SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Coronavirus health data continues to look good in California despite alarming trends around the country and around the world. Yet, ABC10’s health expert, Dr. Payal Kohli said California’s current success could change quickly.
“I think things could turn on a dime,” Dr. Kohli admitted. “Literally within a few weeks we could see a whole different trajectory occurring in California.”
She said it’s important to recognize the virus doesn’t move state by state.
“Even though I think it’s good to acknowledge our wins, I think it's important to temper them and realize that this virus does not follow geographical boundaries,” Dr. Kohli explained.
Sanjay Varshney is a professor of finance at Sacramento State. He said there’s a lot more people need to be talking about than just the health data.
“On the flip side, the economic toll is extremely high,” Varshney said. “It’s just that nobody wants to talk about it because everybody just wants to talk about the medical toll.”
Varshney said California IS suffering -- having the third-highest unemployment rate only behind Hawaii and Nevada. He said the shutdowns have just been a kneejerk reaction.
“These shutdowns that have been forced down to folks really have not been well thought out,” Varshney said. “I think early on we quickly discovered that there is a trade-off between lives and livelihood.”
Varshney said the businesses that have suffered the most relied on direct-to-customer interface.
“These folks are not able to work from home or serve the customers from home,” Varshney said. “These include the nail salons and the barbershops, these include the restaurants. And I can go on and on about all kinds of businesses that rely very heavily on the customer to actually show up.”
He quickly shot down the theory the shutdowns are good for the economy in the long run.
“It’s a very great academic exercise and theory that is very popular with people who haven’t lost their paycheck or haven’t lost their businesses or haven’t lost their jobs,” Varshney said.
He said many businesses can’t sustain even short-term losses.
“In many cases, they would tell you that if you delay any support or any assistance beyond a certain point, they’re never coming back,” Varshney said. “And even when you argue ‘Let the restaurant open at only 25% capacity,’ that doesn’t work either because many of the businesses have such high overhead that at a 25% capacity they could not basically afford to stay open.”
Still, Dr. Kohli insists there needs to be a balance.
“It is important to know that we’re trading off our economic health in some ways in order to try to get ourselves through this virus,” Dr. Kohli said. “But again, we have to keep in mind that this is short term. So if we start now to focus on economic health, when the virus is already ahead and already winning, pretty soon we’re going to have even more of an economic loss than if we put aside the economic health for now, put it on the back burner, focus on defeating the virus which is the imminent threat and the imminent enemy, so that we can really start to repair and rebuild our economic well-being.”
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