In order to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the local government is advising restaurants, bars, cafes, nightclubs, movie theaters, small theater houses, and concert venues to close. Elsewhere closures are even more comprehensive.

While this is prudent from a public health perspective, these closures will have a real and immediate economic impact to service workers across industries. It could mean missed rent or inability to pay for basic needs for many.

The city recognizes the economic stress this will put on service workers, and, in order to incentivize businesses to keep employees on payroll, the administration has announced that "businesses with fewer than 100 employees could be eligible for an interest-free loan up to $75,000 as long as they can document a 25% loss in customer receipts because of the coronavirus."

While an interest free loan is a good place to start, we believe we can do more to help those affected, and are raising funds to be distributed to all the businesses affected by this public health crisis.

The economic impacts of the coronavirus will be comparable to a very severe recession -- some economists estimate direct output loss of 30% for a fiscal quarter, which would equate to an annual GDP loss of 7.5%.

Hopefully, we can anticipate the second order consequences of the coronavirus and proactively work to mitigate them more swiftly than we have addressed the public health concerns.

We cannot all be working alongside all of the heroic healthcare workers testing and treating coronavirus patients, but our goal with this project is to enable every citizen to do something today to mitigate the economic impact suffered by a huge number of service workers.