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It just seems terribly dismissive of all the people who want and demand a return to business as usual. A plan for handling the coronavirus that doesn't include "here's when we'll open the bars" is missing a huge piece of the problem.

I honestly fail to see a connection between your statement and mine.

I don't generally drink alcohol and I have a permanently compromised immune system, so hanging out at bars isn't some normal part of my life. So I don't understand what you feel is so essential to "here's when we'll open the bars."

Also, a bar up the street from me has already re-opened and (when they were just doing take-out beer) I posted a photo of their take-out beer sign to the local subreddit I run at some point, even though I don't personally drink. So please don't take this as me being a tea-totaller who is dismissing alcohol when I say "I don't get it. I honestly don't get it. Can you please clarify?"

I guess I'm not sure how to respond. It's not about bars specifically; it's about returning to an environment where people are free to crowd about if they'd like. As long as there are top-down rules to micromanage where I can go and how many others I can go with, the problem isn't solved. "Maybe we should just get used to those rules" isn't a solution - in all but the hardest-hit areas, the rules are most of the problem!

top-down rules to micromanage

I don't operate that way. Generally speaking, that's antithetical to how I operate in life.

I think if we have more support for remote work for people who want/need it and more support for options like Little Caesar's pizza portal which allows for contactless take-out, that helps make life possible for the most vulnerable people. Given how long people are living and our success in keeping alive a lot of people with incurable conditions who need permanent accommodation, this doesn't impinge on the people who want to do a group activity.

If anything, it frees up space for them to have their group thing without so much exposure to random people so their group thing is safer to attend.

I had someone on HN say something to me once about wanting to "hug their mom" and how my comment on HN was somehow antithetical to that. I live with my two adult sons and I have a permanently compromised immune system. I feel strongly that being exposed to "your group" is generally less problematic than being exposed constantly to random stranger with god-knows-what other strains.

I'm not at all arguing for denying people the ability to go out. I've, in fact, been given hell for making statements about not liking mask mandates and not liking the lock down.

My Walmart is closed at night right now and before it closed I and my sons were managing germ control in part by doing a lot of our shopping at 2am when the Walmart was dead. And that's not possible now and going to Walmart is currently one of the most hazardous things we have to do.

So I'm not all interested in doing what you are seemingly arguing against. And I don't see how it has anything at all to do with what I am advocating for and stated above.

Edit:

I feel like you added this after I began typing and I didn't initially see it: "Maybe we should just get used to those rules" isn't a solution - in all but the hardest-hit areas, the rules are most of the problem!

I don't disagree with that. Reading into my statement that I am advocating for "just get used to the rules" is wildly misinterpreting my comment. I said nothing about accepting our current lock down rules at all.

Maybe I misunderstood, because I'm on board with everything you're describing here. Most people I've seen who say they don't want to return to "business as usual" mean that we should just have restrictions in place forever, but if we're just talking about additive changes to let people avoid diseases if they'd like, I'm all in favor.

Back in March, I had extra money for some reason and the pandemic was hitting my small town in terms of things closing and hours being limited, etc. I made a point of going every single day to get pizza from the Little Caesar's.

When I began going, the staff was standing around with nothing to do and they were scared the location was going to permanently close. They didn't have enough business to survive.

I walk everywhere, so when I get pizza, it's very visible. People see me carrying a pizza box down the street and at least once someone asked me "Oh, is the Little Caesar's open?" and I was able to say "Yes! It is!" without violating social distancing.

I began using the pizza portal, which had been there for some time but never got used. One of the early times I used it, someone stared at me the entire time and now mine is not the only order in it.

The Little Caesar's removed the two chairs from their lobby and added hand sanitizer and made some other changes, but the big change is that -- at least in part because of me modeling it -- locals began calling ahead or ordering online instead of walking in and ordering. Even when they walk in, they frequently go sit in their car to wait for their order instead of standing in the Little Caesar's to wait.

They are busier than I have ever seen them in the three years I have lived here and they were hiring new employees during the pandemic. I always have to wait for my order now because they are always busy, yet it is safer than it has ever been for me to get food from there -- which is a constant concern for me because of my incurable medical condition.

Meanwhile, in recent months I have seen multiple local eateries advertised as for sale, presumably because the pandemic is negatively impacting the restaurant business generally.

Ordering online or by phone and getting takeout is a best practice for germ control and it's available right now and we can improve on that model with relatively small tweaks, like making hand sanitizer standard at all businesses, and larger tweaks, like making pizza portal style pick up options available at other eateries. And it in no way requires any government rules trying to micromanage your behavior.

It's about opening up options that actually work and promoting things that are already proven to work and are already available so the economy doesn't have to be strangled by this pandemic. It's an approach that doesn't require us to choose between economic health and physical health. It's an approach that works because it respects the need for both and does so without asking anyone to jump through giant hoops now in hopes of some potential, but not guaranteed, payoff somewhere down the road after x, y or z happens.

Thank you for engaging me.

ffdjjjffjj 2104 days ago

Everyone wants to return to normal, but there’s still a pandemic. “We’ll open the bars when it’s safe” isn’t a satisfying answer but what good would lying about a timeline be?

SpicyLemonZest 2104 days ago

It establishes a standard for when we need to start looking at alternate plans. The virus isn't going to completely disappear, so there's a very serious risk that "we'll open bars when it's safe" will end up meaning "we'll never open bars". Just look at Australia, where Victoria has been under strict curfew for something like 5 months this year because the only standard they set for leaving is "safe". If our plan is going to end up meaning bars stay closed for a decade, we need to throw it out and come up with an alternate plan, or we're just going to end up with no plan as people and politicians lose their tolerance for further restrictions.

[0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2...

harambae 2102 days ago

I'm glad someone else realizes that individuals (outside unusually-nerdy HN readers... myself included) do not have infinite patience for enjoyable things being shut down. The DGAF attitude will hit a tipping point whether we want it to or not and jailing 40% of the population isn't possible, even in America with it's love of outsized incarceration [0].

talentedcoin 2105 days ago

Idk. I think framing the problem in this way is missing a huge piece of the problem. Just because people want or demand a thing doesn’t mean that we as a society are going to be able to deliver it.

I think we need to think seriously about the fact that, even if COVID goes away, lockdowns like this could become part of the “new normal” (?) anyways. And by the time that happens a lot of affected businesses will already be gone or have to change.

You're not entirely wrong, but the flip side of the coin is that people won't comply with a rule just because we as a society would like them to. People will lock down for immediate severe outbreaks, as they used to for polio, but the longer lockdowns continue the more people will just say "no" and ignore them.

eanzenberg 2105 days ago

I can definitely envision fascist-lite elected officials using lockdowns in the future willy nilly, because the people precisely have gone along with it.

To be clear, I'm actually arguing for finding solutions so that we can put a stop to such things.

I have zero interest in giving government officials any excuse to do such things. Finding actual solutions that actually work is the strongest possible means to combat such an outcome.