MMAC: Doing what we do best - Bringing the business community together to act on challenges & opportunities.

The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce remains open for business, as we have been for 158 years. But as our region, our country and our world face an unprecedented challenge with the spread of the coronavirus and COVID-19, we will be working very differently for the foreseeable future.
 
Starting today, the MMAC employees are working from home, with our physical office closed for at least the next two weeks and perhaps much longer. MMAC and its Milwaukee 7 Economic Development Partnership employees will stay on the job and continue working remotely to meet your needs – a task now more important than ever. This is a significant challenge, but we will help you get through it. When there is a recovery and a return to growth, we will be here every step of the way.

We have an obligation to learn and lead. This decision is reflective of the public and private sector health officials’ guidance on of the value of “social distancing” to slowing the spread of the virus. By breaking chains of transmission from person to person, we can “flatten the curve,” spreading out the burden on our health care system so it doesn’t become overwhelmed. Many business leaders are doing this within their companies already. Whatever we’re doing now, we need to be doing more, and faster.
 
Consider this: During our Board of Directors meeting on Monday, which was held via online conference for the first time in our history, 70-plus CEOs from our region representing more than 100,000 employees heard a potential scenario from Dr. John Raymond, President and CEO of the Medical College of Wisconsin. As a conservative estimate if 5% of Wisconsin’s 6 million residents contract the virus. That’s 300,000 cases. Now, estimate that 20 percent of those cases require hospitalization. That’s 60,000 people. Our health care system currently has 12,300 hospital beds, and between 3,000 and 4,000 of them are available on a typical day. The potential for our health care system to get overwhelmed is real, and it is imminent.

>>View our page on Conronavirus Guidance & Resources

To give our doctors and nurses a fighting chance, we need to slow this down.
 
We’re Milwaukee. We’re resilient. We go to work in two feet of snow or 10-below temperatures, and sometimes we head to a tavern in the same conditions. But we can’t just tough this one out. We have to be smart and act collectively. From China to Italy to Seattle – and certainly soon us -- everything has changed. This means eliminating face-to-face contact whenever and wherever possible. It means learning how to work remotely, and learning it on the fly. It means a difficult choice of postponing events, and impacting many of the business models of our members.
 
These decisions will hurt a lot of our businesses. We do not have all the answers on what it will take to support affected industries and their employees. But the best response for the health and wealth of our community is the short term pain, for a longer term gain.

For additional coronavirus resources, please visit our website.

Stay healthy, stay safe and stay connected even while we remain physically distant.

Tim Sheehy
President
MMAC