Day 152: The Restaurant at the End of the Pandemic

New York, the most immune state in the Union, has backed off on its dining-in plans for Monday, instead indefinitely postponing indoor dining. Indoor dining was also scheduled to begin today in New Jersey, but back on Monday the governor postponed it indefinitely, apparently in horror at some outdoor crowd scenes.

PlagueBlog notes that restaurants are not normally filled with crowds but instead admit patrons according to their seating capacity. Both governors cited the outbreaks in the South and West as being partly driven by indoor dining, though PlagueBlog failed to detect any science behind those statements.

To be fair, the governors of most of the affected states seem to agree, though they also blame bar openings, and California also blames an increase in social and family gatherings—which seem a more likely culprit than the more limited groups able to assemble in restaurants. In Texas, the opposition says bar lives matter.

Here in Massachusetts we've had indoor dining for over a week now with no surge in cases, even though we are not as immune as either NY or NJ. Our cases are up only a quarter of a percentage point today. The weekly data is pretty boring:

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