Restaurants have been lobbying hard to stay open during the pandemic. Alan Freeman writes:
Could the inability to order pizza in an indoor restaurant be the most dire result of a pandemic that has infected 52.4 million people worldwide and killed more than 10,750 Canadians?
Airlines are on the brink. Hotels are near empty. Cinemas and theatres are shuttered. Convention halls abandoned. Yet nobody seems to have much sympathy for the airlines, and nobody appears to care that it may be many months until they can see a blockbuster movie in a theatre.
Yet politicians of all stripes have been bending over backward to please the restaurant industry. Last month, before shutting down restaurants in the face of surging cases, Ontario Premier Doug Ford was clearly pained by the idea. “These are people who have put their lives in these small restaurants,” he said. “I have to see evidence before I take someone’s livelihood away from them and shut their lives down.”
Restaurant work isn't easy. I spent a summer earning my tuition in an A + W in Montreal. The people who work in the industry have a tough row to hoe. But the restaurant lobby wants to open its doors rather than ask for government assistance -- despite clear evidence that restaurants are central to community spread of the virus:
Restaurants are perfect homes for the coronavirus. Dr. Theresa Tam warns us all to avoid the three Cs: closed spaces, crowded spaces and close contact. Bingo. Restaurants are champions on every score. Furthermore, you can’t wear a mask when eating, even though it’s the most effective barrier to the virus around.
We’re all being told to stay home and reduce our interactions with people outside our immediate household, which has forced authorities to provide the most absurd advice in order to justify the continued opening of restaurants.
Dr. Bonnie Henry, the head of public health in British Columbia, has reacted to a spike in cases in the Vancouver area by telling people to avoid social gatherings with “anyone outside their immediate households, inside or outside.” But in the next breath, she says that visiting your local restaurant is perfectly okay, provided you bring only members of your immediate family and a maximum of six people sit at each table.
Increasingly, the dangers of restaurants in the middle of a galloping pandemic are apparent. Research published this week in the science journal Nature found that restaurants, cafés, gyms, and other crowded indoor venues accounted for eight in 10 new coronavirus infections in the first months of the U.S. pandemic.
"Restaurants were by far the riskiest places, about four times riskier than gyms and coffee shops, followed by hotels," Jure Leskovec, a computer scientist at Stanford University and one of the study’s authors, told the New York Times.
This is do or die time for restaurants. They need direct government support. And there is still take out. But opening restaurant doors will only make matters worse.
Image: irvingoil.com
8 comments:
They're shooting craps with the pandemic, Owen, placing bets they can't afford to lose that a safe, effective vaccine will be available in adequate supply if they can only hold out for another six months. You're a hero if the best case scenario comes to be, I suppose. We can't save all the patients. How many human patients will we sacrifice to keep the commercial patients from cratering?
I know this. Once a person is dead, it's over. There's no coming back. A restaurant, however, can fail and subsequently rise again like the Phoenix. I haven't been in a restaurant since early February. I empathize with the owners and their staff but, in any emergency, there are always some that are worse off than others.
As for the airlines, they haven't been worth a tinker's dam since Mulroney privatized air transit in Canada. They cannibalized themselves and, in the process, we lost carriers such as Canadian Pacific, Wardair, and most regional carriers from coast to coast until we were left with Air Canada and WestJet.
Put the restaurants and the airlines on one side of the scale and, on the other, the idea that Ontario could see daily infections soar to 6,500 by this time next month. The choice seems obvious to me.
It seems obvious to me, too, Mound. but these folks continue to think we can split the difference.
The Nature article is interesting for what Stanford researchers found about the spread of Covid through restaurants. They found that restricting occupancy to 20% like Chicago did cut down the predicted spread of Covid by more than 80%. And because these restrictions mainly affected peak hours, they reduced patrons by only 42% rather than the 80% you might expect. The study concluded that reducing maximum occupancy numbers may be more effective than the less targeted measures Ford has been introducing, such as early closing, while being better for restaurants.
As for bars and clubs, their whole business model is serving judgement-impairing drugs to overly social patrons. While this may assist the procreation of the species, keeping bars open indoors is inconsistent with public health in a pandemic. Pay them to stay closed.
Cap
Ford believes tax cuts will keep them in business, Cap. The wiser course, as you suggest, would be to pay them to stay closed.
Denial is so easy. My friends are clean and couldn't possibly have Covid-19. Besides there is none of it around here. Well just like venereal disease, yes one's friends can have it.
We are a selfish society. We continually talk about rights but very little about responsibilities. Covid-19 is showing what selfishness can do. We all have a responsibility to stop the spread of this disease and if that means keeping our friends at a distance and wearing a mask, so be it. In this case, the right of the many to be safe is more important than the right of a few to party.
Ayn Rand claimed that selfishness was a virtue, Toby. Unfortunately, lots of us bought that lie. It's in times like these when it becomes clear just how BIG a lie that is.
They need to be told what to do; Scottish style.
https://www.facebook.com/537446645/posts/10157221732011646/
TB
I can't seem to bring up the link, TB. Any suggestions?
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