Some cautious optimism amid indoor dining's return in the Bay Area
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Daniel Morales serves meals to a table of diners at La Mar on Friday, Nov. 13, 2020, in San Francisco.Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
Last week, San Francisco officials announced that indoor dining at 25% capacity would likely return as the county descends into the “red tier” of the state’s reopening plan: possibly as soon as this coming Wednesday, March 3. That is, if coronavirus infection rates don’t rise before then. (Read Janelle Bitker’s full report.) San Mateo and Marin counties have already permitted indoor dining.
The thought of eating indoors still fills me with dread, but maybe a tiny bit less dread than last time. I am terrified of allowing myself to feel positive about the pandemic, especially considering that our country recently exceeded half a million COVID deaths. Those are lives that we’ll never get back. But I feel optimistic that this move to the red tier isn’t just some illusory performance of progress on the part of our elected officials. (Though they absolutely deserve criticism for the vaccine’s rockyinitial rollout, which had both food workers, Muni drivers and other vulnerable populations like the disability community scrambling to figure out where they fit into the plan.)