Summer of Records and Crackdowns

Boardroom Governance Newsletter #15 | August 2021

Image from The Cult of We book. Masayoshi Son left a signature and evidence of his WeWork optimism next to an image of Yoda.

I started this newsletter in June 2020 quoting Lenin, who said that there were decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen. Well, the weeks have turned into months and now we’re a year and a half deep into the pandemic. But the expectation (at least in the U.S.) was that by this summer (July 4th) most if not all restrictions were going to be lifted. Unfortunately, the Delta variant has thrown a wrench into the expected recovery, despite the prevalence of vaccines.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote that there were 13.3 million+ reported cases of COVID-19 globally (with over half a million deaths), including 3.4 million+ cases in the U.S. with ~136k deaths. Sadly, as of this writing, there are ~200 million reported cases of COVID-19 globally (with over 4.2 million deaths), including over 35 million cases in the U.S. with 613,436 deaths.

I write this …