There will be no graceful exit from the Covid-19 pandemic

Even with the expanded distribution of the vaccines, it is increasingly apparent there will be no graceful exit from the pandemic, which has caused societal strife, high unemployment, and growing inequalities, write Mathew Burrows and Barry Pavel.

To examine what may lie ahead, we relied on our decades of senior government experience in risk forecasting to develop three potential scenarios of how the pandemic will play out -- all of which present disturbing problems of inequality that will likely dog us for years to come. Scenarios are not predictions, but they are useful tools for helping us confront different possibilities and hopefully mitigating the potential consequences.