Seventeen months have passed since the U.S. economy faced the full force of the COVID-19 pandemic. This shock led to an immediate and unprecedented decline as large parts of the economy were shuttered to contain the spread of the disease. The path of recovery has been a difficult one, and a good place to begin is by thanking those on the front line fighting the pandemic: the essential workers who kept the economy going, those who have cared for others in need, and those in medical research, business, and government, who came together to discover, produce, and widely distribute effective vaccines in record time. We ... (full story)