There are other costs in starting up and maintaining a small business, but commercial lenders demanding rent in full from restaurants etc., thinking that they're going to waltz into court and get an easy joint action victory in 2 months I think are sorely mistaken, and lenders who do that are likely going to find themselves out of business because that's the antithesis of how good commercial real estate entities operate.
Whenever this thing ends, it's going to be a tenants' market on the commercial RE side. Every white collar employer in America is conducting an ongoing r&d project about the feasibility of having a paperless or remote office and maintaining efficiency. If your small business needs a physical footprint, it'll likely be as cheap as its ever been in the next few years. And *if* we have restaurants that go away because of lost revenue, I suspect you'll see a spate of food service openings to fill the demand that is already there. As long as the credit markets remain open (contra 08) it's not like we're going to lose restaurants and bars or other businesses.
It would not shock me in the least to see some of these small-ish operations resurrected in situ. There is a cherished small chain in the Bay Area called Speciality's, a bakery/sandwich place. They just shuttered, boom.
By doing so, payroll is gone, whatever goes on with various leases is done, etc.. They've basically cancelled most ongoing operations costs.
If this goes on a couple months, someone buys the trademark, the recipes, the equipment that's probably still sitting in the exact same place, negotiates a lease with the landlord, and boom, back in business. For some of these, it could easily be some person sitting in some sort of VP role that negotiates the buyout deal and becomes the new CEO. States and municipalities will be falling all over themselves to expedite permitting. There will be a lot of people taking bruises in the transition, but it will be fine as long as we can take care of Covid.