Consumer confidence is bolstered by actually being able to go to work, not being actively prevented from going to work. When you have money in your hands, you can do with it as you will. Collecting an unemployment check is not the same thing as being employed. And those benefits eventually run out. And if you have managed to kill off entire industries, what is there for one to do?
Think of the industries which cannot survive with social distancing: Fitness, Food and Beverage, Day Care facilities, Movie theaters, Grocery stores (from the biggest to the smallest), ANY type of sporting activities (from pee wees all the way through pros). The amount of people is virtually incomprehensible. Driving the unemployment rate to over 35% is a staggering amount. 10 years of jobs growth was undone in just a month.
And then when Apple starts to lay off employees because their stores are not meant to operate on 50% capacity and the demand for their product in general is decimated, they then begin to lay off their corporate employees that have been isolating and working from home. And then those people who have been preaching that more patience is needed, are now the ones who scream that the economy needed to be opened sooner rather than later.
Some food for thought. By my office, the Whole Foods today was "temporarily" closed. I have no idea if that was due to someone testing positive and now they need to clean the entire place (best choice) or because as I said, they cannot possibly hope to run on 50% capacity. Think of what happens to the country if the food stores begin to shut down.
As I said, I think that we are basically at the point where the cure is worse than the disease. And the amount of unrest that is coming will be extremely loud. The same people who are inside collecting pay checks will be on the outside demanding the right to work.
I guess I think much of, if not all of that happens if they reopen too by trying to go back to "normal"
Who is going to go to the grocery store without social distancing unless they absolutely need to? If they absolutely need to and there is a spread of the virus, like they contract it there and go to work, and get others sick, back to the exponential infections... I think the grocery stores will all start to, or increase their ability to have people shop from home and pick up or even deliver. They will adapt because there will be more and more demand for shopping from home. Maybe farms will be able to market themselves, set up a viable quick shipping, pick up, drop off infrastructure reducing the need for people to go what we know as traditional grocery stores?
Does Apple really need a brick and mortar store? Or did they do that just to increase their profitability or brand? Couldn't they repurposed those employees, perhaps by bringing some form of manufacturing back to the US? Or perhaps they teach them how to make apps for their phones? Can they set up virtual real time meetings to help their costumers? I just received an email form my doctors saying I could just do appointments virtually for what would be classified I guess as easy to diagnose and prescribe ailments. Again I think that will be something where those companies will adapt.
Sports, I know currently is a giant enterprise, perhaps they too will have to figure out some way to safely allow for them to commence? Maybe they need to wait for real antibody tests? In the mean time could they not have people working on building a better streaming infrastructure in case the demand from the consumer to be there live takes a long time to resurface, if it does at all?
Kids sports, again I do not have the answers, yet I would think if parents felt comfortable allowing for them, and the virus did not spread in some way by allowing it, it would go back to more or less normal, perhaps there is no locker-room in it's current form, perhaps all sports require some sort of face covering, clear face masks, I don't know. Perhaps basically real time testing will be required.
I do not expect things to be the same as they were, normal changes over the generations. We no longer view lots of traditional, or old time stuff the same as we did.
