“The blanket shutdown is a little bit of a betrayal,” said Mr. Winterman, who had supported Mr. Cuomo’s strategy of targeting small geographic areas based on their case rates and hospitalization numbers. Mr. Cuomo undermined his case for a citywide shutdown when he acknowledged that restaurants and bars accounted for less than 2 percent of new Covid cases, while saying that “74 percent of new cases are coming from household gatherings and living room spread.”
Outdoor dining, which is allowed to continue for now, would be safer in theory if all restaurants were following regulations that call for at least half the wall areas to be left open. But many aren’t, and enforcement has been scarce. The colder it gets, the more the streets and sidewalks are covered by dining areas so fully walled in by plywood and plexiglass that anyone who sits in them is, as far as the virus is concerned, eating inside a restaurant.
Mr. Cuomo did promise to extend the moratorium on commercial evictions, which would have expired on Jan. 1. Congress did pass the CARES Act, which wasn’t perfect but kept many unemployed restaurant workers afloat, as long as they weren’t undocumented. But the Paycheck Protection Program was a disaster for many restaurants, as industry groups pointed out, repeatedly, each time Congress had a chance to fix it, and declined. Another bill that would budget up to $120 billion to bail out independent restaurants and bars is slowly gathering cobwebs in Washington. Congress hasn’t explicitly told restaurants to drop dead yet, but then the year is not quite over.
Hellish though this is for restaurateurs, it’s no better for their employees, whether current or former. Those who were not hired back when dining rooms were allowed to run at 25 percent of capacity but were hoping to return when the limit was raised to 50 percent or higher must now be worried that they won’t have jobs before spring. Many of those who were waiting tables indoors were facing stressful conditions and an elevated risk because they had to spend their whole shifts breathing the same air as customers who took their masks off the minute they sat down.
Some of those servers may be able to get work outdoors. Will their tips cover the cost of the cold-weather gear they’re going to need when winter really digs in? Already in the past two weeks, with early-evening temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s, the crowds have been thin. Most outdoor tables are empty long before the 10 p.m. curfew, although some owners are asking to stay open later to make up for the lost indoor revenue.
The only silver lining I can imagine is that those jerks who won’t put their masks on when they’re placing an order may decide to cover their faces with scarves when it gets cold.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/dining/restaurants-indoor-dining-coronavirus.html
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.