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I found an article that talks about a small business owner, Heather Thomas, who opened a CBD oil shop in Mattoon, Illinois about a month before the COVID-19 pandemic started. She took a loan for $25k to get started and opened a small storefront location in the rural town. The first few weeks she was earning $3-4k per week with many customers coming with the downtown foot traffic. Her lease was $2,000 per month.

Once the news of COVID-19 spreading in the U.S. began to come out on social media and the news, she noticed a sharp decrease in customers. Less than a month after opening her doors, her state ordered an official shutdown. She said it was a financial nightmare.

She didn't qualify for any relief or any other SBA loans. She didn't want to take a personal loan out, because there didn't seem to be any point in doing that. She packed her inventory in boxes, locked the keys in a lockbox, and walked away.

Unfortunately for her, she had very bad timing with her business launch with an unforeseeable pandemic and government lockdown coming. She clearly didn't think about an exit strategy with only one month with doors open for business. She ended up walking away with debt and small amount of inventory.

I think she didn't have much chance given this was a start up with a pretty high price for the lease. She had no cash reserves or cushion to stay in business. I'm not sure she would have wanted to drag out the inevitable either if she was able to keep the doors open with her cash reserves. She said one day she had zero customers after the pandemic hysteria started. In my opinion, she made a good decision to shut it down and walk away before she incurred more debt. She did abruptly cut her losses to minimize the damage.

https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/inside-story-of-covid-crushed-businesses/