It seems obviously wasteful to keep such businesses open where most the paying customers won't be showing up during a pandemic anyways. Why even pay to have the lights on? You need to mothball the operation ASAP and lobby for government assistance for the duration.
I was just poking at rough figures last night out of curiosity regarding when the other end of this arrives in terms of 60% herd immunity for the US. Just pulling numbers out of my ass, like 200,000,000 for 60% and an avg infection rate of 100,000/day. With those figures it's 5.5yrs before 60% gets infected. We're at more like 50,000/day last I checked, but who knows how accurate that is.
Either way, it looks like this is going to be a life of masks and social distancing for a long time. Hopefully a vaccine arrives in volume before 5+ years go by.
> It seems obviously wasteful to keep such businesses open where most the paying customers won't be showing up during a pandemic anyways
In Sweden people still seem happy to go out to bars and restaurants, even in the middle of a pandemic. It's non-stop work for the government to shut down venues that are crowded beyond the allowed covid19 congestion regulation.
This whole "even if restaurants and bars were open, nobody would go to them" narrative just doesn't bear out in reality.
We're seeing the same thing in the UK now as well.
I did read it (and insinuating I didn’t is against the rules).
Nowhere does it have any proof of restaurants losing all their customers. It says that economists predict a contraction (that hasn’t happened yet), that consumer spending at one point was down 25%, and that the manufacturing sector had to shut down due to supply chain issues.
I never said that restaurants have lost customers, just that there is still a very significant amount of people willing to go out anyway.
The Google Mobility report shows that retail & recreation (which includes restaurants) for Sweden is currently down only 1%!!! (workplaces -40%, transit -25%)
I was just poking at rough figures last night out of curiosity regarding when the other end of this arrives in terms of 60% herd immunity for the US. Just pulling numbers out of my ass, like 200,000,000 for 60% and an avg infection rate of 100,000/day. With those figures it's 5.5yrs before 60% gets infected. We're at more like 50,000/day last I checked, but who knows how accurate that is.
Either way, it looks like this is going to be a life of masks and social distancing for a long time. Hopefully a vaccine arrives in volume before 5+ years go by.