Watching a parade of pundits calling on governments to shut down bars, restaurants and other businesses, I had one thought — easy for them to talk. Columnists and TV talkers can work from home, pounding out copy on their laptops and Skyping in to cable shows. They tend to have savings, too.

Not so the waiters, bartenders and other service-industry workers who stand to be devastated by the edicts from Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo shutting down their businesses to all but pickup and delivery traffic. These decisions are going to cause many people to lose their livelihoods. In the last week, I talked to a number of waiters and bartenders on the front lines of the industry. They overwhelmingly didn’t want a shutdown.

I’m one of the fortunate salaried ones now, but I know well what it’s like to live at the mercy of outside forces. My father was a contractor who framed houses and sometimes, when building slowed in the northern Canadian winter, a taxi driver. How well we ate some weeks depended on how brisk business was.

Thousands of hardworking New Yorkers are getting a shock to the system far worse than a Canadian winter. Bars and restaurants were already reeling from a loss of visitors as fear and travel bans led to fewer tourists. Then Broadway went dark, and with theatergoers went more business. Now venues across the city are laying off workers as the mayor takes it upon himself to decide which businesses are allowed to remain open.

Yes, some isolation is necessary to keep our health-care system from being overwhelmed as a rash of new coronavirus cases flood hospitals. We should particularly take care to isolate those most at risk from a lethal case: the elderly, the immunosuppressed and those with certain underlying medical conditions.

But the disease isn’t deadly for most — of Italy’s 803 deaths through March 12, only two were of people under 50. And we can cut down on the spread by cutting down on our social activities, as Americans across the country have done.

But we also need to allow people to make the decisions that are best for them and their families. For those living paycheck to paycheck, one or two lost pay periods could even mean the difference between life and death.

Elena, the thoughtful bartender at one of my local watering holes, said she has some savings but many of her peers don’t. It’s a high-turnover business — and restaurants and bars don’t have huge margins — and some see periods of unemployment between gigs.

She was taking extra precautions — washing her hands even more than normal, scrubbing everything down more often — but wasn’t worried about catching something. She was more concerned about how her friends in the industry would cope.

Others I interviewed don’t have the two-month emergency-fund cushion the experts recommend: It’s a tough business.

For them, there is a lot to worry about. Besides the usual expenses such as rent and food, they might have to find child care, with schools shuttered, and they could have increased medical expenses.

If they have been laid off, they have lost insurance coverage — critical this time of year, as flu racks up way more casualties than the coronavirus (up to 690,000 flu deaths annually worldwide vs. 6,500 thus far killed by the coronavirus).

Perhaps we will see grocery stores even more packed than they have been with panicked customers — increasing the risk of the ­virus spreading there than at under-capacity restaurants.

It could get worse in places with curfews, like the one New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy declared Monday, with only “essential” travel allowed from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. Forget crowded stores: How will those who work during the day get the groceries and other items they need at night?

The effects will be felt beyond the food and beverage industry, of course: People will be taking fewer taxis and Ubers, for example, and many drivers will end up struggling to make ends meet. Concession workers at cinemas, dealers at casinos — the list goes on of those put out of work by our politicians. There are businesses that will shutter this week and never reopen.

Out of solidarity, I went to one, a knitting shop, when I heard it was closing for a month and planned to continue paying its employees as long as possible. De Blasio made one last trip to his beloved Park Slope YMCA before it closed. The fact that he made his usual gym visit indicates he is about as worried about the people he is putting out of work as he is worried about catching the coronavirus — not much at all.

Twitter: @KJTorrance