Imagine being a young entrepreneur finally opening your dream, a leased building housing your cafe offering breakfast, lunch and specialty coffee offerings. You open up in early 2019 and your business quickly grows, offering jobs for servers and cashiers. You hire eight people and both you and other family members work the business.
By summer, the business is going strong. The fear of meeting monthly bills and obligations and payroll are a thing of the past and you are making money. Your reputation of serving a great breakfast and lunch brings them in to sample your offerings. By the end of the year, things are looking good for the future and you’re thinking about a possible second cafe opening and you start to make plans for doing so.
Then COVID-19 hits.
You are told to wear masks, frequent hand washing, and social distancing cuts down on how many customers you can serve with your limited offering and hours. You are losing business and you drop the idea of opening a second cafe. Then the state shuts down your business to stop the spread of the virus.
The bills are still there at the end of the month, you have been given permission by the state to offer take-out only. You grab at the chance to do so. You have laid off most of your workers and the few that remain work to fill orders. The business is less than half of what it was.
The bills keep piling up. Suppliers are being selectively paid – one supplier one month, another the next. Electricity bills are past due, rent on the building is late. You don’t have the money. You can’t pay your workers and survive yourself on what is left.
You decide it isn’t worth the effort to keep the business going at this level and keep losing every month. You declare bankruptcy and close the cafe and lay off the remaining workers. Suppliers are shorted what is owed, the lease is unpaid, the electric and gas companies get shafted.
What is wrong with this picture?
The governor has never operated a business, she is a lawyer and politician. She has no real life experience with customers on a daily basis, and only allows who she wants to see in her office through the receptionist. No amount of misery among the” little people,” those making the state run by their daily efforts and paying taxes on wages and sales tax, affects her decisions on what will happen to fight this virus. If your business is shut down or running on fumes, that’s your problem, not hers.
Is it surprising most of the states that have this “shut down” mentality are Democrats? I’m sure the vast majority of them have only had jobs as lawyers or in politics, never in the normal private sector – running businesses, making daily decisions, making payroll, and if a public company – paying dividends based on company performance.
Remember, the reason businesses exist is to make a profit, not provide jobs. If it provides jobs, good wages and benefits, it is because the business is successful and has to remain so to keep the good jobs and benefits.
Government has to do nothing, produces nothing, to get tax money to keep the state running and state employees working and getting paid. But with all these businesses with reduced hours and business shut down and/or bankrupt, those tax dollars cease to exist.
Governor and legislators – get off your behind, open up the state for business and make mask wearing a law (not a directive), social distancing and hand washing to be practiced. We have had mask wearing for months and it doesn’t seem to change the virus rate. But people need to work to be productive, to make a living, and provide for their families. They cannot be kept at home.
The schools need to open and the teachers go back to work. Are there risks involved…. every damn day! When you get up in the morning, get ready for work and get on the highway, do you know for sure you’re going to make it to your destination? Will you get run over crossing the road? In your physical exam, will cancer be detected?
Many of those contracting the virus have no symptoms, others flu-like symptoms, and those with pre-existing conditions are most at risk. Are we better off laid up at home for both mental and physical health? How many are abusing drugs and alcohol? How many children are being abused because of the increased frustrations?
The president-elect, Joe Biden, has stated he would shut down the economy for as long as it takes based on science! Well based on science, the virus is stopped if you wear masks, wash hands frequently, and social distance…. how’s that been working?
Most of the people I see at supermarkets and gas stations wear the mask properly (over mouth and nose), social distance, and maybe wash their hands frequently. Yet the contracting of the virus and death rate continue to go up. Maybe “science” doesn’t know everything? They have gotten so much wrong and have changed the story so often, who knows what is right and wrong? But dementia Joe is going to listen to the scientists.
Life is for the living… and living like we have been for the most of 2020 sucks and isn’t working. Open up businesses and let’s move forward.
Remember this. This is a virus from the Communist Chinese, and biological warfare virus manufactured in the Wuhan Virus Laboratory under the communist government. The Chinese are totally at fault for this pandemic. Not Trump, not Republicans or Democrats – the Chinese Communists!!
The rotting of America from within continues…
Mask up and open up, been repeating that since March, stop with the games and get on with life. We will have COVID-19 for years to come, take precautions, absolutely but get on with life.
Mask up and open up no masks at 4 Trump rallies in Mich if your God and leader wont follow the rules how can you expect people to follow . No social distancing lots of yelling Trumpy far from the crowd close to his plane so he can get the hell out of there. You Trumpies are all blind.
Ranger Rick
I totally agree the Chinese Communists are responsible. The question is what do we do about it?
The answer seems to be… Nothing. They knew very well the rest of the world’s countries would not raise a finger in retaliation. Why would they? People are dying already; another useless war would only bring more death.
It’s easier for the communists to set back and watch the “free” world destroy itself.
Kind of amazing one hears very little about the communist countries’ death toll or their economy “tanking.”
Sadly, few have any memory why America had fought against communism.
If I’m correct Vietnam was the last major fight against communism.
Today no one in America has a fear that Communism or Socialism maybe the next form of government. In fact some welcome socialism with open arms.
It just took biological warfare to weaken the greatest foe communism and socialism ever had.
Until we agree to try and return to some form of normality with guidelines being adhered to by everyone, we as a country are “on the eve of destruction.”
We do know, yes by science, that wearing masks REDUCES the spread of the virus, along with washing/sanitizing our hands and social distancing.
The problem is many people, like you and those who have commented here, don’t believe this. Many others outright refuse to wear a mask, citing it infringes on their freedoms. Give me a break! Do you want to be the person who tells our doctors and nurses they cannot take any time off during the holidays because the hospitals are overflowing with patients?
These professionals are over worked and burned out already, yet we don’t have this virus contained yet. Because we know masking up reduces the spread of the virus, opening up businesses where the mask comes off once inside (restaurants, bars & cafes) will only continue the spread and completely overwhelm the hospitals and their staff.
Think about your argument above, “When you get up in the morning, get ready for work and get on the highway, do you know for sure you’re going to make it to your destination? Will you get run over crossing the road? In your physical exam, will cancer be detected?” Should this happen to you and the ambulance takes you to the hospital, drops you off in the “waiting room” which is now some converted office space, and tells you they will get to you when someone is free to check on you. Imagine that for a moment. How would you feel? What if it were a loved one of yours and you met them at the hospital. You wait, and wait and wait all the while getting more and more mad that nobody has even came to check on your loved one’s injuries.
I’m sorry but this world needs to check themselves and their selfish wants of opening up these businesses, a lost business if better than a lost life!
Would that be the same science that showed no real difference in infection rates between those who wore masks, and those that didn’t? Or the same science that shows no increase in death rates between this year and last?
Once Biden is inaugurated there will no longer be any COVID-19, it disappears just like that.
We can go back to rioting, looting, and burning down whitey businesses and demand justice and equality!
Joe and Kamala will make everything better. Just click your heels together and say “There’s no place like home” over and over. Now don’t you feel better?