Anyone with even a half of a brain cell still working knew that state leaders having the power to determine what businesses in their states were "essential" and which were considered "non-essential," knew the devastation such decisions would cause throughout the country, from coast to coast.
As we have said multiple times, each business and each job at those businesses were 'essential" to those working there or those who owned those businesses, yet state leaders ignored the imminent destruction of America "small businesses," in favor of overreaching power grabs.
The preliminary numbers are in, and they tell the shocking truth of the COVID lockdowns that the media, liberal politicians that are still refusing to completely open their states up, and the Biden regime, would prefer Americans did not know.
• Fully 89% of these small businesses employ 20 or fewer employees.
The quote below shows the amount of devastation individual small businesses, their workers, and all of America has suffered due to the permanent loss of nearly 40% of small businesses in the United States.
While bureaucrats gave Walmart, Costco, Lowe’s, and other big-box stores “essential” status, allowing them to stay open during the COVID pandemic, 38.9% of America’s small businesses, the providers of most of the country’s jobs, were forced to close based on fear, hackneyed social-distancing rules, early ignorance about transmission, and an insatiable desire by governors to micromanage the affairs of men.
In short, small businesses could have operated the entire time, exactly like big-box stores did, had it not been for tyrants in statehouses and mayor’s offices around the country destroying lives in the name of “science.”
Twitter user Mark Changizi showed the precipitous drop in small businesses in a series of charts from both Womply and Harvard. When he first checked, 37.5% of businesses had been closed. That number is now 38.9% as of June 13. That’s far worse than when he used the word “decimated” to characterize it.
That is a lot of loss, both for Mom and Pop physical small businesses and those a little larger but not as big as Walmart, Costco and other big box stores, which were all deemed "essential" and allowed to continue to operate and survive.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant challenges for many companies, including Washington Prime Group, making a Chapter 11 filing necessary to reduce the Company’s outstanding indebtedness. Throughout the restructuring process, the Company remains committed to serving as a preeminent operator of retail town centers and will continue to serve its guests. Importantly, the Company will continue to prioritize the health and safety of our guests, retailers, employees and communities.
For a visual representation of how massive this problem is all throughout the country, the blog Cheapism has interactive maps for each individual state showing how many businesses are operating now, in comparison to the numbers as of January 2020.
Below is a screenshot of just one of those maps, California, which forced one of the most tyrannical lockdowns in the nation.
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What makes it worse other than the fact there are very small businesses that fall through the cracks and are not listed officially, is the states knew what would happen because the federal reserve economists had predicted even more closures.
Other reports from early April show the situation is getting worse, not better, as some businesses cannot overcome what the lockdowns had done to them.
The report, which surveyed over 35,000 small and medium-size businesses across the world, found that 22% of U.S. small businesses were closed in February. Those figures were up from October’s 14%. At the peak in May, the pandemic saw 23% of small and medium-size businesses closed — only 1 percentage point higher than the current closure rate.
While the overall closures are nearing Covid highs, the report found that different areas of the country were experiencing varying degrees of difficulty. Some states, like Maine, Idaho and Colorado, were seeing 9%-10% closures, while others like New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts were seeing at least 30% closed.
These numbers are not something we hear a lot about on national news, while local stations do report a bit on it in their area, so the bigger picture of the amount of damage, what we see as a deliberately caused national disaster, is unknown to many that get their "news" from the establishment national media.
IT WAS ALL FOR NOTHING.......
Back to the original PJ Media piece, at the very top, we see a study by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, which found that the lockdowns made little, if any difference in "health benefits."
“Previous studies have claimed that shelter-in-place orders saved thousands of lives, but we reassess these analyses and show that they are not reliable. We find that shelter-in-place orders had no detectable health benefits, only modest effects on behavior, and small but adverse effects on the economy. To be clear, our study should not be interpreted as evidence that social distancing behaviors are not effective. Many people had already changed their behaviors before the introduction of shelter-in-place orders, and shelter-in-place orders appear to have been ineffective precisely because they did not meaningfully alter social distancing behavior.” [Emphasis added]
It was all for nothing. Livelihoods destroyed, families starving and forced to food banks or giveaways. Inability to pay utilities and rent, and forced to live in cars and RV's.
Via USA Today in February 2021, in a piece titled "'Hidden homeless crisis': After losing jobs and homes, more people are living in cars and RVs and it's getting worse," we see the following example as one of many.
For months, Nicholas Atencio and his girlfriend, Heather Surovik, spent nearly every minute of their lives together in a 2000 Cadillac Escalade.
After Atencio, 33, lost his job as a plumber in May, he and Surovik, 36, delivered for Grubhub by day and at night curled up with their puppy on an air bed in the back of their car parked in a lot in Longmont, Colorado, dreaming of being reunited under one roof with Surovik’s teenage son who was living with his grandmother.
“I’m a mom, so I want to fix everything and make it better,” Surovik said. “It’s hard when you don't have the means to do that when you can’t do anything because you don't have anything.”
Americans are being driven into their vehicles by COVID-19 pandemic-fueled woes. And their ranks are likely to grow as the government safety net frays and evictions and foreclosures rise.
The term" vehicle residency" was not one I had heard until researching this piece.
It is heartbreaking, and to repeat myself, it was all for nothing!
PLENTY OF BLAME TO GO AROUND
The CDC, the face of the pandemic reporting Anthony Fauci, the media, liberal state leaders that continue to keep their states closed in an unprecedently power grab, even after "science" supposedly says it is time to open, celebrities that care nothing about the devastation because they aren't the ones living in their cars..... the list of those responsible for turning a pandemic response into a deliberately caused national disaster, goes on and on and on.
A case of the "cure" being worse than the original sickness.
Fauci has changed his "guidance" more than some change their underwear.
The media, first denied the problem, then acted like they were the ultimate experts.
Liberal state leaders took that Fauci and CDC "guidance" and ramped it up to the nth degree, which destroyed their states economies as well as their own constituents' lives. Worse than that, some of these same liberal leaders set one standard for their citizens and another for themselves.
Examples:
CA Gov. Gavin Newsom places strict restrictions on his constituency abut eating indoors at restaurants, then he gets caught doing what he deemed against his decrees.
The data on the devastation is finally starting to show the long term consequences of the actions of hypocritical political leaders, and as some states are still forcing COVID restrictions on their citizens, these numbers are just the preliminary data, and things are expected to get much worse.
The incompetence of Fauci, the irresponsibility of the media, the tyranny of the political leaders, have all taken a pandemic and turned into a deliberately cause, financial disaster, and as I have said, more than one.... it was all for nothing.
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