It had been a very long time since I entered the dining area of a restaurant; I've been very careful during the pandemic to stay masked in public and not to linger too close to strangers for very long. Looking around the room, I noticed literally no one in the very busy dining area was wearing masks or social distancing, which gave me the willies.
When CM and I first moved to Seattle, I learned some history about the city. In 1889, there was a huge fire that destroyed practically all of the central business district. After the ashes and rubble were cleared away, the city fathers urged business leaders to build back higher than the shoreline so there would be less trouble with flooding and sewage issues (the tides had a tendency to back up all the city's toilets), but as soon as they could, people began rebuilding right back on the flat again. Nothing would convince them to work in the best interest of all Seattleites; they wanted to get back to making money immediately.
At the time I couldn't understand why so many people would act in such a short-sighted fashion. But now I get it. All these places across the United States are reopening without Corsi-Rosenthal boxes or any other kind of viral mitigation measures, as the Covid pandemic continues and as we prepare for a potential H5N1 pandemic. No one will take even basic measures to guard against more people falling ill. Because it's been a few very lean years and damn it, they want their money.
It makes me wonder whether cities that want serious viral mitigation should do what the city of Seattle did to fix their problem. Since they couldn't force shop owners to rebuild higher than their original storefronts, they chose to rebuild the infrastructure--namely, the streets--twelve feet above the front doors of the new shops, requiring pedestrians to use ladders to cross the streets. This situation was so awkward that it soon became evident to shop owners that they had better do what the city government had asked for in the first place. Maybe, if you couldn't reopen your business without several Corsi-Rosenthal boxes in place and running, you would do what you needed to do to get back to serving customers. Because clearly, most people aren't going to do what's right unless it's making them money, they're being legally dragged to it, or they're shamed into doing it.
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