who will find “they can be just as effective–and conserve time, money and the environment by doing much of that business on video.” And Delta CEO Ed Bastian told CEO Daily “I’m not sure you are going to see travel at scale the way we have come to know it in our industry.”


Innovation or Unacceptable? Social Distancing on Airplanes

We might be flying less in the future, but Aviointeriors, an Italian design firm, has come up with a concept to address social distancing on airplanes when we do fly. Rather than leaving seats empty between passengers, “the new Glassafe product is designed to shield passengers from their neighbors and those passing through the aisle by cocooning each one in a plastic shield.”


Health Care System Is Being Financially Shocked by the Crisis

According to the State of Reform newsletter on April 24, 2020, “the COVID-19 pandemic has financially shocked the health care system in jarring ways.” According to various polls, medical group practices, on average, are reporting a 55 percent decrease in revenue and a 60 percent decrease in patient volume. Twenty percent of primary care practices predicted they will need to close within the next four weeks. This comes as a result of patients avoiding healthcare facilities for fear of contracting the virus.


Two Other Pandemics, Two Other Times

According to National Geographic, when George Washington faced an outbreak of smallpox in his Continental Army, he “embraced science-based medicine, ushering in the new country’s first public health policy.” Despite political opposition, he immediately isolated anyone suspected of infection. He also ordered a controversial procedure called variolation, an inoculation that involved “making a small incision in a patient’s arm and inserting a dose of the live virus—large enough to trigger immunity but small enough to prevent severe illness or death. Infection rates dropped from 20 percent to one percent.” Washington had been infected with the disease himself when he was a teenager.

More than a century later, in 1918, the Spanish flu almost derailed the women’s suffrage movement, says National Geo. When the U.S. Public Health Service prohibited large meetings and gatherings, the Suffragists' election campaigns were compromised. Instead of large meetings, they printed more than one million pamphlets and bulletins for local newspapers and reached out personally to neighbors and friends. The grassroots campaign carried the day. Read the full story here.


What Are States Doing?

With the coronavirus affecting states in different ways, the response by those states has varied. Thanks to ImpactAlpha's April 29, 2020, newsletter for the following information.

  • Massachusetts is hiring 1,000 people for an anti-pandemic blitz to reach and test everyone in the state and get anyone that may have the virus into isolation or treatment.
  • New York aims to recruit and train hundreds of contact tracers, including SUNY and CUNY students.
  • California is building a contact-tracing army of 10,000 librarians, attorneys, investigators and other non-medical volunteers, while expanding testing to 60,000 to 80,000 tests per day.
  • Michigan says testing and tracing will be big factors in the state’s re-opening strategy.
  • New Jersey will deploy up to 7,000 contact tracers as part of the state’s public health-driven plan to reopen.
  • Alaska, Georgia and Tennessee are pushing to reopen without robust health plans or adequate testing.

COVID-19 Slams Clean Energy Workers

In March alone, 106,473 clean energy industry workers lost their jobs, according to Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2). California led the way with more than 19,000 losses. North Carolina was next with 6,800. E2 says the data shows “the crushing impact of the COVID-19 health and economic crises on one of the biggest, fastest-growing job sectors in America — one essential to our economy, our resilience and our environment.”

BW Research, the firm doing the analysis for E2, says the losses “wiped out all 2019 job gains across solar, wind, energy efficiency and clean vehicle and energy efficiency materials manufacturing.” The firm also predicts 500,000 clean energy workers could become jobless in the next few months.


How Is the COVID Crisis Like Climate Change?

“The COVID crisis has parallels with the climate crisis. Both target low-income people with a vengeance. Both are global, but both 'come home,' personally affecting each one of us. On pandemics and severe storms, scientists have been shouting from the mountain-tops. Both problems would benefit from early governmental action. From Climate Resolve’s April 25, 2020, email.


COVID-19 Brings Back Single-Use Plastic Bags

Bans on single-use plastic bags have been put in place across the globe to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the environment. However, the use of plastic bags is being allowed again has because of COVID-19. Reusable grocery bags and totes are thought to carry the coronavirus to and from grocery stores. Plastic bags are believed to be a safer alternative. The hope is that the changes are temporary.


Eat More French Fries! Crisis Solved!!

With dropping wholesale prices for food and lack of demand because restaurants and schools are closed, agricultural products are in surplus in many parts of the world. Belgian farmers are facing a surplus of 750,000 tons of potatoes which might have to be destroyed, according to the Brussels Times. The answer for ramping up consumption: encouraging the populace to eat French fries (frites) twice each week!


Poop Might Be the Key to Understanding Coronavirus Trends

According to the Water Education Foundation, testing sewage flows might be the best source of information about when the coronavirus crisis is ending. “From Stanford to the University of Arizona, from Australia to Paris, teams of researchers have been ramping up wastewater analyses to track the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Initial studies show that sewage monitoring, or 'wastewater-based-epidemiology,' could not only tell us how much the virus might actually be spreading in a community — but also when the virus has finally gone away,” the Times says.


Is the U.S. Exporting COVID-19 to Guatemala?

According to CBS News, Guatemala fears the U.S. is exporting the virus there through deportation flights. “At least 99 migrants recently deported to Guatemala by the U.S. have tested positive for coronavirus as of Sunday, according to the nation's public health ministry. Deportees from the U.S. make up nearly 20 percent of the 500 coronavirus cases in Guatemala, which has had 15 pandemic-related deaths.”


Nettleton Strategies - Helping You Navigate the Big Reset

This is a challenging time for all of us, in a way we have never experienced before. At Nettleton Strategies, our philosophy has always been that we need to know two things to find solutions and move forward:

  • A clear understanding of the status of the current situation.
  • A clear vision of how you want your world to be in the future.

With those two benchmarks, we can create a path from our current status to the future imagined status, eliminating the obstacles and identifying processes and resources needed to reach the future state.


Take This Time to Imagine Your Future

We encourage you to use this time to begin imagining a post-coronavirus future. Visualize a time when you can begin to realize your dreams in a sustainable way. If we can help you find opportunities to navigate your Big Reset, please contact us.


Carl Nettleton is an award-winning writeracclaimed speaker, and a subject matter expert regarding water, climate, sustainability, the ocean, and binational U.S. Mexico border affairs. Founded in 2007, Nettleton Strategies is a trusted source of analysis and advice on issues at the forefront of public policy, business and the environment.


 


Nettleton Strategies Logo White Back Black Type copy (2017_03_23 22_56_28 UTC).jpg

Nettleton Strategies

P.O. Box 22971
San DIego, CA 92192-2971
U.S.A.
+1 858-353-5489
info@nettstrategies.com
http://www.nettstrategies.com

 

Update your profile

Footer1en_Placeholder

PoweredBy_Placeholder