We Are Mad As Hell And Not Taking It Anymore!

tVillage Intelligencer

MAD AS HELL AND NOT TAKING IT ANYMORE

National Restaurant Dining Restrictions

December 15, 2020

By Kevin Mitchell

Some 100,000 U.S. restaurants have permanently closed in the past six months with tens of thousands more expected if state Covid-19 (C19) corrective policy shifts are not made and if Congress fails to act in providing financial support. That equates to massive damage to an industry that is exceedingly difficult to succeed in - without a pandemic.

No doubt this is a catastrophe for these small business owners and millions of workers trying to make ends meet. State and local bar and restaurant restrictions and indoor and outdoor dining closures are rarely predicated on science, and there is no closing of large political campaign donors' stores like Target, Walmart, Home Depot and Sam's Club. Remarkably, you can fly for six long hours on JetBlue from JFK to LAX, as reported by The Connecticut Mirror - with all manner of C19 health-safety lapses enroute - but there is no outdoor dining allowed in Los Angeles County. It is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution to shut down these mom and pop businesses while leaving the massive political patrons' businesses open.

As an example, Pennsylvania Governor Wolf shut down indoor dining for bars and restaurants from December 12 to January 4. The question becomes how many restaurants are going to want or be able to reopen in what will be the worst ever January in U.S. restaurant industry history? That's 580,000 people out of work in just Pennsylvania! New York Governor Cuomo just followed suit for New York City, effective Monday.

There is hope!

1. The hypocrisy of elected officials is on display everywhere now and the message, for example, from California Governor Gavin Newsom is that he does not feel at any health risk while at the French Laundry dining among non-family members without social distancing. Or Steve Adler, the Mayor of Austin, Texas brazenly admonishing the city's citizenry from his timeshare in Cabo San Lucas Mexico not to travel - after deplaning from his private jet. The growing number of these incidents is utterly collapsing the credibility of these politicians, and their public health officials.

2. Americans are beyond the tipping point and are disgusted with the intelligence and ethically-challenged elites crippling our economy and way of life. Whether it's Daniel Presti, owner of Mac's Pub House in the Statin Island borough of New York City or Angela Marsden, owner of the Pineapple Hill Saloon & Grill Sports Bar in Sherman Oaks, California - or their customers - citizens are beginning to fight back. People are mad as hell and are not going to take it any more!

3. Infectious disease epidemiologists, public health scientists and medical practitioners from prestigious universities around the world such as Harvard, Stamford and Oxford signed the Great Barrington Declaration denouncing lockdowns. These 50,871 healthcare leaders, of all political strips, denounced current lockdown policies for producing devastating consequences.

4. It's now in numerous press reports, for all citizens to see, that governments around the U.S., while shutting down bars and restaurants for being C19 superspreaders, outright refuse to provide industry associations and restaurant operators - those being asked to sacrifice - with the data that were used to support such devastating policies.

5. California and Pennsylvania, for example, are embracing increasingly non-scientific, draconian restrictions based on the trigger of having reached a threshold of 85% of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds being occupied. However, they are publicly silent on the fact that federal and state laws require hospitals with ICUs to have the immediate capability to expand capacity to 125%. Many hospitals can go much higher - some to 200%. Arizona, for example, in June instructed its hospitals to activate emergency plans to increase ICU capacity by 50%.

Trust is a necessary condition for effective communication, especially of the persuasive kind where citizens are being asked to accept very significant financial and personal-freedom sacrifices. My view is that the Well of Trust is dry. Broad citizen pushback and policy changes are very near at hand.

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Mitchell is chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, an advocacy organization for the travel and tourism industry and its employees.

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