Restaurants and bars in Ohio are forcibly closed now, except for carry out, in response to this COVID-19 virus. This has to be unprecedented. I don’t think any illness or anything else has invoked anywhere near this level of response here. The numbers so far make the response seem a bit excessive, but maybe things are much worse than they appear, since testing has been limited so far.
With the incubation period of the virus and some safety, I can’t imagine this lasting less than three weeks. As such, I had to have one last dine-in restaurant meal before the cut-off of 2100. I had an Uncle Rico (roast beef, tater tot, cream cheese bagel) at Mr. Zubs. I was considering other options, but Zubs was relatively close and likely to be open. In fact, I drove by Aladdin’s first, but it appeared to be closed.
I have to imagine the entire industry and its employees are going to struggle with this, even with proposed assistance. Restaurants and bars are a large part of the job market. Hopefully things work out for them, but I imagine many will struggle.
The stock market jumped upward on Friday, but I can’t imagine it doing anything but dropping like a rock over the coming few weeks at a minimum. So many industries will be affected significantly by this, both the businesses and the employees. Some industries are facing significant losses of revenue, which will be hard to make up for with loans and bailouts. Consumers losing income will spread revenue losses. I’d like to have more money to put into the market as prices fall. It will be hard to time though, with all the uncertainty of when the disease and the economic blockages will clear up, and how much government assistance will do.