“No fair.” That’s what a five-year-old child would say to a set of rules that applied different restrictions to different people for no discernible reason.
Even a five-year-old child would recognize that something has gone terribly wrong in California. A double standard of pandemic restrictions is forcing restaurants out of business for no valid reason.
Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer issued a new order closing outdoor dining – the only type of restaurant dining then allowed in the county – days before Thanksgiving. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors considered a motion to reverse that decision and continue to allow outdoor dining. The supervisors questioned Ferrer and her team about the evidence, if any, that outdoor dining had been a source of COVID-19 spread.
The Public Health department had no evidence to show them.
Still, the motion to restore outdoor dining failed, with only Kathryn Barger and Janice Hahn voting for the evidence-based position that restaurants should be allowed to continue to offer table service.
Soon thereafter, Gov. Gavin Newsom reworked his metrics for pandemic shutdowns yet again and declared that entire regions of the state must close down restaurant dining. So it didn’t matter that the California Restaurant Association and L.A. restaurant owner Mark Geragos, a well-known attorney, won their lawsuit against L.A. County’s outdoor dining ban after a judge asked the Public Health department for evidence that restaurants were a source of COVID-19 contagion, and no evidence supported the ban.
Restaurants in most of the state are now limited to take-out and delivery only. For many, to-go service alone is a money-losing venture that business owners have suffered to keep their staff employed.
The unfairness of the restrictions came sharply into focus recently, when California Health Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly admitted at a news conference that the in-person dining ban is “not a comment on the relative safety of outdoor dining,” but instead “really has to do with the goal of trying to keep people at home.”
The difference between a public service announcement and a ban on restaurant dining is apparently lost on the state employees who have imposed these restrictions.
Frustrated and financially desperate restaurant owners who have sought to keep the doors open despite the ban have been cited, fined and threatened with the permanent loss of their health permit. These businesses, built through years of hard work and long hours, are being driven into the ground only because state officials want to persuade people to stay home.
Adding insult to injury, restaurants have been ordered to implement costly modifications to their businesses in order to comply with previous sets of pandemic regulations. Restaurant owners invested to build patio dining and spaced their tables to accommodate social distancing. They struggled to keep their employees working as revenues plunged under requirements for reduced occupancy.The Newsom administration and three-fifths of the leadership of Los Angeles County do not care.
This outrageously cavalier attitude toward other people’s livelihoods is made worse by elected officials and their closest friends showing up at restaurants to enjoy dinner even as they told the public, without evidence, that this was terribly unsafe.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the government cannot take private property for public use without paying for it. Some elected officials may pay for it sooner than others.
Posted by: https://anaheimsigns.com
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