Covid 19--the Healthy Victims
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“This virus has cost me two million dollars in two weeks,” he told a friend.
“From your investments?”, the friend replied.
“No—from my business.”
He manages a hotel that’s part of a national chain. It’s located near the headquarters of Microsoft in Redmond, WA., about five miles from the nursing home where multiple people died from Covid-19. The hotel manager said that his occupancy rate—typically close to full—was sitting at 11%. “I’ve got more staff in the building than guests. People working in the restaurant and bar spend their days mainly talking to each other. The housekeepers have no rooms to clean. My catering people have had everything cancelled for at least the next 50 days.”
It doesn’t take much foresight to figure out what’s going to happen to these people. Even if they’re willing to work, they’re not going to be working for much longer.
Play this scenario out against numbers we already know:
44% of U.S. workers aged 18 to 64 make less than $18,000 a year (less than $10.25 per hour)
17% of Americans say they already don’t have enough money to pay all of their monthly bills
40% say they couldn’t come up with $400 to pay an emergency expense
All this existed before the virus. This is a pool of Americans that numbers in the tens of millions. Many of them work in jobs directly impacted by Covid-19.
When their trickles of income are turned off entirely, what happens next? What do they do?
Aside from face masks, test kits and Purell, government leaders need to prepare for an economic crisis whose victims could easily outnumber those contracting the virus. “Working from home” is a far different thing than not working at all.
Exactly how do leaders do that?
I don’t know.
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