[vkou]

> Shame we decided to shutter all those down across the country, for an extended period because they were deemed "non-essential", leading to many of them to shutter forever.

This meme needs to die already.

A lot of those businesses shut down in 2020.

It's 2023 now, we haven't had any COVID restrictions for 2 years, and all the ones that have gone away... Have long since been replaced with equivalents. Some of whom have also shut down, and have been replaced with equivalents.

Restaurants and coffee shops die and open all the time. 2020 was rough, but in the long term, the net impact on my neighborhood has been ~zero.

You know where they have been dying and not re-opening? Downtown, because half their former patrons are now WFH and don't go into the office anymore. Unfortunately, that's a little harder to blame on COVID shutdowns.