Like many of you, marking the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic fills me with mixed emotions. I feel like we have all aged several lifetimes since the first positive case was detected here on March 13, 2020. At the same time, though, given how much things have changed, I hardly know where the time has gone. A year ago, we were one of the highest-performing regional economies in the country. Today, thousands of jobs have been eliminated and hundreds of lives have been lost. The toll is immeasurable.
It will take us months, if not years, to climb back to full employment. I’ve mentioned some of the specific investments that I think our country should make to help us recover further and faster – namely, affordable housing, broadband internet and other infrastructure, workforce development in our neighborhoods, and greater research capacity at our universities.
As much as where we invest, we should be mindful of how we invest – the values and cross-cutting considerations that can bolster us from future storms and plagues:
Focus the relief where it’s needed the most. As more federal aid becomes available to cities like Chattanooga, leaders have both a moral and economic responsibility to target those dollars to help those most affected. This means that women, minorities, and hourly wage workers who have been knocked out of the workforce in disproportionate numbers need more assistance to get re-employed, ideally in more stable and sustainable careers.
Follow the science. At city government, we have built a culture of looking at data when making decisions, pushing what works and shunning what doesn’t. The pandemic raged when we refused to follow the science. As we look to long-term challenges, from climate change to income inequality, we should keep a clear understanding of the facts so that we can tackle these problems clear-eyed and effectively.