Knee-Jerk Reactions Like This Don’t Help The Serious Coronavirus Threat To People
There’s a rise in coronavirus infections so of course, officials respond by closing the bars.
They have no real statistics to prove bars are the culprit, yet they make the watering holes and those who go to them take the brunt of their shutdown punishment.
So why are the bars taking such a beating in reaction to the rise in COVID-19 cases?
Well, because bars are such easy targets, of course. But that reason doesn’t fly at press conferences so they have come up with this explanation that was printed in the Los Angeles Times: “California state officials say the consumption of alcohol in bars impairs judgment and leads to decreased use of face coverings and keeping socially distant from other people. The spaces are also loud, often requiring people to speak in louder voices, which can lead to the spray of potentially infectious oral droplets while talking.”
Okay, so we make bad and impaired decisions when we drink. Yeah, I know – I’ve slept with some some fat and ugly girls after an impaired evening. Like every other single guy.
But such lapses are rare. The vast majority of people who go to bars don’t get hammered. We get buzzed, and only when there’s some excitement – friends raise up their glasses to do a group “cheers,” a new prospective single person enters the picture or our favorite team scores the winning run/basket/goal/touchdown – do we throw caution to the wind.
And then only for a brief moment.
Plus, I don’t know about the bars where you’ve been drinking, but the ones I have gone to lately don’t exactly invite a whole lot of impaired judgements because they are so boring now with the limited people allowed inside them and the 6-foot social distancing policy. In fact, as I wrote just a few days earlier, going to bars in the COVID-19 era sucks for these reasons.
And here’s another point: has anybody done a study on the effects alcohol has on the coronavirus? Of course not. Maybe it doesn’t kill the coronavirus but maybe it suppresses or weakens it. I know I’ve got rid of a few colds by drinking tequila shots.
Maybe shutting down the bars is indeed the right thing to do, but who really knows? Maybe people need to be kept out of bars, maybe more lives are being saved than would be otherwise when these people are shopping, at a grocery store or even a protest. Which brings up an interesting question: where were the social-distancing, masks-need-to-be-worn officials when thousands of people stood shoulder-to-shoulder during the protests? Many of whom were not wearing masks.
Well, they were in the protests themselves, of course, not because they were supporting social justice but because they wanted to appear that way for PR purposes. I guarantee if a protest were to take place right now with hundreds or thousands of people, the officials won’t be calling for the shutting down of those protests.
But they might find a few more bars to close.
And by the way, I am all for peaceful protests. It’s a part of the USA’s constitution. What I don’t support are the looters who use them as an opportunity to destroy things. And I don’t support people, officials and corporations who use them as a pulpit for PR.
Okay, that’s a bit off base for the point of this post – hey, we all need to vent every now and then, right!? – but it still makes little sense to come down so hard on the bars when there are so many other areas of infection to target.
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