How the Pandemic Has Been Good for (Some) Businesses
There is no overstating how hard the U.S. economy was clobbered when the pandemic first descended. In the spring of 2020, more than 3 million businesses stopped operating across the country. By June, an estimated 400,000 of them had shuttered permanently, according to one study. Unemployment, in the meantime, exploded to 11.2% that month.
That was the very bad news. The very good news, as my colleague Emily Barone reports, is that as the country and the economy emerge from the worst of the pandemic, new businesses are launching and the ones that survived are rebounding, often nimbler, stronger and more prosperous than before. The severity of the recession, Emily writes, acted like “a forest fire that cleared brush for more resilient growth and fresh green shoots.”
Anecdotal evidence abounds. There is Natoli’s Italian Deli in Secaucus, N.J., which saw its indoor business dry up and instead moved all of its service outdoors and turned its former dining room into a specialty grocery store. Revenue boomed—so much that the owner opened another grocery store in another part of town. There is Coucou French Classes, a language school with locations in New York, Los Angeles and Minneapolis that went fully online during the pandemic and now has developed a hybrid business model. The digital transition spurred other business ideas. The company developed new courses and class schedules, built out new workbook materials and optimized every aspect for the digital experience.
In addition, macro indicators suggest there are many new businesses launching.
Applications for new businesses jumped in the latter half of 2020 to the highest rates in the 17 years that the government has tallied such figures, according to a University of Maryland analysis . By contrast, in the months of recovery from the economic upheaval of the 2008 Great Recession, business applications continued to decline. One-third of the new applications in the U of M analysis come from non-brick-and-mortar retailers, suggesting that those who had innovated in online sales during the pandemic positioned themselves to succeed afterwards.
Not all new or reimagined businesses initially thrived. Some experienced more-than-anticipated income loss and are now expected to take a longer time to recover, in part because of the increased upfront investment required, according to a May study from the International Journal of Disaster Reduction. The study notes, however, that if a business can withstand the short-term pain of such a pivot, it may ultimately end up stronger.
All of this can mean businesses that are more crisis-proof than they would otherwise have been, Maria I. Marshall, an economics professor at Purdue University, told Emily. “Even if your profits stay the same,” she says, “your business has changed in a way that makes you more resilient to the next nonnormative shock.”
About 391.2 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of yesterday afternoon,of which some 339.1 million doses had been administered thus far, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 48.8% of Americans had been completely vaccinated.
More than 192 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 1 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 4.1 million people have died. On July 21, there were 559,573 new cases and 8,725 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 3 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 34.2 million coronavirus cases as of 1 a.m. E.T. today. More than 609,800 people have died. On July 21, there were 52,072 new cases and 333 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of July 22, 1 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Nearly every state in the U.S. has seen an increase in daily cases over the last two weeks, and leading public health experts are starting to strike a tone of deep concern. Earlier today, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rachelle Walensky, said in a press briefing that the U.S. is in “yet at another pivotal moment in this pandemic, with cases rising again and some hospitals reaching their capacity in some areas.” Walensky and other White House health officials expressed a growing concern over the threat the more infectious Delta variant now poses to the country’s pandemic recovery.
The official opening day of the Olympics is tomorrow (though some competitions have already begun). Today, Tokyo recorded 1,979 new cases of COVID-19, the highest daily count since a 2,044 peak on Jan. 15,reports the Associated Press. The surge is occurring despite a limited state of emergency imposed by Prime Minister Toshihide Suga on July 12, one which largely involves shorter hours and bans on alcohol sales for restaurants and bars. Meanwhile, some 75 people connected to the Olympics have tested positive, and officials are working to minimize viral spread within the Olympic bubble, reports my colleague Amy Gunia.
In a CNN Town Hall held in Cincinnati last night, President Joe Biden predicted that the Food and Drug Administration would issue full approval for COVID-19 vaccines as early as the beginning of the school year. Currently the shots are being administered under emergency use authorization. Biden also said he expects emergency use authorization would be granted for children under 12 “soon.” Full FDA approval is seen by many health experts as a key to boosting vaccination rates, given that skeptics and refusers regularly cite the vaccines’ “experimental” nature as their reason for not getting the shot.
YouTube has taken down videos posted on the channel of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, charging that they spread misinformation about the pandemic, reports Reuters. Bolsonaro has used the platform to cast doubt on the severity of the pandemic, question stay-at-home orders, tout ineffective cures for COVID-19, and more. Said YouTube in a statement, "Our rules do not allow content that states that hydroxychloroquine and/or ivermectin are effective in treating or preventing COVID-19, that states there is a cure for the disease, or says that masks do not work to prevent the spread of the virus.”
China pushed back yesterday against a World Health Organization proposal to reopen its investigation into the origins of COVID-19, including an inspection of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, reports The New York Times. On March 30, WHO released the results of an earlier investigation that found it “extremely unlikely” that the virus escaped from the lab, but WHO director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has lately floated the idea of re-examining the lab. At a press conference today, Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the Chinese National Health Commission, pronounced himself “extremely shocked” at the idea and charged that it revealed “an arrogant attitude toward science.”
At least 1.5 million children worldwide have lost a parent, a custodial grandparent or other principal caregiver to COVID-19, according to a study published in The Lancet on Tuesday. The survey covers the first 14 months of the pandemic—and is thus probably an underestimate—and is extrapolated from mortality data from 21 countries, which accounted for 77% of COVID-19 deaths worldwide in that timeframe.
In a moving and widely circulated interview on the Alabama news site AL.com, Dr. Brytney Cobia, of the Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, recounts her experiences treating unvaccinated COVID-19 patients in the moments before they are placed on a ventilator. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine,” she says.“I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.” Cobia reports that the most common explanation she hears from the next of kin for why deceased patients didn’t get vaccinated was that they thought the disease was a hoax, or no more serious than the flu, or that they were immune because of their race or blood type. Alabama currently ranks last in the nation in vaccination rates, with only 33.7% of the population fully inoculated.
Employees may emerge from the pandemic in a stronger position vis a vis their bosses than they were before, writes Kevin Delaney, a co-founder of the consulting firm Charter, in TIME. With more jobs available than workers, surveys suggest roughly 40% of U.S. employees are open to switching jobs in the coming months. In order to attract and retain workers, Delaney writes, employers are being forced both to boost wages and offer more flexibility in hours and work-from-home arrangements.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
If you were forwarded this and want to sign up to receive it daily, click here.
Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Elijah Wolfson
沒有留言:
張貼留言