My daughter and I went out to an outdoor restaurant a few months ago. As the waiter bought us out menus the first thing they stated was that if we ordered an alcoholic beverage, we must order food at the same time.
You see, Governor Cuomo of New York made an interesting decision. He stated that during pandemic, alcohol could not be sold in a restaurant/bar without food being sold along with it. Of course, these establishments retaliated by selling “Cuomo Chips”- bags of chips for 1$. Then he started to define what constitutes “food” and all of a sudden a piece of cheese on two slices of stale white is being heralded as cuisine du jour.
Last week, one of New York’s state universities shut it’s in person operations. Reason: too many kids partying. Too many worries about disease spreading.
So let’s get down to the meat of the issue: alcohol.
In early contact tracing, clusters and spreads of COVID are being traced to situations where alcohol is being served. People have a couple of drinks: first off- it you’re drinking you’re not wearing a mask. (I have yet to see people drinking a beer out of a straw) Secondly, you’re probably not standing six feet apart from someone you don’t share a house with.
Alcohol and pandemic: is it a good mix?
Here’s my question:
IF alcohol sales had been banned in March, would COVID be over in the US?
to be clear- this is not my opinion- I am asking a question- see the question mark?? I highlighted the IF and the ?…
I understand that there are many who say that people would not have survived pandemic without alcohol: But- would not having it for two weeks stopped the early spread?
Would things be “more normal” now?
I asked one of my friends this question. Their response was “what about people who have an addiction issue?”
OK- fair question.
My response: Aren’t we trying to help the MAJORITY of the people? Wasn’t the whole point of lock down to protect the majority?
Did alcohol fan the flames of COVID spread?
Discuss:
Waking up on the Wrong Side of 50 
I was just talking to my daughter about bars near campus and how it would be easier to keep students on campus if they closed the nearby bars.
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My daughters school is not campus, but some students rented apartments in the area. The provost sent us a scathing letter the other day to tell us to remind students of what is happening
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My daughter says there is a story out of the university president showing up at a bar near campus to disperse the crowd of students
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I could see that happening
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Probably made it worse in some cases, but far from the only “propellant” of this disease.
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True. I was just presenting a what if to think about
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For a large part of the population the moment you tell them they can’t do something they turn around and do it to extremes. You can call it immaturity, selfishness, or even just a general FU attitude based upon age/belief system/even personality… once the command is made the likelihood of problems grows exponentially. We still want to believe that presenting reason and fact will sway people, help them understand the bigger picture, cause them to be socially conscious in their decisions. Nope.
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My husband works at the health center of a universtiy, and they are definitely seeing a MAJOR outbreak that is mostly related to partying. But I think bars became the unfair scapegoat of the pandemic. The people hanging out at Starbucks with their overpriced lattes are equally socially-undistant and sans-mask. All the sports practice is plenty risky, what with no mask, contact, and ball sharing. IMO even if they *had* banned alcohol (or even just sales at bars and restaurants) I don’t think it would have made a lick of difference. The problem is people not taking the pandemic seriously, which would still have been true without alcohol.
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Very interesting question! I don’t have a conclusive answer but I know I have drunk more alcohol than normal this summer. Having said that I’m now taking a month off drinking it. I think house parties are definitely a contributing factor in the spread of the virus in the UK. Whether banning alcohol altogether for a short spell would have made much difference though – I’m not sure? There are probably several other environments where the virus is highly likely to spread too.
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I understand the bar issue. Basically if you are going to a bar it is not generally to eat but to meet up with people in a confined area. Even if they cut down the capacity of inside bars it might not be profitable for the bars, they count on crowds. Yes people will meet up at a Starbucks etc, but all the coffee shops around here have no indoor seating. Colleges are tough because part of the college experience is meeting new people and in large groups. Kids in college for the most part will do what college kids do, inevitable.
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Interesting. We live a Half hour from
ISU which is in Ames where massive parties were held about 1-2 weeks prior to Ames becoming the nation hotspot. I would agree that alcohol fuels the coronavirus spread. Currently the bars here and in Ames are closed down but as we took our walks this weekend it was obvious that even in our sedate neighborhood house parties replaced the bars so maybe no alcohol sales would have worked because bar goers found alternatives. There Are some people in the state that are trying to raise the drinking age even higher until Cove it is over to keep kids from purchasing alcohol. In addition Iowa still has no mask mandates and the cities have tried to enforce city and even county mask mandates yet our governor States that only she can issue the mask mandate and no mask mandates are enforceable in the cities or counties unless issued by her. Although that’s another issue!!! So we just sit back, stay home and keep away. It’s going to be a long fall.
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Well there was the strip club thing I mentioned a while ago, where one waitress was in contact with a slew of patrons to her establishment over the period of several shifts (she was asymptomatic but got tested later when she felt ill) and the next thing was there were 500 cases leading back to her shifts at the club.
Similar to partying?
I don’t know what the answer is but saying no to alcohol will most certainly do the opposite of level-headed behaviour. I don’t know if modifying the rules like Cuomo did is the answer but you gotta give him points for trying something other than banning outright…
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Governor Cuomo trying to get New York back up and running. Headline.
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I believe it’s unfair to single out any one behavior. If it’s not alcohol, it would be something else where people would gather in groups without precautions…..perhaps protests? Granted, partying among the college-age students is causing the spread to become more prevalent. Ban alcohol and their parties would probably turn to other “banned” substances. The point is they are going to get together, regardless. In our town, they act so concerned about classes being socially distanced and wanting to Zoom their classes, yet our town had to ban the sale of alcohol after 9pm so students would stay out of the bars at night. So, I suppose you should just eat your cheese and stale bread while you enjoy a glass of wine and hope Cuomo doesn’t further define what you can and can’t order as food.
Did someone say day drinking at home?!?!? Big fan. 🍷
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People always find alcohol if they want it. Some may already have at least 2-week’s worth in their homes. The main problem from the beginning was the “leadership” in our country not taking the virus seriously enough and making so many mistakes.
Some of the issues about buying food along with the alcohol had to do with licensing, I believe, at least in some states. If bars are closed but restaurants are allowed to open, they need to show that a certain percentage of their sales come from food. This wouldn’t work out if people were coming in and just buying alcoholic drinks.
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In the case of nyc it was to keep people from sitting outside just drinking, which was happening leading to many issues.
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Yes, I can see how that might do that!
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😉
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Alcohol is a contributor I think but to answer your question, if banning alcohol was the ONLY thing that was done in March, I don’t think the pandemic would be over. People would have found a way to get alcohol, even if they started making it themselves. Look how inventive people got with other things. I believe that from the outset it wasn’t taken seriously enough.
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I meant banning alcohol when everything else was shut down
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Alcohol doesn’t help, but masks do.
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Early on, when the Teetotaler-In-Chief toasted Covid 19 as a hoax, half the damn nation became intoxicated by this idiocy. The buzz was out of the bottle.
And the drunken disinformation continues to this very day.
So no way going all temperance, even temporarily, would have made a garnish of difference in this cocktail of incompetence.
“point of lock down to protect the majority?” Maybe ….more likey Markets, which in reality protects the majority. But I fear any recovery won’t be a V, or a W, but a mid eighties neoliberal like (K) shaped bounce back.
Nice post. Bye Bye.
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When I first heard of the lockdown, I thought liquor stores would be closed as well. My surprise when they were deemed essential. However, I agrew with your friend, alcohol withdrawl is deadly. People really can die from not drinking if their body is used to drinking a lot.
Also, had they banned liquor sales, we would have been stuck with a country with little to do to get their mind off their problems. That can only lead to no good. I am not encouraging it, just being realistic.
But yes, the fact that bars were open and alcohol still sold really made rhe situation worse. With people inhibited, COVID was left to spread like wildfire.
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This brings to mind prohibition and we saw how well that went. I think people would have still found their ways around it. Sure, you could have made it so that no public drinking or open sales as in bars and restaurants were allowed, but people would still demand their gatherings and would have done so no matter the rules (as we’ve seen EVERYWHERE.) It might have slowed things down if done in conjunction with dozens of other things, but the biggest of all is people actually willing to follow the rules and guidelines.
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Hmm now there’s a thought…. was prohibition the greatest political suppression failure of all time? Suppression never works and never will 😦 .
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I haven’t ruled it out here….
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I’m not a fan of this idea, selfish reasons, but I do think it’s a factor in a complicated snafu! C
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I wanted to toss it around. I’m still contemplating it
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Could it be that when alcohol is involved people make less than optimal decisions? There is still a liquor ban here, but people find ways.
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Inhibitions definitely go down
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I don’t think it would have made a difference. The problem was people moving from place to place and gathering in large groups. I think an earlier travel ban would have made a huge difference. Amazing to me how quickly this spread simply by people not being able to stay put.
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No one was going to listen. To anything.
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True.
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My opinion is, alcohol or no alcohol the UK and USA would be in exactly the same place….. ok marginally improved, covid levels in the UK are high because when people congregate in groups so the Reproduction rate rises! If track and trace, testing and quarantining had been taken seriously like in Vietnam then we’d have kicked covid’s butt temporarily!
Suppression never works and never will………….. covid should have been allowed to run its course much the same as the British great plagues in the 1600’s, Darwinism in action have you will. Unlucky for some but the strongest survived and developed an immunity, if we carry on trying to suppress (remembering humans are stupid) I fear covid will be here for years to come…………. unless there’s a vaccine!
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Years to come. Vaccine will be as effective as flu vaccine. But that’s a whole other thing
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In the year 1665 England banned the movement of people from Europe, what they hadn’t counted on were the flea ridden rats and virus that entered the country on trading ships………… mother nature always wins in the end…………. lol rant over 😀 . (A thought provoking posting).
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😉
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Remember when this all started, there was talk, even by Fauci, of herd immunity? We develop herd immunity, if I understand it correctly, by lots of people being exposed. Most will be asymptomatic or have lighter cases. We, of course, still need to protect those with weak immune systems, underlying health conditions and the elderly. When the dust settles on Covid, I think we will find some solid evidence. Right now, science and politics are mixed up, the recommendations keep changing, and public health orders vary widely from state to state. My recommendations: wash your hands frequently and thoroughly, stay at home if you have a fever, and don’t put Covid patients in nursing homes with well clients.
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Someone said to be the other day that there’s no politics involved in any of this….I just stared blankly
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Good question. Coastal towns also saw spikes around holidays where masses of people crowded on boats and beaches, with or without alcohol. So docks and beaches as well as bars got closed.
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Yeah…I can’t help but think about this
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