>When there's a stay-at-home order in place, businesses can
>make insurance claims over the fact that they're not legally
>allowed to be open, through no fault of their own. Furloughed
>workers can draw unemployment (inadequate, but better than
>nothing).

I work in insurance - what you speak of is called "business interruption insurance" which is a type of coverage that *used* to cover epidemics and pandemics under your typical commercial liability insurance. But after the SARS outbreak in the early aughts, insurance companies (in typical asshole insurance carrier fashion) started considering pandemics and epidemics add-ons or "endorsements" to their general coverages, and could therefore jack up premiums for those add-ons. So a lot of companies (specifically small businesses) have been either unwilling or unable to pay for this endorsement and therefore, aren't covered for this "business interruption".

It's fucked up shit but that's how the insurance industry works, sadly.

Thankfully, a lot of state legislatures (California being one, obviously) are basically forcing insurance companies that operate in their states to cover these companies' losses. Specifically small companies. So there is some recourse, depending on where you live/operate your business.

But it's not a foregone conclusion. And I can't imagine GA is one of the states referenced above ha.

EDIT: come to think of it, maybe you are speaking specifically about GA, in which case you may know better than me whether or not they are one of the states forcing insurance carriers to cover these losses. My response is, obviously, about this type of coverage in general.