As the anniversary of the initial pandemic-induced nation-wide lockdowns looms, cities and states throughout the country — including ones that have maintained some level of restriction for months — are reversing course on a number of measures, including restaurant dining bans put in place around the holiday season to combat nationally skyrocketing COVID-19 cases. Restaurants depleted by a nearly year-long crisis are swinging open their doors and welcoming diners back to dining rooms and roadside tables in bids for survival. But the growing government laxity around restaurant dining is not a sign that either practice is necessarily safe, nor that decreasing positivity rates will continue without ongoing vigilance. On the contrary, new variants of the coronavirus, along with more than 100,000 new infections still being recorded nationally each day, may make this moment more dangerous than the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, for workers and diners alike.