There’s a little spice shop in Ventura, CA. It has been around for years and sells great cinnamon. This past winter, the owners wanted to do something new so they put the shop up for sale. It was purchased by a young couple who took out a loan and used their savings to buy the shop.
Not too long after that, we all learned about COVID-19 and the stores in the area were closed. But, the new owners of the spice shop pushed forward, they had no choice but to try to make it work. They opened an online store and offered home delivery. But, most spices are inexpensive and getting people to pay more for shipping than the product is worth is really hard to do. So, they offered curbside pickup.
Finally, after months of trying to keep their business alive, they were allowed to open their doors, only after they installed costly disease-preventing upgrades to their store. Shortly after that, the city decided to close off their street so that the local restaurants could expand their outdoor seating.
Now, if you want to visit the spice shop, you need to park in a garage over a block away. You used to be able to pop in for a minute, pick up your spices and be on your way but now it’s turned into a 20-minute ordeal. So, their foot traffic has nearly evaporated. After all, there’s a limit to how much effort one will expend to buy good cinnamon.
The county is set to open a new testing facility this week. As President Trump pointed out months ago, if you increase testing, it’s going to result in an increase in the number of confirmed cases.
He is 100% correct. That will happen here too.
So, here’s what’s going to happen. The county is going to start seeing an increase in the number of confirmed cases because they’re going to be testing more people. Because of the increase in confirmed cases, the local authorities are going to freak out. They’re going to force business to close again, and the little spice shop is going to go out of business. We’ve seen this happen before. There is no reason to believe it won’t happen again.
“The Economy” is a fairly abstract concept. The media doesn’t like to talk about the financial impact the lockdowns are having on individual people so they stick to talking about “The Economy”. Here’s the thing, The U.S. economy is driven, not only by big corporations, but also by nearly 31 million small businesses.
Yelp released some data recently that is startling. According to the data, as of June 15th nearly 140,000 businesses listed on Yelp have closed since March 1st. And, 41% (over 57,000) of those business will remain closed. Permanently.
And that number is rising. In April, the split was 79% closed temporarily and 21% closed permanently, by July that had changed. Now, nearly 55% of all “temporary” closures have become permanent. Keep in mind, that’s just businesses listed on Yelp. There are many, many businesses not listed on Yelp that are being similarly impacted.
There was a lot of data in that paragraph so I’ll give you a quick summary. The longer the lockdowns are in place, the more people there will be who will lose their livelihood. Not only are business owners affected when a business closes, all their employees are affected too. And, the problem is getting worse.
The lockdowns and other drastic measures put in place to curb the disease were initiated in a panic. The early models showed an incredible high mortality rate for the disease. But that’s not what happened.
We’ve seen that the mortality rate is much lower than initially predicted. For young and healthy people, the mortality rate of COVID-19 is nearly zero. We’ve learned that many people (up to 81% in some studies) are completely asymptomatic. Most of the remaining 19% experience mild symptoms and get better with home care.
We’ve become better at treating people than we were months ago, and the overall mortality rate, already small, continues to decrease. But, the exact same approach is still being used to stop the spread of the disease as was being used before we knew all of these things. The local governments are still using a fire hose when they should now be using an eyedropper.
The President said in March that “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”
We have reached that point.
It’s time to reopen the United States because the damage being caused by this perpetual state of unknown is worse for the country than COVID-19.
Some of you are going to want to counter with “but we need to save lives.” I’m not saying we shouldn’t. Clearly if restrictions are lifted and businesses are allowed to open, more people will catch the disease and transmit it to one of the very few people who might get seriously ill. What I am saying that it’s time to change the approach. We need a more precise way of protecting the people who are at-risk.
Here are some ideas I came up with in just a few minutes.- Home delivery of food and goods to the elderly- Give at-risk people home sanitization systems- Increased testing of at-risk people even if they’re not exhibiting symptoms- Provide in-home care for COVID-19 patients when possible
It’s true that some seemingly healthy people will get sick and some will die. “Healthy” people die every day from a myriad of illnesses and accidents. I’m not advocating that we force anyone to return to society. If someone assesses their own personal risk, and feels it is too great, they can simply shelter in place. Just don’t force everyone to do it.
The small business owners I’ve spoken with don’t want government handouts or loans. They want to be allowed to open their businesses and have a chance to make a living. They should be given that chance.
It’s time for the local leaders to start making decisions based on what we know now, not what they thought was true in March. It’s time to reopen America. It’s time to give businesses, like the little spice shop, at least a chance to succeed.
Final Notes:
I fully realize that some businesses permanently close every day for a variety of reasons. I couldn’t find a reliable resource for the data or I would have included that in the analysis. However, if we use April’s rate (21%) as the baseline, even though the real number is much lower than that, the percentage changes from 21% to 55% comparing April to July. That’s still a huge difference but, in reality, the problem is much worse than that.
I didn’t even touch on issues like rising suicide and overdose rates, the potential negative impact on children if they’re not allowed back in school or people dying because they’re delaying much-needed medical care. These items also need to be considered when comparing the harm caused by the disease to the harm caused by the cure. Even without considering these issues, we are well past the point where the current response by authorities can be considered reasonable.
