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Comment by ceilingcorner | Hacker News Reader

I really don’t think many people are afraid to go into public settings. Maybe not into a crowd, sure, but a restaurant? The holdup there is from the government, not the public.

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I think it's safe to say there is a large portion of the population that will continue not eating indoors until they are vaccinated, or the infection numbers in their area go down significantly. I can't find articles to back it up, but I have read from restaurant owners saying that even when they were allowed to expand their indoor capacity, they were never hitting that limit.

With that said, this is going to vary by region. There is absolutely a large percentage of people wanting and willing to go eat indoors at restaurants right now, I just don't think that number represents a majority.

I may never go back to eating at restaurants. I never really liked them to begin with, they seem like pretty much the least efficient and most expensive way to eat food. I never really understood the allure. Now I look at a crowded restaurant and all I can see is all those mouths and noses in close proximity to each other spraying and snorting god-knows-what into each other. Yuck! I may never look at crowds the same way either. The pandemic has given me a boosted appreciation of personal space and hygiene.

If people are scared to go out then why even have lockdowns?

Schrödinger's virus: We need lockdowns to save everyone but even if we didn't have lockdowns nobody would go anyway but we still need to lockdowns.

People still go out. Enough to spread infection. But not enough to maintain the economy.

If the virus were actually as deadly as past examples, there wouldn’t be a need to impose lockdowns. People would avoid each other out of sheer self-preservation.

I would be nervous going to a restaurant if it was the same set up as before. i.e. a lot of tables packed next to each other. With the reduced indoors capacity or outdoor seating that's some what spaced out I'm less nervous about it.

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