by Timothy McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine For everyone, 2020 is the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is usually a defining story every year. But never one like this one.
Terms like “unprecedented times” and “star 6 to unmute” have become so familiar they’re even used as punchlines.
In fact either of the top two stories this year would qualify as the biggest story in the nearly 50-year history of Vermont Business Magazine.
COVID-19 Pandemic
The novel coronavirus was certainly on the horizon as the new year broke in 2020. And while the threat of a global pandemic that would kill millions had been much in the news over the last decade, few people expected this; certainly, we did not.
Vermont has been an island in the storm in many ways. Our death toll is lowest in the nation (by a little) and our total cases are fewer than any other state (by a lot). Within the Northeast travel map we have nearly all the counties with the lowest per capita cases.
Governor Scott has received a lot of praise and caught a lot of flak for the “tough love” approach of his Stay Home order. In Vermont, the bars and restaurants closed before nearly any other place in the nation.
Health Commissioner Mark Levine, MD, mused early on whether shaking another’s hand in greeting would ever return.
The Pfizer vaccine – and a general sense of hope-- arrived a couple days early on December 14 and the next day the first Vermonters got the literal and proverbial shot in the arm.
The Moderna vaccine followed the week after, so nursing home residents and staff could start to get inoculated.
The vaccines arrived just as case counts peaked in Vermont and deaths eclipsed 100.
As of this writing, cases in Vermont and across the nation – with the exception of California and a few other hot spots – have lessened. The death toll, however, has retained its grim hold on the nation.
Recession
We had the Great Recession a decade ago and the Great Depression 90 years ago. We haven’t heard any fancy name for this not-great economic downturn. Maybe someone will come up with something.
But it’s the worst economic situation since the Depression. Unemployment last April was at its worst since 1929. The fact that Vermont’s unemployment rate is now back to pre-pandemic levels indicates how the statistical modeling is woefully outdated.
A lot of people simply have given up on looking for a job as the hospitality industry has been gutted.
The economic saving grace has been the willingness of the federal government to borrow trillions of dollars, coupled with the still-unexplained lack of any inflation.
With all these dollars floating around, there should be inflation. But there isn’t. Interest rates are historically low. Housing prices and the stock market are up.
We are collectively holding our breath that it lasts. It feels like it will.
Meanwhile, the second of the major stimulus plans has passed Congress.
It’s sort of like the COVID-19 vaccine. Except that it feels less efficacious and slower to arrive.
The first plan, the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, is credited with saving the economy, even though we opined when it was signed last April that it was about a trillion short.
Still, Vermont’s whopping $1.25 billion share of the package got us through most of the year.
The new stimulus plan adds just about that lost trillion. But looking at things now, even that is clearly not enough and does not include any budget support for states and municipalities. The Senate has staunchly objected to that. We still need another trillion.
We didn’t expect the economic downturn or the pandemic to persist with such virulence into another year. It has and Congress should respond.
Cyberattack
The University Vermont Medical Center, and to a lesser extent its health network partners, suffered a colossal ransomware attack just before Halloween. By Christmas most of the systems destroyed were back up.
The hospital and its staff, and National Guard, FBI and others helped get the hospital back on its IT feet. Some patient services were transferred or postponed. The hospital operated remarkably well despite all that.
The financial hit is substantial and more than $60 million on top of the tens of millions lost due to the pandemic shutting down profitable elective procedures earlier in the year. Pencil and paper also came to the rescue.
The hospital never did pay ransom. In part because the hackers seemed more intent on destruction than the usual pay-to-play model of a cyberattack.
From the hospital’s point of view, the software and hardware had to be rebuilt anyway because of the attack so there was no reason to even contact the perpetrators.
No personal or medical information was compromised.
Election
The election was hard on underdogs who couldn’t go door to door and meet nor greet to woo voters.
Governor Scott’s widely hailed handling of the pandemic led to an avalanche re-election. No incumbent governor has lost in 60 years anyway.
But the bigger winner was mail-in voting – another effect of the pandemic – which resulted in the largest turnout in the state’s history for both the primaries and the general election.
An emotional race for president also encouraged Vermonters to get their “vote is your voice” heard with postage-paid return envelopes.
Like the handshake, will long lines at polling places ever return?
Black Lives Matter
Who knows if this is a sea-change in race relations in America, or a good step forward, or another lost opportunity? But it feels like it will have some long-lasting affect in our two-century march out of racial inequality.
But for those who do not understand why Black Lives Matter, there is not much more to say.