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COVID-19 Pandemic Perspectives India (Tushya Mehta) The perspective that this page is exploring is the perspective of the largest democracy of the world- India. It is also the second-most populous country in the world and so understanding how the nation is dealing with this crisis is crucial. The country is another giant like China where things could go very wrong and according to WHO may direct the future of this pandemic. I am exploring what the citizens are feeling and how they are responding to the pandemic. I have studied the Prime Minister’s speech on the nationwide lockdown to understand the action being taken., I used media/journalistic sources from TIME and NewYorker to see how the governments decisions are impacting the people. Using previous Public health studies I tried to understand why the decisions being taker are necessary and how prepared India actually is?

Small Business Owners & Employees (Kaleigh Rios)

Fact-Checked Source: CBC News, "Small Businesses Call for More Help During COVID-19 Crisis"

On April 2, 2020, CBC News correspondent Vassy Kapelos conducted an interview with two small business owners about the devastating impacts the COVID-19 shutdown has had on their employees, their personal livelihood, and their companies from a broader financial standpoint.

Five Fact Checked Claims

In order to better understand the concerns of these small business owners and to verify claims made throughout the interview regarding the actions of the Canadian federal government, I did research to fact check these statements.

Last week the Feds announced that they were boosting their planned wage subsidy from 10% to up to 75%. It will apply to all businesses big and small.

Justin Trudeau did in fact increase the wage subsidy and also relaxed the parameters to qualify for the loan program according to CTV News.

Part of this announcement from the Federal government where help for businesses is concerned was a $40,000 loan made available through the Business Development Bank. Interest for the first year and then a quarter of it, well up to a quarter of it, can be forgiven.

I thought this was important to fact check because at the time of this interview this loan program had not yet been released, but was rather a mere proposal. I was able to find through Business Development of Canada's website that this loan program can now in fact be acessed through a Canada Emergency Business Account.

This is already a narrow margin business and for the answer to be to just take on more debt, keep paying your bills, but take on more debt. I don't see how that's helpful at all.

This quote coming from the the owner of a small resurant claimed that this proposed loan program would not be advantageous or within reach for a large portion of small businesses. According to CBC News, the requirements of this specific loan program made it very difficult to qualify, and many businesses would not be able to financially handle inevitably accumulating such a large amount of debt.

There needs to be some support here. Leaving it up to the good graces of banks or your landlords is not gonna work, you know, we're particularly vulnerable.

Small businesses in fact are more financially vulnerable than businesses in the corporate sector according to FXStreet. Small businesses have greater difficulty paying back loans due to their typically small profit margins and sensitivity to growing interest rates.

In the mall that we're in I think about three quarters of the businesses are forced to be closed now.

According to the Financial Post, all non-essential businesses in Canada were in fact forced to shut down until further notice. Only grocery stores, pharmacies, and the supply chains needed to support those stores are allowed to remain open.

Analytic Essay

Leaving the Vulnerable Behind: The COVID-19 Crisis from the Perspective of Small Business Owners and Employees

The COVID-19 pandemic was something out of everyone’s control. In the midst of an essential shut down, a lot of small businesses are fighting to stay open. The owners are now being vocal about their disappointment in the federal government. Small businesses are important for the economy as they provide meaningful and gainful employment, along with serving as a gathering place for their local communities. From the perspective of small businesses, low profit margins and the requirement to pay for rent and utilities among other costs make them particularly vulnerable to pandemics, and therefore they must receive aid from the federal government as well as implement new emergency practices in order to protect their business and communities.

The COVID-19 pandemic quickly erupted in North America in early March, thus forcing small business owners to make an emergency plan within just a couple of weeks. This included making tough decisions involving laying off employees and preparing for inevitable profit losses. Two small business owners interviewed by CBC News presented conflicting opinions on the proposed Canadian loan program. This sparked my interest to look further into ways a business could protect themselves during a crisis. I looked into a scholarly source that analyzed effective practices small businesses could implement in order to lower the negative impacts a pandemic would have on them. The lead author of the scholarly source, Deron Burton, is a medical officer with the US Public Health Service. Even in places like New York City, Burton recognized that if small businesses were to shut down there would be detrimental economic consequences to the city as a whole.

In the study of emergency preparedness among small businesses, a careful analysis was conducted of practices owners implemented prior to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 that they believed helped to lower the potential negative effects of the situation. A list of continuity planning ideas that acted as effective means of lowering costs, organizing the employees, and lowering their exposure to the greater public in NYC was collected. To Burton’s surprise, many of these rather simple and cost effective strategies were not being endorsed by small businesses.

The businesses affected by the coronavirus face a different kind of sadness: the anguish of an unexpected disaster when everything was going well (Mulliainathan, 2020, p. B8)

The devastating reality is that most small businesses did not have a set pandemic preparedness plan before COVID-19 struck, and as a result many are struggling greatly.

Although the implementation of certain practices would’ve allowed for a smoother transition, small businesses are still too economically vulnerable to survive a recession without government intervention. Due to the fact that small businesses are viewed as having less economic importance than larger corporations, they have developed distrust for these companies as well as the federal government. Dane Stangler from Forbes outlines this distrust,

Yet what this all threatens to do—as I heard another national policy leader say—is set up a clash between small business and big companies. In some ways, the current crisis magnifies rifts that have always existed among business interests categorized by employment size (Stangler, 2020, p. 12)

The COVID-19 pandemic has essentially confirmed that small businesses continue to be undermined in the socioeconomic sphere and are often left to survive with little government intervention.

Despite the issue of collaboration between the federal government and small businesses, the local community will typically take responsibility to support them in trying times.

The phone has been ringing off the hook with people either wanting curbside pickup or deliveries. The first couple of days we were actually busier than normal (“Small Businesses Call for More Help,” 2020)

With a lack of government funding, many community members have decided that whether their most beloved businesses survive or not is heavily dependent on their committed patronage during this time.

It is essential to include the perspective of small business owners and their employees on this website in order to promote their interests as stakeholders. Small businesses are especially vulnerable due to their small profit margins, bill requirements, and inadequate funding from the federal government, thus they need to be provided with robust solutions for aiding their business during a pandemic. In addition to pandemic preparedness planning, it is important that we come together as a community in collaboration with these businesses to assure their survival.

References

CBC News. (2020, April 2). Small businesses call for more help amid COVID-19 crisis | Power & Politics [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV4jiZeD-Uk

This is a primary source coming from an interview by CBC News with two small business owners from Canada discussing the devastating impacts the COVID-19 shutdown has had on their companies. This source represents the perspective of small business owners because the news anchor is directly asking about the thoughts these two men have on the recent federal action that has been taken in an effort to support their companies. The main argument being portrayed in this source is the disappointment these owners are expressing for the lack of helpful federal programs during the pandemic, and how they are still desperately waiting on some well thought out government intervention.

The owner of one of the restaurants had already offered takeout and delivery previously and described that although this was still a difficult transition for him, it wasn’t as strenuous as it had been for other small business owners. The restaurant that had not yet offered take out and delivery was struggling to pay rent. I think including this source provided a good piece of evidence because it is very emotionally driven and captivates the audience. Sometimes it is easier to just think about the pure logistics of the current situation and forget that small business owners and employees dedicate their entire livelihood to these companies. My hope is that if more people watch this interview they can begin to see why these owners are so incredibly desperate for the federal government to take some more action.

Stangler, D. (2020, March). How Do We Help Small Business During COVID-19 Crisis? Forbes, 10-13. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/danestangler/2020/03/17/how-do-we-help-small-business-during-covid-19-crisis/#2527cca81b7d

This is a secondary source coming from a journalist working for Forbes who has done their research on how COVID-19 is negatively impacting small businesses financially and what we as a country should be doing to help them. Although this article is not written by a small business owner themselves, the author still provides some powerful insight on what government plans they believe should be implemented to save small businesses in these trying times. The main argument expressed in this article is that having this global emergency strike out of nowhere and the immediate recession we were thrown into proves that both our federal government and small businesses in the US are economically unprepared to handle pandemics.

The author begins the article by describing the vulnerability of small businesses and how many of them essentially live paycheck to paycheck. As a result of COVID-19, a lot of them are facing disruptions within their international supply chains. Both of these issues are driving numerous businesses to close for good. Even at home businesses are suffering due to being denied access to federal aid programs as they do not fit the government’s qualifications. The author suggests that there is a lot more that could be done such as an increase in loan availability and lowering the amount of solicitations.

I think this selected source provides good evidence for the perspective I am focusing on because it outlines more of the specifics of what the government is actually doing to try to help small businesses. Obviously, like anything else, when you are watching the news and hearing our government leaders talk about all the good they are supposedly doing, you may get a false impression of how much improvement these owners and employees are actually seeing. The plans that have been put out thus far are helping a percentage of small businesses, but certainly not all.

Mullainathan, S. (2020, March 20). We All Need Small Businesses. Don't Let Them Die. The New York Times, p. B8. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/business/small-businesses-coronavirus-help.html

This is a secondary source that comes from the perspective of the son of a former small business owner who is advocating for economic action to be taken during this pandemic. The main argument of this article emphasizes that unless the US Federal government infuses some money into small businesses or freezes commercial rent and mortgage payments, then when the economy eventually reopens a large percentage of our small businesses are going to be gone. The author of this article takes time to reflect on the 2008 financial crisis and explained how without government intervention such as the infusion of money into banks, a lot of the companies likely wouldn’t have survived. In addition to the negative consequences a shut down of a small business has on the owner, it also impacts employees and their families, as well as the greater community.

This article informed readers that we should feel it is our civic duty to help the small businesses in our local communities during this time if we are financially able. I felt that this source was necessary to include because it’s easy to forget just how vulnerable the most beloved small businesses within our local towns are. There are always things we could be doing to help each other during the pandemic, and one of the most powerful would be to continue to voice our concerns and push the government to take serious action in the protection of our economy.

Burton, D., Confield, E., Gasner, M.R., & Weisfuse I.B. (2009). A qualitative study of pandemic influenza preparedness among small and medium-sized businesses in New York City. Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, 5(3), 267-289. doi: 10.1155/58618902204

The lead author of this source, Deron Burton, is a medical officer with the US Public Health Service. He is also a medical epidemiologist and the head of operations in Western Kenya. This paper mainly focused on the preparedness of both medium and small businesses in New York City (businesses with less than 500 employees) in the face of the influenza pandemic. Burton worked with a combination of telephone, email, and fax communications to talk with small business owners in all boroughs of NYC. The thesis outlined in this paper states that in the face of a pandemic, small businesses need to practice continuity planning in order to sustain the economy and continue to deliver their services and goods.

The main continuity planning ideas that were widely endorsed by many business owners included things such as hand sanitizer use, having a transportation plan, healthy workplace communication, emergency communication plans, and cross-training. These were effective ways of lowering costs, organizing themselves, and lowering their exposure to the greater public in NYC. These ideas are meant to be relatively simple and cost-effective strategies, but to Burton's surprise, they were not being widely utilized by many businesses in times of crisis. If the small businesses in NYC were to shut down due to a pandemic, that will also have secondary consequences for the larger businesses in the area.

This source was important to include to discuss the irony and disappointing fact that this paper was written in 2011 in an effort to spread insight gained as result of the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. Burton expressed his optimism for the future if another pandemic were to hit unexpectedly because of this newfound knowledge. Maybe the businesses in NYC that participated in the study are going to make it through, but it's very probable that most small businesses in the US did not have a concrete pandemic plan in preparation for COVID-19.

References Used for Fact Checking:

Aiello, R. (2020, April 8). Feds update wage subsidy and unveil changes to student summer job program. CTV News. Retrieved from https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/feds-update-wage-subsidy-and-unveil-changes-to-student-summer-job-program-1.4887926

(2020, March 22). Business Credit Availability Program. Business Development of Canada. Retrieved from https://www.bdc.ca/en/pages/special-support.aspx

Dunne, J. (2020, April 8). ‘They should open it up’: Why some small businesses have been shut out of COVID-19 emergency loan program. CBC News, 24-27. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/small-business-loans-ceba-1.5526549

Erazo, F. (2019, November 9). Are Small Businesses Financially Vulnerable? FXStreet. Retrieved from https://www.fxstreet.com/analysis/are-small-businesses-financially-vulnerable-201811091403

McLeod, J. (2020, March 23). COVID-19 UPDATES: Ontario and Quebec order all non-essential workplaces to close. Financial Post, p. B2. Retrieved from https://business.financialpost.com/news/covid-19-live-updates-canadian-business-and-economic-news-from-the-coronavirus-pandemic