GOOD LORD: COVID Shutdowns Destroyed Nearly 40% of American Small Businesses for No Damned Good Reason.

The Number of Small Businesses Destroyed by COVID Lockdowns Will ASTOUND You

COVID shutdowns championed by U.S. governors and D.C. bureaucrats are responsible for destroying nearly 40% of small businesses since the virus was unleashed on the world—and we know now that it was for little to no damned good reason. A study by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences revealed recently that shutdown orders made little to no difference in COVID’s impact. From the abstract of the study:

“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]

● Shot: The Bay Area’s small business closure crisis is already here. One out of every 100 businesses in the San Francisco metro are permanently closed.

—Leonardo Castañeda, The San Jose Mercury, September 22, 2020.

● Chaser: California’s stricter COVID rules did not hurt the economy: report.

—Leonardo Castañeda, The San Jose Mercury, today.

● Hangover: Nearly a third of California’s restaurants permanently closed as pandemic set in.

—The AP, May 19^th.

h/t SG