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But I tried to share it around and a lot of people in my industry weren't having it, and said more precautions are always better than less.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/scourge-hygiene-theater/614599/
I'd say compared to what I've heard other bars and restaurants in our city are doing, we're right in the middle ground. We wash our hands or sanitize after every interaction with any surface or guest, wear a mask during any interaction with a guest and hit tables and chairs with both disinfectant and sanitizer instead of just sanitizer. We no longer spray doors after every time they're touched, we've never REQUIRED masks, we primarily seat outside, our tables are still about 8 feet apart indoors, and we still have sanitizer conspicuously placed throughout the building.
But other places are still requiring gloves on employees' hands at all times, only serving drinks and food in/on disposable materials, spraying used materials with disinfectant before handling them with gloves, some even requiring masks stay on unless you are specifically taking a bite of food or drink of beverage.
And for the first few weeks, I was all about a lot of that too. I smoke, I drink, and I'm interacting with hundreds of strangers a week. I'm scared as hell, and I can never tell if I'm experiencing a minor anxiety episode, a hangover, chest tightness from smoking too much the night before, chest tightness from an oncoming panic attack or onset of virus symptoms. I'm quite scared, all the time! But the more we participated in it, and the more I came across information that ultimately coalesced in that Atlantic article a couple weeks ago, I just got so skeptical. The most important things you can do are mask up, wash your hands and keep your distance. The rest is more like performance art than additional safety measures. I mean...
"Finally, and most important, hygiene theater builds a false sense of security, which can ironically lead to more infections. Many bars, indoor restaurants, and gyms, where patrons are huffing and puffing one another’s stale air, shouldn’t be open at all. They should be shut down and bailed out by the government until the pandemic is under control. No amount of soap and bleach changes this calculation.
Instead, many of these establishments are boasting about their cleaning practices while inviting strangers into unventilated indoor spaces to share one another’s microbial exhalations. This logic is warped. It completely misrepresents the nature of an airborne threat. It’s as if an oceanside town stalked by a frenzy of ravenous sharks urged people to return to the beach by saying, We care about your health and safety, so we’ve reinforced the boardwalk with concrete. Lovely. Now people can sturdily walk into the ocean and be separated from their limbs."
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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz
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