The Death of Small Business

Regarding your story “Blue Dog Blues,” I saw the anti-maskers marching the last two Saturdays up State Street. In round numbers, I think there were about 100 the Saturday before last and about twice that many last Saturday. I talked to a few of them. I do not think that they are COVID denialists as much as they are against dictator Gavin Newsom The First.

To deny people the right to open their own businesses may be equivalent to death for many people. Millions of small business owners may go bankrupt during this pandemic and lose their life savings that they have invested in their businesses, and tens of millions of their employees may be unemployed, homeless, etc. for an extended time. As you probably already know, small businesses create about 80 percent of the jobs in this country. If these small business owners go bankrupt, this country may go into an extended economic depression.

Our health authorities have no data on the efficacy of an extended “shelter in place” during a pandemic. A recent comment by the Los Angeles County Health Department indicated that 92 percent of the people who had died in that county had pre-existing conditions. Thus, it seems that a universal “shelter in place” probably is both unwise and unnecessary.