COVID-19 and the Omicron variant have heavily impacted events, smaller businesses and organizers’ ability to create events and Cerritos Colleges’ ability to go back to in-person classes.

When talking to the president of the Downey Arts Coalition, Pat Gil pointed out, “It was totally affected [-the cancellation of Jukebox] big time. We were closed for a whole year because we just didn’t have any events going on.”

Andrew Hernandez, a board member of the Downey Arts Coalition, mentioned, “everyone got the notice about the shutdown, and we are going to have to cancel all our shows until future notice … for that whole year, we were in limbo.”

President Gil also mentioned, “Now we have to be very careful. I think it was a responsible thing to do because … we have a lot of older people come to our concerts,” which the Coalition decided to postpone events that were scheduled recently.

What makes things worse for the Downey Arts Coalition is that they are a non-profit organization, which Google defines as a “group organized for purposes other than generating profit.” By not having events, they don’t have much revenue to use to reinvest into their concerts or future events.

Madison Criollo, student Vice President of the forensic team, explains the effect of COVID-19, “Last semester, Fall 2021, we had a hybrid type of course. It affected us in the sense that we are not able to see one another in-person and … you can see so much through a screen.”

The student Vice President also talked about the distractions that may occur while doing the tournaments virtually, “the Wi-Fi may be a mess or having your family members around can make it difficult to get through tournaments without having background noise.”

The coach for the forensic team, Selene Aguirre, talked about the effects of COVID-19 on the team, “Before COVID, we were able to meet one on one [in-person], in the forensics squad room [to meet with coaches, hang out, eat, etc.]. Due to the pandemic, it has not been available to students … and changed through Zoom one on one’s.”

“Over 70% of small business owners say this omicron wave has hurt them financially. Nearly 40% say they’ve had to close or scale back hours recently,” according to Marketplace.org. From that same article, they mention the lack of days off, staffing issues such as people being hired and quickly leaving due to worries of COVID-19 exposures.

Another issue, brought up by the New York Post, talked about, “nearly 9 million American workers calling out sick because of COVID-19.” The Wall Street Journal introduced the point of canceled flights that occurred and CNN pointed out the increase in inflation and the canceling of restaurant reservations.

Phil Korshak, who runs Korshak Bagels in Philadelphia, talked about his worries to CNN, “he’s (Korshak) worried he will be forced to shut down for an extended period this winter.”

Overall, there has been a major impact with COVID and now Omicron with small businesses or non-profit organizations. The bigger businesses like Amazon or Walmart in the world will be perfectly fine but the mom-and-pop shop might not.

Just like CNN titled one of their sections, Déjà vu, and for small businesses, it creates unneeded stress that can result in smaller businesses or non-profit organizations shutting down in turn.