We are fast approaching the point in the coronavirus pandemic at which the supposed cure is almost as bad as the disease.
This isn’t about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. This is about the closures and restrictions on civil society, on Main Street, and on businesses where people get together.
Governments for over a year have demanded compliance from restaurants, movie theaters, storefronts, gyms, play places, and countless other “third places.”
The closures, the sanitization rules, the capacity limits on these institutions have been based more in fear and outdated practices than in science, but proprietors went along. Yet for many businesses, there was simply no way, under these onerous rules, to pay the bills.
The Decurion Corporation, for example, announced this month the permanent closure of its ArcLight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres chains, citing the heavy losses incurred during the pandemic.
The two chains, which are based mostly in California, have been shuttered since March 2020.
“This was not the outcome anyone wanted, but despite a huge effort that exhausted all potential options, the company does not have a viable way forward,” a statement read.
ArcLight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres also operated venues in Boston, Chicago, Maryland, and the Washington, D.C., metro area.
They are not the only business casualties of strict pandemic safety protocols. They are merely the latest in a long string of businesses that have had to shut their doors permanently thanks, in part, to the demands of state and federal pandemic guidance.
In Baltimore, Ida B’s Table announced this month it was shutting down for good, striking “another pandemic-era blow for the city’s downtown area,” as the Baltimore Sun put it. The closure comes after the home decor store Trohv announced it would also shutter after 14 years of business. The “Best in Baltimore” shoe store Ma Petite Shoe is closing, as is Kirchmayr Chocolatier, the latter having served the Baltimore area for three decades. Hampden Junque, for its part, is moving to an entirely online business model after being open for 25 years.
In Washington, D.C., alone, an estimated 375 businesses have shuttered since March 2020, according to DCist.
Illinois has lost more than 500,000 jobs since the beginning of 2020, according to the Chicago Tribune, of which nearly 43% were jobs in the “leisure and hospitality sector.”
In the world of retail, at least 13 major businesses, including Brooks Brothers, Guitar Center, J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, and Pier 1, have fallen into bankruptcy, each citing the pandemic as the catalyst for their Chapter 11 filings.
Killing these businesses means harming downtowns and Main Streets. These are the very predictable side effects of the nonmedical interventions that state and local governments have imposed and that the federal government has recommended.
These businesses have suffered in the name of public safety. They have done everything that has been asked of them, and they have paid the price. Perhaps most insulting of all is that health officials say now the pandemic protocols they imposed on businesses, the same protocols that likely hastened so many closures, are not even all that efficacious.
Businesses were ordered to cut their capacities drastically to honor the 6-feet social distancing rule. Now, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 3 feet is an acceptable distance for at least schoolchildren to maintain.
Businesses were advised to disinfect everything in their stores thoroughly to help contain the spread of the disease. Now, the CDC has relaxed its rules, claiming intense disinfectants are possibly doing more harm than good.
This is also to say nothing of healthcare officials saying first that masks were not necessary and then demanding later that businesses police their clientele to enforce compliance with mask mandates. This is to say nothing of the “nonessential” businesses that were temporarily shuttered altogether during strict lockdown periods.
These protocols not only put a strain on businesses but also likely had a negative psychological effect on customers, scaring them into thinking that even socially distanced brick-and-mortar shops are simply too dangerous to patronize in person.
Many of these places are never coming back. Hundreds of jobs no longer exist. And it’s all happening while everyone is still trying to figure out how to reintegrate into society post-pandemic.
Worse still, worse than even the loss of jobs and businesses, is the long-term effect these onerous pandemic social distancing standards will likely have on civil society. Venues that once provided healthy outlets for entertainment and communal celebrations are disappearing, leaving a void in a nation that is both tired and on-edge from the psychological effects of lockdowns.
If we continue at this clip, losing the outlets of leisure that serve as the basis for our shared culture, all while hemorrhaging jobs and all the financial security that comes with it, the cure may very well become as bad as the disease itself.
