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?
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.
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].