Los Angeles County Banned Outdoor Dining. Theres Zero Evidence It Spreads COVID-19.

And we know this has created a lot of hardship for so many. This is trash. It’s crippling a sector of our economy, that’s already limping. To persecute us as an industry based on five or six weeks of spiking cases that probably have very little to do with outdoor dining is just crazy. On November 22nd, Los Angeles became the only county in America to ban outdoor dining this winter for a minimum three weeks. This order could put out of business many California restaurants that were barely hanging on.

00:34 - Some of which recently invested in retrofitting for exclusively outdoor dining. The worst part, according to critics is that the public health agency issuing the order has provided no concrete evidence that outdoor dining is a significant source of COVID spread. I personally feel like we’re being punished. Kat Turner is a chef and partner at Highly Likely cafe in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles. The data to support that COVID is being spread through outdoor dining, I think it’s extremely flimsy.

01:02 - I just don’t understand the agenda that’s being pushed. They’ve shut us without saying, hey, here’s a solution, this is how we’re gonna help businesses, this is how we’re gonna help you get through this period, because they knew it was coming, but where’s the planning? Where’s the foresight? David Combes is the CEO of Botanical Group which owns two restaurants in West Hollywood including EP and LP, which shifted all of its business to outdoor rooftop dining. We’ve spent a considerable amount of money, our additional investments being in the hundreds of thousands of dollars from additional staffing required, security required to manage patrons and make sure there’s distancing applied barriers and sanitizers. Health Department–they visit us to check for compliance. I’m happy to say that we’ve sailed through with flying colors, certainly made our life challenging and profitability an impossibility.

01:54 - LA county’s Department of Public Health issued the order the weekend before Thanksgiving. Pointing to a 108% increase in case numbers and rising hospitalizations as rationale for the renewed restrictions. Gathering with people you do not live with can increase the chances of getting or spreading COVID19. LA Public Health Director. Barbara Ferrer held an online press conference on November 23rd to discuss the order and estimates from the county’s contact tracing that 10 to 15% of COVID transmissions are linked to dining experiences. Though she hasn’t clarified, how many of those transmissions were attributed to outdoor dining at restaurants and declined to provide the underlying data when pressed by reporters.

02:35 - Has there been a noted outbreak that has come from people dining outside? People are eating and drinking and they’re not wearing their face coverings for the vast majority of time that they’re there. When they’re gathered with people who are not in their household, there just ends up being a significant amount of risk associated. I think the question, and I don’t know that you answered it, is she wanted to know a number of outbreaks as a result of restaurants– I don’t have those numbers in front of me but I will be happy to work with our communications team and we’ll get those numbers. The Health Department didn’t respond to Reason’s follow up requests for those numbers, and the county’s online data portal identifies only 16 restaurants as outbreak sites. Most of them fast food restaurants involving only employees not outdoor diners.

03:24 - And restaurants don’t make the county’s top five list of COVID exposure sites. The counties also found that the vast majority of restaurants do comply with its health orders and that cases fell through the summer, even as outdoor dining was allowed. Given that you haven’t identified an actual source of an outbreak being in outdoor dining how do you rationalize the closure and how do you expect to measure whether it actually is accomplishing what you’re hoping to accomplish? We know that places where people are gathering without wearing their face coverings are places where transmission is easiest and most likely. But we will, as always, watch our data. The counties had eight months to get their shit together in relation to contact, tracing, and also testing. So it feels like we are being disadvantaged by a lack of process from the LA County.

04:18 - And now, for political optics, it’s, the requirement for them to do something is well the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna shut down restaurants and bars. I think it’s stupid. I think people are still gonna wanna get together, and now they’re gonna do it inside at other people’s homes, instead of meeting outside at a restaurant to have dinner. And now that it’s colder outside they’re not gonna wanna sit in the backyard. They’re gonna sit in the living room. The Los Angeles County Board of supervisors voted three to two to uphold the Health Department’s order. One restaurant owner has already filed suit against the County.

04:47 - Turner says she worries about the unintended consequences of an indefinite shutdown of one of the only relatively safe places that people in Los Angeles can gather. With the very fabric of our mental health as a community kind of hanging in the wires, and the financial stability of us as a business and the livelihood, the literal survival of my team gets completely irresponsible to shut down outdoor dining. Like what we have here is good for the community and it’s good for the economy and it’s good for our staff and we’re doing it safely. Like this is not dangerous. .