Update
There is pressure from the pub industry to re-open pubs in April or May. Tim Martin has (inevitably) expressed his thoughts which unusually for him are broadly quite sensible. Of course his comments about how much pubs contribute to the economy would look better if he paid Wetherspoons staff a decent living wage:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56068252
The report also contains a comment from Dr Bharat Pankhania, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter medical school,
“What the executives of pubs need to know is that failure to get it right equals back to square one. And back to square one equals much more pain economically, much more hardship.”
He said people drank alcohol to relax and “one of the consequences of relaxing is that you drop your guard”.
Dr Pankhania doesnt sound like someone who is perhaps too familiar with the pub environment since his ‘drop you guard’ point does makes it seem that everyone who visits a pub gets completely drunk and then frolics (clothed or not) with other drinkers. Not in the pubs I frequent I might note and certainly not in COVID secure pubs.
Below is some actual evidence, mundane thought it is, about COVID infections in pubs in 2020
COVID transmission in pubs: some actual evidence(not what temperance campaigners hope for)
With Schools possibly re-opening from March 8th once again stories are appearing that pubs and restaurants will have to stay shut until May to avoid a spike in COVID infections.
The Telegraph has embellished this (6th February) with a story, inspired no doubt by the usual temperance campaigners in the scientific community, that they can open provided they don’t sell alcohol. The usual evidence free BS about pubs and infection also appears again
If schools reopen safely as they should there will be no reason why a rise in infections should occur. Of course the Government has tried three times to reopen schools unsafely in June and September 2020 and January 2021 but only got away with it once, with unfortunately predictable results.
Secondly there is no actual evidence that pubs and restaurants are significant sources of COVID infections particularly when significant safety measures are taken, as they were last summer. That’s not the same as saying that they don’t cause infections but rather they are not high up the list.
There are always experts ready to opine otherwise although they never have coherent evidence. Without delving into their justifications too much one might suggest that they vary between those that rarely if ever venture into pubs and restaurants but assume they must be venues where mayhem routinely occurs and those that like such places a little bit too much and think that everyone else also gets completely drunk every time they visit a bar as they seem to themselves.
Fortunately some quite mundane but likely to be accurate information on COVID infections in pubs and restaurants has now appeared. It came when two senior public health officials from Sheffield and Staffordshire appeared before a House of Commons Scientific Committee on 27th January. They are responsible for running now reasonably effective local authority track and trace operations looking in some detail at where infections occur.
While pubs and restaurants are currently shut both agreed that even when they were open household transmission was by far the most common source of infection. Pubs and restaurants did cause infections but not significantly so.
Not really the stuff of hyperbolic media headlines but just everyday reality
Health experts’ claims ‘hospitality not Covid hotbed’ comes as ‘no surprise’
28-Jan-2021 By Nikkie Thatcher
Claims from local public health directors that hospitality venues are not a big risk of coronavirus transmission should come as no surprise, one trade body has said.
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