The new abnormal

In the age of COVID-19, the new normal is anything but normal for most of us. I’m an exception. Sure, I miss going out to restaurants and theaters, hugging the grandkids and getting tattoos like everyone else, but I live in Georgia, one of the last states to close down and one of the first states to open back up. So, my wait was relatively short, and now I can basically do whatever I want, except hug the grandkids. They’re off-limits, six feet away. A new tat? No problem.

I’m also fortunate in the sense that I’ve been a teleworker for 20 years or so. I know the drill. This work-and-stay-at-home thing is business as usual for me. If anything, the pandemic, while awful, has one silver lining from my perspective: Since everyone is stuck at home tethered to a laptop, it’s quicker and easier to get a hold of contributing authors for the two magazines I edit. That’s a big help when you have a publication to get out by a certain deadline every month.

At the same time, I understand life and business is anything but usual for most folks.

Two Analytics magazine columnists are cases in point. Interestingly, one of them, Vijay Mehrotra, used to be a columnist (“Was It something I Said”) for OR/MS Today before taking his talents to a new audience in Analytics mag (“Analyze This!”). Meanwhile, Harrison Schramm suspended his “Five-Minute Analyst” column in Analytics at the start of the pandemic to help procure contributions to “Coronavirus Chronicles,” the latest of which appear in the current issue of OR/MS Today.

Besides their writing prowess, Vijay and Harrison are both high-energy extroverts, which must make the coronavirus era that much more frustrating for them. Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, burns off energy by bicycling for many miles at a time or chasing his skateboarding son down an empty street on a skateboard of his own. Vijay, a professor at the University of San Francisco, fills his days this summer at an industrial arts space in Oakland, Calif., where he’s part of a team of volunteers making personal protective equipment for healthcare providers. The experience serves as a backdrop for his column in this July/August issue of Analytics. The column’s title, “This Year is Not Normal, Not Even Close,” pretty much sums it up for all of us.

Speaking of prolific writers, Joseph Byrum, whose nine-part blog series, “Understanding smart technology – and ourselves,” ended with the May/June issue of Analytics, starts a new blog in the July/August issue, this one called, “Seeing economic collapse and recovery through the lens of complexity economics.” Joe, the chief data scientist at Principal Financial Group, notes that the new series “will look at the pandemic-related economic problems we currently face and how we might apply important concepts of complexity economics to better understand how to move forward.”

Since there’s just no getting away from the pandemic – at least until someone comes up with a vaccine or we reach herd immunity –  get used to the new abnormal.