Here's what experts say has to happen before businesses start reopening their doors

STEWARTSTOWN, Pa. (SBG) — Businesses across the country are anxious to open their doors after the coronavirus closed down commerce. But experts say a few key things have to happen before the economy can safely reopen.

Shannon Blake loves the beauty salon she’s owned for the last eight years. But the pain of not being able to operate in the last five weeks is not just emotional, it’s financial.

"I've taken a huge hit," she told us. "Fortunately I planned a long time ago for an event, if i needed to be shut down for any large amount of time so I could sustain and make it through."

Pennsylvania, where Blake's Mane Street Station is located, is currently only allowing “life-sustaining” businesses to operate. But just three miles down the road, across the border in Maryland, salons can serve essential workers. The contrast is just one example of how states across the country are slowly reopening on their own terms.

"It can be frustrating, but it is what it is. I can't change it," Blake said about differing policies for business operations from state to state. "I just have to wait for my time and it will be here soon enough."

On Friday, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan unveiled his Roadmap to Recovery, a systematic plan that breaks down businesses into groups based on risk. Under the program, businesses and organizations at different levels are given the green light as certain benchmarks are hit. Hogan said, "Each of these recovery stages will need to be instituted in a safe, gradual and effective manner."

Maryland's slow rollout plan stands in contrast to Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp was widely criticized for allowing gyms, tattoo parlors and spas to reopen. Following the criticism, Kemp laid out a comprehensive 26-page Executive Order, outlining safety requirements for businesses. That state joins Alaska, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Tennessee and others in deciding which businesses get to open, when and under what conditions.

"What we really want is a return to normalcy. And lifting those rules does not give us a return to normalcy," said Alex Tabarrok, theBartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at George Mason University. Spotlight on America spoke remotely with Tabarrok, who also worked with the Harvard-based team that developed the country’s first comprehensive roadmap for reopening, "The Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience". Before the country can get back to normal, that committee says mass testing has to be scaled up big time, saying, "We need to deliver 5 million tests per day by early June to deliver a safe social reopening." Contact tracing is another key element to the group's strategy for safely reopening the nation.

"The most important input into production is what economists call human capital. So thats you and I, the knowledge in our heads, the education, all of our skills," said George Mason University economics professor Alex Tabarrok. "You don't want to risk all that human capital by going back to work too early."

Tabarrok, who told us the economy is losing between $150-300 billion each month, emphasized that failing to increase widespread testing would only lead to future damage and further delays. "I can tell you for sure until we get mass testing, we’re not going to bounce back at all."

The other requirement for a safe and stable reopening according to Tabarrok is the creation of standard plans and protocols for how businesses can operate while protecting workers and customers. If companies need a framework, he points out many existing industries already have one that can be easily translated for other fields.

"We actually have a lot of experience with rules like this. Every single restaurant has to follow a set of safety rules," Tabarrok said. "Poultry plants and pork producers and hospitals all follow a set of safety regulations. Most industries have some safety and have some quality control standards, and we just need to apply those more broadly."

Instead of creating a list of so-called essential businesses or developing a hierarchy of which ones should be allowed to open first, Tabarrok says it would be more beneficial to ensure any company that wants to operate is ready and equipped with firm rules that keep people safe.

Shannon Blake has spent the last few weeks preparing. In addition to ordering three times the amount of supplies she'd normally need, Blake is also working on plans for how to protect the customers and stylists she considers family once they can be welcomed back into the salon. She hasn't received any formal guidelines yet from the state and has been given no timeframe for when reopening might be possible. But she remains patient and hopeful.

"When it’s our time, it’s our time. Safety is first for my employees, for our clients and our community," Blake told us. "When they say we can go, we're going. We can't wait."