Chorus of Epidemiologists Call to 'Close the Bars and Pubs!'

A bar in San Francisco called "Pittsburgh's Pub" exploited the closed-off streets of quarantine by transforming into an outdoor beer garden. Circle "six feet" stickers rained the sidewalk. The masked bouncer milled the crowd pointing at the ground reminding couples and friend pods to keep to their cliques. Patrons lifted masks to sip pints and, semi-inebriated, conscientiously re-covered their faces.

Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant called last Thursday for the federal government to pay all bars and pubs to stay closed. These are super-spreader environments, he contends. Enclosed spaces. And after a pint or two patrons talk louder to each other, spraying droplets into a concentrating air block of viral load.

Wired: Maybe we should have done that months ago. Isn’t it too late for that?

Larry Brilliant: It's less effective, obviously, when you have 3 million cases and 130,000 deaths in the US than when you had 15. But it’s never too late to stop a virus from spreading.

Wired: What’s the third thing?

Larry Brilliant: A sensible, nationwide requirement for those places where there are clearly going to be super-spreader events to stay closed: bars, indoor restaurants, churches, megachurches, the kinds of places that we know will spread the disease. Those places can’t be reopened.

Friday, Slate published "Congress needs to bail out America's bars". Next Topher Spiro, the Health Vice President of Center for American Progress tweeted out a "cluster busting" thread calling for same. Spiro linked to a Slate article.

Arizona Governor Ducey is taking heat for his executive order June 27 closing for one month all bars, gyms, movie theaters and water parks.

Epidemiologist Andy Slavitt Sunday night said a state governor told him a Monday announcement would officially mark the re-closing of bars and pubs in his state.

Monday morning, this epidemiologist joined the growing chorus:

O-zone commentary. Those states, MA, NY, NJ, CT, NH, VT, are all likely suffering from case importation from the high infection states. They will be unlikely to further recover as long as bars stay open in Georgia. A travel quarantine is not enough. pic.twitter.com/EBhcS3F6Ia

— Dave Blake, PhD (@_stah) July 13, 2020

This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.