De Blasio’s war on the elitest institution of indoor dining in restaurants
Only kulaks and worse dine in restaurants, don’t you know? At least, according to Commissar de Blasio:
At his daily press briefing, De Blasio was asked why public school students who return to classrooms this fall will eat their lunch inside while restaurants can’t reopen indoor dining.
“I don’t think there’s a similarity at all,” de Blasio said.
“We have an imperative — a legal imperative, a moral imperative, an educational imperative– to give kids the best education we can. We know that means having at least some time in person,” he said.
“Versus indoor dining, which is obviously a very optional activity, which some people do a lot who have the resources and others can’t do at all because they don’t have the resources,” he said.
De Blasio’s suggestion that eating inside a restaurant is only for people with thick billfolds ignores the thousands of cheap diners, fast-food eateries and pizza joints across the five boroughs catering to cost-conscious New Yorkers…
De Blasio reiterated Tuesday that he has no concrete plan to resume indoor dining because it’s too high-risk an activity in the age of coronavirus…
New York City is the only state region that still does not permit some indoor dining, while it is allowed in neighboring suburban counties like Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester.
Dr. Jay Varma, the mayor’s senior adviser for public health, also weighed in…
“We know through experience everywhere around the world and also from the United States that indoor dining is a very high-risk activity and there’s reasons for that,” Varma said, pointing to the lack of masks while eating, proximity to other people and duration spent indoors.
Where to begin? I suppose the first thing to state is that indoor dining is New York’s lifeblood, that it’s hardly confined to the wealthy, and that colder weather is coming soon. I can only conclude something that’s already been clear for quite some time, which is that destroying the economy of NYC is one of de Blasio’s goals as mayor. Although that sounds like a nonsensical sentence, it’s typical of leftist thinking, in which the idea is the equality of misery. As Churchill said (no wonder they deface his statue):
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
That’s it in a nutshell – and de Blasio and our other resident socialists and Communists, Marxists and leftists, call them whichever name you favor – clearly prefer the equality of misery and are willing to do everything in their power to bring it about. COVID has given them a lot of power, and they are making sure they use it as fully as possible.
I will also point out that people who live in Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester, where indoor dining is allowed, travel to NYC regularly. Therefore, even if an indoor dining ban worked, they could be carrying illness to NYC anyway.
And lastly, to Dr. Varma: oh really? “We know through experience everywhere around the world and also from the United States that indoor dining is a very high-risk activity”? Where is the research on that? This sort of thing (from June) is all I could find, and it’s weak correlative sauce at best.
It is intellectually dishonest of government officials to cite ‘research’ or ‘experience’ without providing any information or link as to what that research/experience might be…basically, it is an argument from authority, ‘I’m the Pooh-Bah of Pandemics in this state, so what I say goes!”
The JP Morgan analysis looks interesting, but it’s hard to know how seriously to take it without looking at what other factors they controlled for and what statistical methods they used to do the controlling. I may be able to get a copy of the actual paper, I’ll give it a try.
Thank goodness his royal highness Lamont has acquiesced to allow indoor dining here in CT for the last 2 months.It’s allowed a little semblance of normalcy as my wife and I typically went out for dinner once or twice a week. Now going about once every two weeks. Though sometimes if the weather is good, it’s also been nice to sit at the outdoor tables. What’s silly is the servers have to wear masks, while as soon as we sit down we take them off. So there’s this ridiculous little ritual of walking with the mask on for 15 feet to the table and then out again after the meal.
As for the effect of dining on the virus, for the last two months, CT has seen a flatline in new cases at about 70/day, and deaths, as of this past week are now averaging 0.9/day. So what say you Dr Varma??
Just a report here . . . eff why eye . . .
NO indoor dining in San Diego County (and in much of California), *period*.
Even unto this day, the 27th of August, 2020.
De Blasio is in his final term so he does not care. He is the ultimate Communist elitist and him and his hideous wife are two despicable people who love “humanity” but actually hate people.
Yelp, the ratings website, says 50 percent of the restaurants it tracks in New York have closed permanently.
The inhabitants of NYC have declared their priority. They have elevated virtue signaling above their livelihood and other priorities. Who are you to tell them they are wrong? After all de Blasio was elected twice. Once is happenstance and twice is affirmation of a wish.
“After all de Blasio was elected twice.” Andy
This is how I feel living in Los Angeles/California, in general. For every ill, I blame the voters and have for a long time.
google: covid indoor restaurant airflow
delivered 175,000 hits, including a reference to the study from April:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/willhorton1/2020/04/22/how-coronavirus-spread-in-one-restaurant-shows-why-air-travel-is-safer-than-you-think/#7427b8ba1972
The January study was limited, but it details how the disease was spread in a restaurant by an air conditioner. What was significant was that diners who had the disease were upwind from other diners, and the airflow carried respiratory droplets several meters down-range.
It’s also worth considering the if wearing masks reduces the rate of infection, and I think that there is evidence that it does, then restaurants are particularly problematic as you have to remove the masks to eat and drink.
Restaurants and other businesses will need to consider better air handling (up and away) or air purification (e.g. UV light treatment).
There is also a difference between a public school cafeteria and a restaurant in that infection rates for healthy children is much lower than adults, and the risks of serious illness in children is much lower, assuming that that at-risk children remain isolated.
That having been said, I’m not convinced that keeping such businesses closed does much good. You can postpone the rate of infection (i.e. “flatten the curve”), but the disease doesn’t appear that dangerous to young, healthy people. Re-opening makes sense as each potential customer can consider his or her own risks. People will get infected. Many will get quite ill. Hospitals will not be overwhelmed. Sadly, a small number will die.
Do you remember the days when people had the right to choose?
In particular, when they had the right to make their own healthcare decisions?
Do you remember when we were closing businesses for 14 days to flatten the curve?
Good times.
Before considering Marxist philosophy, let’s not ignore the very live possibility that de Blasio is just stupid, literally doesn’t understand what he’s doing, and also possesses one more more significant emotional/mental problems.
Mike
Before considering Marxist philosophy, let’s not ignore the very live possibility that de Blasio is just stupid, literally doesn’t understand what he’s doing, and also possesses one more more significant emotional/mental problems.
I think you’ve got him pegged. Question: why is the dynamic of New York politics such that such an inadequate creature ends up in the mayor’s chair and isn’t blown clean out of office the next election? Idiocracy is now.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/420242208948876651/
DeBlasio is willful, not ignorant. He is a Lenin or a Stalin. He does not lack their brutality, just lacks their power.
What to make of a white man who seeks out and marries a black lesbian?
That just improves his Leftist standing, his false and phony “virtue”.
What to make of a white man who seeks out and marries a black lesbian?
Unattractive, seven years his senior, and of such an age when he married her that you would have expected no children. Who does this?
rcat:
Many people die each and every day from a multiplicity of causes. The fact of death or devastation has never paralyzed us before, has not yielded the oppression that we have today.
There is little “sad” about dying, since we will all do it. The median survival in a US nursing home is 1.3 years; check in but never check out. If it’s not the Wuhan virus, it is something else. It is the suffering of a fatal illness that is sad, not death itself. The afflicted themselves are not “sad” though they see death coming. See Kubler-Ross.
Slaves obey the orders of massa
Of course the people most hurt by De Blasio’s war on the wealthy are the working class (restaurant workers) and middle class (small business owners, restaurateurs). This is reminiscent of the luxury yacht tax, intended to soak the rich and raise revenue, but did neither. Instead it put a bunch of working stiffs on the unemployment lines.
As to whether De Blasio is stupid or evil, I say “both.”
Jimmy:
I agree that de Blasio is both stupid and evil. But that’s much better than being smart and evil, isn’t it? If a person’s going to be evil, I’d rather the person be stupid also.
“If a person’s going to be evil, I’d rather the person be stupid also” – Neo
From most of the news stories lately, the Democrats as a whole qualify on both counts.
What is larger: the odds of choking to death on a bone or something, or suffering food poisoning, at a restaurant… or catching the Ultimate Death Plague (eating in a room is dangerous, you could DIEEEEEE!!!!1!!) at the same restaurant? These people are worse than the Inquisition, I swear. I fear I’m going to begin to turn into an anti-masker because of the hysteria (“very high-risk activity” – really?!).
Speaking of anti-maskers, I’m very interested in what will come of this big protest they’re planning in Berlin tomorrow.
But that’s much better than being smart and evil, isn’t it?
Not sure about that. Would a smart and evil mayor destroy the city’s tax base in the pursuit of his nefarious goals? Hurt the people he claims to be on the side of? Hard to say, there aren’t that many examples of smart and evil. Maybe Bloomberg, who at least tried to preserve the city’s business climate while worrying about ‘big gulp’ drinks.
I’m reminded of a professor who was my primary instructor as a Russian Studies student. There is a short story that he used to frame the Soviet mindset that was, he claimed, commonly told in Russia:
A genie appears to a Soviet citizen one day (I may have simplified this first part a bit) and tells him he will grant him any wish he wants. There is a catch, however. Whatever he wishes for, his neighbor will be bless with two-fold. After some considerable thought, the Soviet tells the genie his wish: “take one of my eyes”.
Slightly off topic but this is neo’s most recent COVID post so I am putting this link here.
http://www.twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1299758115034980352
What in God’s name are we doing in this country?
Also the New York Times story today about the problems with COVID PCR tests should be a massive story but won’t be. Studies have shown that 80-90% of the positive tests may have so little of the virus present as to be meaningless.
Again, this is in the NEW YORK TIMES shouldn’t this be a big deal to all our NYT loving elites.
And of course yesterday we had Gavin Newsom’s new criteria for reopening counties in California which basically insures that nothing will ever open again.
There will never be another concert or sporting event with crowds in California again under these criteria.
Some smaller counties can only open if they have zero cases for 21 consecutive days.
Insane.
The damage to the mental health of children and college aged young adults is unfathomable.
Anxiety, depression, fear of others are going through the roof right now.
All for an illness with 99.9% survival rate for those under about 25.