Shut it down. The U.S. disease chief just suggested restaurants and bars close. After 48 hours of studying restaurants' role in COVID and brainstorming ways to help people in my industry, I tragically agree: we should temporarily close nonessential public gathering spaces.
I'm not an epidemiologist or a health expert. I'm a writer whose skill is digesting reams of research until I'm reasonably sure I've found truths. And I believe we need to temporarily shut down. The time for helping small business owners by gathering in crowded spaces is over.
Unfortunately, this is a social disease. And the same awesome people who create social spaces (bars, restaurants, concert venues, etc.) have to fall on the sword.
By temporarily closing or just offering to-go food and drink, they're helping humans survive. Therefore it's our moral responsibility—the government, landlords, private sector—to help them survive the crushing economic blow.
What I would love to see is a unified message from the government and landlords and private sector that says: "Restaurants and bars, we will help you get through this. We promise you X."
We need to focus on helping our at-risk people: dishwashers, bussers, servers, cooks, caterers, farmers, and owners. The biggest myth/lie is that restaurant owners are all wealthy. Most of them are not. This will financially ruin most of them.
The experts I'm reading and listening to believe a full shut down is coming anyway. L.A. just banned gatherings of over 50 people, which crushes many restaurants. SD restaurants are closing. When we finally get the tests, I think we're going to see COVID is a much bigger problem.
The U.S. gov't says they're getting tests. Until they do, I've decided it's personally irresponsible to go into crowded spaces for non-essential purposes. It's not about me. I'm low-risk. It's about our elderly, our sick, our public health. If our hospitals crash, we're screwed.
Here's how you can help: Buy gift certificates from your favorite place. Buy merch (t-shirts, mugs). Order to-go food. That unfortunately doesn't help the millions of low-paid restaurant workers, but if the restaurants fail, they won't have work to go back to when this is over.
I hope I'm overreacting and this will be seen as evidence of my paranoid propaganda. But after two days of research and discussions, I can't ignore the evidence and advice of health professionals. Three EU countries are on full shut down. I'll err on the side of paranoia.
If we shut down now, hopefully we can contain it and the pain—though awful and scary and financially crushing—will be shorter. If we go on as normal and it spreads out of control, whole cities will shut down for much, much, much longer. Infinitely more pain, infinitely more loss.
I'm so sorry to all the people in this industry, in every industry. I'm not wealthy. This has already affected me financially and could very easily ruin me. I promise to do everything I can to help the people in my industry survive this. Please do the same in your spheres.
None of these tweets reflect the views of @SanDiegoMag or any other media outlet I work for. I don't want to say this. But after doing my research I feel it's morally and ethically wrong for me, personally, to stay silent.
If you are impacted please submit your story here docs.google.com/forms/d/1sNWQP…
Here's the link to the story about COVID-19 expert Dr. Anthony Fauci advising the two-week closure. restaurantbusinessonline.com/operations/fed…
