The True Cause of Death
Even as the death toll climbs unrelentingly and inexorably upwards, it now seems clear that we may never know the true extent of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Office for National Statistics here in the UK has issued guidance to medical practitioners required to complete the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death stating that they are required to certify causes of death “to the best of their knowledge and belief without diagnostic proof, if appropriate and to avoid delay.” The guidance states, “if before death the patient had symptoms typical of COVID19 infection, but the test result has not been received, it would be satisfactory to give COVID-19 as the cause of death”. In short, the death certificate will make no reference to previous underlying conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
The same — I fear — will apply to the premature demise of companies that succumb to the fallout from the Coronavirus pandemic and the resulting lockdown. Starved of the oxygen of work and income for three months or more, many firms will now find themselves in a weakened state.
Should they collapse, the headlines will likely suggest that their demise can be attributed directly — and wholly — to the COVID-19 crisis. But while the pandemic may have dealt the final, fatal blow, it is equally likely that there will have been underlying symptoms that were present long before the Coronavirus brought the world to a standstill.
There is a very real possibility that the first companies to fold will be those that were already displaying signs of metaphorical business obesity or heart disease. Bloated by excess, economic arteries clogged by inefficiencies, some of these companies were already on their way to the financial morgue. The arrival of COVID-19 will have merely hastened their journey.
Making a small departure from medical analogies, I am minded of the autopsy that is performed upon those football teams that are relegated at the end of the English Premier League season. Because it builds suspense and tension, TV commentators will refer to “must win” games and they will suggest that the final game is “make or break”. The truth is that their season was decided over the course of the previous 37 matches, not just by that final game.
The same applies to the fate of companies in the coming post-COVID economic storm. Many of them will have already been teetering on the edge; the Coronavirus will simply provide the final shove.
Returning to my medical analogy, those companies that are lean and fit have the greatest chance of survival. They will be more resistant to any economic disease that grips the industry and the nation in the coming months and years. They will be more agile and hungry, allowing the to bob, weave and pivot to dodge whatever a recession throws at them.
The same, sadly, cannot be said for the lumbering companies that are weighed down by inefficiency and that have survived until now on past glories. Decision making slowed by multi-layered management and feet rendered heavy by overly large overheads, these bloated companies will move as if wading through treacle; each economic blow landing and driving them to the canvas for the final count.
Over the years, I have met and interviewed countless business men and women that have stared into the financial abyss, and a good many that actually fallen in and subsequently bounced back.
They bounce back because their business is all they know and it is what they do. It is in their blood. But when they do return, they are always leaner. Gone is the desire to be the biggest. Gone is the need for large, expensive workforces. Having stared into the abyss, they come back with the realisation that the word “trappings” contains the word “trap”.
I realise that my analogies are all over the place here — I have been in lockdown for more than nine weeks now and my brain is fried, you’ll have to forgive me — but I am minded of a rock band that started out with the sole ambition of playing music. Then came the fame and the fortune, the agents, managers and hangers-on, the groupies, the drugs and the alcohol. A band that honed its skills over hundreds of gigs then spends three years off the road, writing and recording an album replete with guest rappers and a brass section. That album lands like the proverbial lead balloon. The Johnny Come Lately fans desert in their droves. The groupies depart, taking the Jack Daniels and the coke with them.
Then, after a prolonged period of rehab and counselling, the band reunites in a cramped and sweaty room above a pub. The magic is still there; the groove is still there; the love of the music is still there. Only now it is pure; untainted by excess. It is a belated reminder of why the band started in the first place.
Sadly, not all bands are afforded the luxury of a second chance. Those that are seldom hanker for a return to the limousine lifestyle. If the COVID-19 pandemic does — as I fear it will — claim victims in the business arena, I can only hope that they return similarly chastened.
Mark Anthony is editor of DemolitionNews.com.
