There have been government programs — Paycheck Protection, disaster assistance, the upcoming Federal Reserve lending program — designed to help business owners during the coronavirus crisis.

Then there are the measures that essentially demonize businesses, or at the very least push any liability for bad things that happen solely to business owners.

One good example of that is Assembly Bill 828, which would allow courts to force landlords to reduce rents by 25%, even if a tenant can’t show a COVID-19 hardship or need.

Another example would be an executive order that Gov. Gavin Newsom is apparently mulling over that would presume essential workers who fall ill from COVID-19 contracted the coronavirus at work, automatically making them eligible for workers’ compensation coverage.

This would expose employers to those costs, even if it were unknown where the employee actually caught the virus.

With projections of upwards of $33 billion in potential workers’ comp claims related to COVID-19, those are the sorts of numbers that could make insurers reconsider whether or not they event want to stay in California.

That’s according to local experts weighing in on the potential executive order for a story written by reporter Frank Lopez in tomorrow’s edition of The Business Journal.

Lobbying has been fast and furious from businesses and farms, which obviously sees this as an unfair ploy to shift health care costs to employers. While it’s obvious that front-line health care workers should have an easy path to workers’ comp if they need it, this opens up liability to essential businesses of all kinds, and employers will have zero recourse.

When it comes to fighting COVID-19, let’s not do it on the backs of small business owners doing their part to keep the economy on life support.