WASHINGTON – Arthur Avenue, in the Bronx, is one of New York’s great culinary arteries, long considered the city’s ‘real’ Little Italy, both tastier and more authentic than its touristy counterpart in Lower Manhattan . Like all other segments of New York’s restaurant industry, Arthur Avenue has been devastated by the coronavirus, which has killed some 23,000 people in the city throughout the spring.
Summer has been a lifeline, with restaurants transforming the street into ‘Piazza di Belmont’, an open-air layout whose name refers to the Italian heritage of the surrounding neighborhood (the artisans who have lived here are responsible for the gracious masonry of the Bronx Zoo). But that barely proved to be sustainable, and now these restaurants are desperate to welcome diners inside again, especially with the looming cold.
Piazza di Belmont on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx (Belmont business district)
“It’s doable,” Peter Madonia, head of Belmont’s business improvement district, told Brian Lehrer, host of the WNYC talk show. Madonia, who owns a bakery on Arthur Avenue, added that waiting for a coronavirus vaccine indoors to resume, as Mayor Bill deBlasio suggested last week, is tantamount to a ‘death knell’ .
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has a plan to allow New York City restaurants to start seating customers indoors at 25 percent capacity. But even though that plan – announced without deBlasio’s input, as the Democratic mayor and governor continue to feud – is relatively modest, it still flies in the face of science, with a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggesting that restaurants and bars are an important source of viral transmission.
This study found that people infected with the coronavirus were twice as likely to have been to a restaurant than those who had not. And they were three times more likely to have frequented a bar.
“I’m concerned about the meals inside, even at 25% capacity,” says Linsey Marr, a leading aerosol scientist at Virginia Tech who was not involved in the new CDC study. “Restaurants are the worst of all situations,” she says, because people don’t wear face masks when eating and drinking. They also tend to speak loudly, which is associated with increased pathogen spread.
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While New York City is opening restaurants for seating, Florida is reopening bars to half capacity. The governor there, Ron DeSantis, has constantly downplayed and distorted the threat of the coronavirus.
A Code Enforcement Officer walks out of a restaurant on Ocean Drive on July 15, 2020 in Miami Beach, Florida. Florida reported 112 deaths in a 24-hour period on Wednesday to exceed 300,000 cases. (Johnny Louis /.)
Marr calls Florida’s decision “reckless”.
For her part, she says she hasn’t been to a restaurant since March and won’t eat at a restaurant until – in keeping with deBlasio’s now dismissed view – there is a vaccine. “I feel for the restaurants,” says Marr. Yet the evidence is clearly not on their side.
The new CDC study, released Thursday, surveyed 314 adults across the country in July. They had all left for coronavirus tests after experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. One hundred and sixty of those people were found not to have COVID-19, while 154 tested positive for the disease. Those who contracted COVID-19, “according to the new CDC study, were” about twice as likely as control participants to have reported eating at a restaurant in the 14 days before the illness. They were also more likely to have frequented a bar or cafe.
Lead author of the study, CDC epidemiologist Dr. Kiva A. Fisher, told Yahoo News his study did not focus on the details of these dining outings. “We didn’t differentiate between eating inside and out,” she said, describing this as fertile ground for future study. A study from the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China found that one person in a restaurant in Guangzhou infected nine others. the guests during the lunch service inside. The researchers attributed the spread to “a strong flow of air from the air conditioner.”
Dr. Fisher lives in Atlanta, where the CDC is located. Although Republican state governor Brian Kemp allowed restaurants to offer indoor seating, Dr Fisher says she continued to support local restaurants by resorting to “low risk options.” »Such as take out or delivery.
“These are good options for supporting local businesses. “, She says. Restaurant owners have argued that while delivery and alfresco dining have kept them surviving in recent months, they desperately need to reclaim seats indoors to make a significant profit. The lack of a new federal coronavirus relief program, which has been the victim of partisan fighting on Capitol Hill, only makes the situation more urgent.
People dine outside the Peter Luger Steakhouse in Williamsburg as the city continues with Phase 4 of the reopening following restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus on September 10, 2020 in New York City. (Noam Galai /.)
As has been the case throughout the pandemic, the shock of economic needs and scientific realities has led to an untenable situation. Dr. Fisher’s study found that study subjects who contracted COVID-19 and who had eaten out before falling ill, “were less likely to report observing that almost all restaurant patrons adhered to. recommendations such as wearing a mask or social distancing. . “
The main limitation of the study was the lack of specificity about whether people indoors or outdoors. By the time the study took place in July, most of the states in the survey – including Utah, Colorado and Massachusetts – had allowed indoor dining to some extent.
“We need data that assesses whether this perceived risk is primarily associated with indoor meals,” former Food and Drug Administration director Scott Gottlieb wrote on Twitter.
Eating, especially indoors, presents unique challenges that the study finds are not associated with other activities, such as shopping. For a,
eating and drinking with a mask is impossible. Even with social distancing warrants in place, restaurants could become coronavirus hotspots. This could be especially true in New York City, where finding the hole in the wall that serves the best pizza or samosa has long been the subject of food lovers in the city.
“The direction, ventilation and intensity of the air flow can affect the virus
transmission, even if social distancing measures and use of masks
are implemented according to current guidelines, ”write Dr. Fisher and co-authors. Some restaurants have installed sophisticated air filters, but smaller restaurants may not find this option affordable.
For indoor dining, ventilation is really essential, ”said Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist who rose to prominence with his tweets about the disease.
“There must be at least one very strong draft with an outdoors completely inside, given the noisy atmosphere of most restaurants.”
City council members, parents and students participate in an outdoor learning demonstration outside a public school in the Red Hook neighborhood on September 2, 2020 in the Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City. (Spencer Platt /.)
As with the reopening of schools, the absence of a national plan seems to have only created more confusion. The CDC offers advice to restaurants, but it’s relatively broad and incentive practices like hand washing and surface sanitizing. New York City’s plan for indoor dining also lacks specificity, even though it requires temperature controls and prohibits sitting in bars.
Mayor’s spokesman Bill Neidhardt said it was wrong that de Blasio and Cuomo clashed over how and when restaurants should reopen in the city. He said the two, who had been political enemies for years, “were working on the same plan.”
The plan says that if the positive rate for coronavirus diagnostic tests exceeds 2%, “the City will reassess it immediately.” That positivity rate, however, will be a reflection of who in the city gets tested for the coronavirus on any given day, as opposed to a measure of infection rates among people who eat in restaurants.
Epidemiologist Dr Feigl-Ding has dismissed temperature checks as a largely cosmetic measure because people can transmit the virus even without having a fever. And he doubted the city’s quarter-capacity mandate. Even if a restaurant is only 25% full, he told Yahoo News, people “can still emit a lot of aerosols when shouting or talking for an hour.”
Governor Cuomo’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
As the CDC study suggests, the stark reality of the pandemic may be that getting away from other people, as difficult as it may be, remains the easiest way to stop the virus from spreading. A new study by Johns Hopkins researchers published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases found that infection “was significantly less common in those who reported strict social distancing indoors and out. He also concluded that “the regular use of an indoor mask was significantly associated with a lower likelihood of infection”.
A pedestrian walks past a sign asking people to cover their faces in the Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, DC on June 22, 2020 (Mandel Ngan /. Via.)
One of the study’s authors, Dr Sunil Solomon, said he was confused as he walked past a crowded outdoor patio in Washington, DC “There was clearly no social distancing,” a- he said of the restaurant in question, Millie’s, a popular Nantucket. popular theme restaurant.
Although people gather on an outdoor patio, Dr Solomon said the scene was worrying nonetheless. “People lose their inhibition after a few drinks,” he said, moving closer and speaking louder. At the same time, he understood the imperative to gather in bars and restaurants, especially since the autumn weather is looming.
“We’ve all been locked up for months and looking for an opportunity to get out,” he told Yahoo News. “We’re getting to a point where people are tired.”
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