Will insurance companies and lawyers stand in the way of economic recovery?
An appointment with my hairstylist shows that the lockdown won’t end and an economic recovery begin until the insurance companies and lawyers stand down.
One of the worst things for many people about America’s shutdown has been the inability to get haircuts. Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot isn’t the only person who takes personal hygiene seriously. Basic maintenance is important to all of us.
My hair, difficult at the best of times, has gone completely out of control during the lockdown. The hairdresser I want to go to has been shut down for months now. However, I finally got the call this morning that she’s seeing people again. There are conditions, though:
- Instead of an open floor plan, she’s had to turn her shop into a series of cubicles. The camaraderie of a hair establishment is gone.
- She’ll be wearing a mask and gloves. Those aren’t bad things for hair coloring or perming because of the chemicals. However, cutting hair with gloves on is a lousy way to cut hair. No matter how good she is, my haircut will be less well done than it could be. This is silly because I’m pretty sure that my hair can neither give nor receive a viral infection.
- I have to be masked. My masks are the type that wraps around my head. I’m going to have to buy or make new masks, the kind that hooks on the ear, just to get a haircut.
- The waiting room is off-limits. The new way to go to the hairdresser is to call from your car to let the receptionist know you’ve arrived. Then, you wait outside to be allowed to go in. The temperature here is in the 90s. I either waste gas running my car’s A/C or I sit in the hot sun.
- UPDATE: I forgot to add that they also will take my temperature using a long-range sensor on an app. Aside from my not knowing how accurate those things are, they’re a problem for me because I’m one of the lucky small percentage of women who will experience hot flashes for the rest of my life. When they hit, people move away from me because I suddenly radiate explosive heat. I really dread a lifetime of fighting with clerks and airline people over my so-called “temperature.”
And why all these restraints on a virus that has killed three people in a county of over 185,000 people? Insurance. The shop owner’s insurance will not cover her if she doesn’t do all this.
I’ve read and heard about other businesses that are being told to jump through silly hoops or risk losing their insurance. Indeed, although I can’t remember who it was, I know that one of the crazy Leftist governors threatened business people with the loss of their insurance if they opened up during the governor’s extreme shutdown. Wolf? Newsom? Whitmer? I don’t know. They’re all mad with power and it runs together in my mind.
You can bet, too, that plaintiff’s attorneys are slobbering at the bit to start suing businesses based upon claims that the businesses were disease vectors. They too will be a hindrance to the resumption of normal business dealings.
It seems to me that, unless state legislatures or Congress address paranoid insurance companies and hungry attorneys, we will never recover from this foolishness. The standard shouldn’t be that you’re liable unless you run your business like an operating room. Instead, as in the past, if your business isn’t filthy and set up to spread disease, but is run according to existing health code requirements, that’s enough. From there on, when it comes to the Wuhan virus, caveat emptor.
Image: The staff of Draper’s Barber Shop, Martinsville, Virginia, complete with spitoons.