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
