Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first introduced the five stages of grief model in 1969. The stages are:

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

Last year, David Kessler, a colleague and co-author of Kübler-Ross, said that the stages applied to various aspects of the pandemic. Specifically, he said, “There’s denial, which we saw a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us. There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities. There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks, everything will be better, right? There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end. And finally there’s acceptance: This is happening. I have to figure out how to proceed.”
Acceptance, as might be imagined, is where the power lies. People find control in acceptance:
“I can wash my hands. I can keep a safe distance. I can learn how to work virtually.”—Harvard Business Review, July 2020​