By Marya Doerfel

The global disruption of “normal” caused by COVID-19 may reveal things that should change and must change - like making workdays shorter, workloads lighter and ending disproportional executive pay, Rutgers' Marya Doerfel says.

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Telecommuting from home appears to be a straightforward way to adapt to the COVID-19 quarantines while largely staying the course. Or is it?

Resilience is about staying the course. People are resilient, in part, because they continue to work. Businesses are resilient because employees continue to do their jobs despite chaos and uncertainty. In a way, responsibilities “pull workers through” crises. Businesses and nonprofits are resilient because workers “push the organizations through” disruption. When organizations continue to be productive, they feed into community resilience. Those who work fuel our society enabling communities to get through this together.

Yet this pressure to continue working can be emotionally and physically exhausting. This global crisis is generating stress from social isolation and heightened uncertainty. Challenges are especially poignant for families with small children, for people at high risk, for those whose family members need extra care, for people who lack technology in their homes, and for people who are simply freaked out.

The leaders of the state Senate on Monday released a letter urging the governor to devote more state employees and resources to reduce the backlog of New Jersey workers suffering while waiting for unemployment benefits.

More than a million workers have applied for unemployment benefits in the Garden State, and while 721,000 are receiving benefits, hundreds of thousands more are not.

The state has seen an unprecedented surge in unemployment claims since mid-March, when businesses statewide were ordered to close their doors or dramatically curtail their services to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Since then, people who found themselves without a job have complained of waiting more than a month for benefits or running up against an overwhelmed online application system and call centers.

We hold this truth to be self-evident: The murder of Ahmaud Arbery was a lynching — to use Bryan Stevenson’s definition, as a racially-motivated act of violence committed by two or more people where there was no accountability — and it only takes one careful viewing of the Feb. 23 shooting on video to label it as such.

But what makes it more terrifying is that an elected law enforcement official in 21st century Georgia — a state that has had 594 documented lynchings between 1877 and 1950 — gave it his official endorsement after watching footage of this murder with impunity more than two months ago.

Clearly, without the videotape that went viral Tuesday, there would have been no attempt at justice, and it was only Thursday night that charges were finally brought. If not for this gargantuan mess of a truth bomb being posted on a radio station website — incandescent evidence that even Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called “absolutely horrific” — this case would still be nailed shut.

Spring is here, and Gov. Phil Murphy’s stir-crazy constituents are clamoring for a return to normalcy.

As he’s begun carefully loosening some of his lockdown restrictions, starting with the parks and golf courses, everyone is wondering: What’s next? In some respects, we’re doing well.

Phase 1 is successful social distancing, and it’s clearly helping to contain the virus, with new hospitalizations trending downward in our state.

U.S. Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J., spent much of his time Friday during a conference call with New Jersey emergency medical services responders saluting their service for treating pre-hospitalized coronavirus patients.

“To put it simply, there is just no way we could make it through this pandemic without (EMS responders)," he said.

But Booker conceded verbal bouquets are not what EMS responders need right now.

They need financial support, he said.

With New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy ordering schools to close for the rest of the 2019-2020 academic year, parents, guardians and students are asking themselves what an eventual reopening would look like as the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic plays out.

The simple answer is, who knows? The outbreak has thrown curveballs at our daily routines, and how normalcy returns is the million-dollar question. State officials have been preparing for the next steps based on the latest data and trends on coronavirus infections.

With more than 1.3 million students across the Garden State, the mission to reopen schools won’t be easy. But state officials say they plan to do the best they can with whatever resources are provided.