https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6936a5.htm?s_cid=mm...
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/88543
> "'Implementing safe practices to reduce exposures to SARS-CoV-2 during on-site eating and drinking should be considered to protect customers, employees, and communities and slow the spread of COVID-19,' Fisher and colleagues concluded."
which is exactly in line with opening restaurants with modest measures.
the study only provided impetus to look closer at restaurants as potentially not insignificant localities of spread due to self-reports citing slightly higher restaurant patronage in the 2 weeks prior. they declined to put forth any conclusions on prevalence or mechanisms for spread in restaurants because they didn't study those things. they only presented some statistics on the self-reports. that's it.
At what point do we fully re-open? Winter 2022 after everyone has had a mandatory vaccine?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-cdc-ai...
If a restaurant hikes the price, I am never going back there.
Paying £15-£20 with service charge for a steak or burger is already insane. They can't ask for more, especially at the peak of a crisis where there is no money to pay for it.
HN don't get but it but every young graduate is desperate and might not get a job for years while the rest of the workforce got laid off or is under reduced salary.
Except for the prices, maybe? While it is true that most restaurants make most (or even all) of their profits with drinks, customers probably realize that they are paying 200% markup for a zero-effort service if they ordered beers from a restaurant instead of getting them themselves...
most restaurants could have employed some modest measures and stayed open at 80-90% capacity (which may be below break-even for some, but probably enough to ride out the pandemic with price hikes and/or modest gov loans), as risk is isolated between tables (no, that one hypothesized case of down-blower transmission is not proof of significant risk) and you shouldn't be sharing breathing space with people you don't trust. people who would eat at a restaurant together likely ate together in private anyway when restaurants were shuttered.
bars, on the other hand, by their very nature make it very difficult to contain transmission risk, because the whole point of a bar is to lower your guard to promote mixed socialization. distancing, talking gently, limiting respiratory ejections, and/or wearing a mask just don't go together with drinking and carousing. (private parties then likely became a primary transmission vector, but there's no way to stop private parties without truly draconian measures.)
we could have let restaurants save themselves by remaining open, and tackled the remaining, more manageable issue of closed bars with supplemental programs.