pantherag said:

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jamey said:

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ORAggieFan said:

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Indoor dining at 100% capacity would potentially have far worse consequences. Are restaurants choosing to limit capacity?

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Ive been to numerous restaurants the last few weeks since getting 2nd dose.

A lot of restaurants have some common sense measures in place. Tables are spaced, several had some sort of guard or separator between tables that physically inhibited air flow between groups of patrons, they'd clean tables more thoroughly between customers...etc

Other restaurants have expanded their patio and there seeme to be more people choosing to eat out on the patio than before.

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ETX is 100% capacity with no restrictions. Masks only being worn by those still fearful or whatever personal reason they have. ETX is in Post Covid era. The hospitals have closed the Covid floors. I'm aware of medical offices that are no longer taking temps of patients entering the office. Things are pretty well back to normal in the Sliver.

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It's 100%, no restrictions everywhere in Tx. Thats a state thing not an East Tx thing.


I'm talking about what restaurants in DFW are actually doing regardless of any state
regulations or lack thereof

Old Buffalo said:

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Javiers
Uptown bars
Knox Henderson bars
Palmers chicken
Bella Green

Literally no mandates. No spacing. Freedom.

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I would not expect anything at a bar. Not much of anything can be done at a bar

But I've seen changes at

Big Fish
Local Diner
Urbano Taco
BJs Brewery
Tolbert
Coton Patch
Lupe Tortilla

None of it made a flying **** as far as "freedom" to me, thats laughable. My freedoms are not that fragile

duck79 said:

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Been to several restaurants in Collin county and all have been full during peak hours with waits. I was at one last weekend where the entire staff was maskless as well. It felt great to return to normalcy.

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I haven't seen anywhere yet where the staff was not wearing masks.

That includes all the restaurants and a bunch of stores. Probably like 20 stores including a bunch of small independent stores

Petra. 380 and Stonebridge about. The only people in masks were the customers that chose to wear them.

Old Buffalo said:

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jamey said:

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None of it made a flying **** as far as "freedom" to me, thats laughable. My freedoms are not that fragile

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"It's just a tax on tea. I don't know why everyone is up in arms. Just drink water if you don't want to pay the King's tax" - Jamey, circa 1773

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There's a tax/cost on tea. We're talking staff that's financially and in every other way, irrelevant to me

Ol_Ag_02 said:

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jamey said:

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Ol_Ag_02 said:

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jamey said:

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duck79 said:

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Been to several restaurants in Collin county and all have been full during peak hours with waits. I was at one last weekend where the entire staff was maskless as well. It felt great to return to normalcy.

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I haven't seen anywhere yet where the staff was not wearing masks.

That includes all the restaurants and a bunch of stores. Probably like 20 stores including a bunch of small independent stores

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You should probably just stay home. Safer for you. More tolerable for everyone else.

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Obviously I'm going out lot. No big deal, just like everything being discussed

It's you who seem to have a problem, with monsters like masked staff...so scary, or dividers between booths at a restarant...oh the horror!!!

Get a grip

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I haven't posted on this thread until now. You're wound way too tight.

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Says the guy who opens up with

"You should probably just stay home. Safer for you. More tolerable for everyone else"

While missing the whole point that I've gone out a lot and it's no big deal to me.


[All, This thread will be locked if the disrespect and spiraling continues. -Staff]

It's at most 50/50 on public mask wearing in suburban Dallas these days. I'm taking the kids to Rangers opening day next week, will be interested to see how heavily it's enforced. I didn't notice much enforcement towards the end of the year at Kyle this year. Cowboys Stadium was pretty strict, though.

I'm just not in the camp that thinks a mask is the next step in government mind control or whatever or more than a minor inconvenience.


Agreed, agree to disagree.

What I think is kind of funny is that certain retailers have been arguing that removing the mandate removed the "authority" that their employees had to enforce the mask mandate. Now that certain companies wish to keep their own mandate instated, it's more difficult for them to enforce without government teeth, so to speak. I find that argument flawed personally. To me, having worked at a gym as a trainer when the mandate was established, we viewed the mandate as an extra burden of enforcement that we should not have to bear. We were not deputized to enforce law and had regular jobs that we needed to focus on, especially given the fact that in our industry, closures forced a lot of us into holes in terms of getting clients and signing up members plus not losing the ones we already had.

To me the simple solution is for business to end their masking policies overall. If it is just now "too difficult" to enforce such a policy without the state backing it up (businesses own words), the very easy solution is just don't have one. I think eventually over the next few months with a lot of us completely safe to those around us b/c we are vaccinated, this is what we will see. Businesses right now are being reactive. They don't want to appear insensitive. But if they can just say it's impossible to enforce and still do their jobs, it gives them an out.

TxAg82 said:

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If you have a job where you spend hours a day trying to communicate and talk to people they are a huge inconvenience and make the job much more difficult.

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I wear one at my job, not 100% of the time but often

The problem is we live in a sue happy world. No big business wants to be the first to leave masking up to the customer 100% and then take the chance that somebody claims they got Covid in the store due to lack of safety. At this point I really feel the continued signage is just a way for companies to protect themselves legally.

duck79 said:

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The problem is we live in a sue happy world. No big business wants to be the first to leave masking up to the customer 100% and then take the chance that somebody claims they got Covid in the store due to lack of safety. At this point I really feel the continued signage is just a way for companies to protect themselves legally.

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Totally agree. I think what they will do is what Academy has done for instance. State that they are requiring their employees to mask to protect other employees and customers and "we ask that you consider to do the same". Pulls them out of a lot of responsibility, especially when the law in TX doesn't back them up to enforce a mandate. There are plenty of ways legally around it but also retailers fear, again, the appearance of insensitivity. So for the next few months, they will skirt that line until finally relinquishing. Once there are enough of the population vaccinated, the numbers of Covid cases will be so small that it will be hard to argue the need for a mask. Granted, many still will. I'm unfortunately convinced a portion of society will want all to mask, distance and stay in well after Covid isn't a threat.

All of this goes away with a hard stance reassurance from medical and political leadership that all of this is truly temporary.

duck79 said:

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The problem is we live in a sue happy world. No big business wants to be the first to leave masking up to the customer 100% and then take the chance that somebody claims they got Covid in the store due to lack of safety. At this point I really feel the continued signage is just a way for companies to protect themselves legally.

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I don't know whatnthe percentage is exactly, but there's also a percentage of the population that won't shop in person if a chunk of the people inside aren't wearing a mask.

So profit margins probably play a role too

I don't disagree. If you say "we recommend" then you are playing to both customers.

jamey said:

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duck79 said:

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The problem is we live in a sue happy world. No big business wants to be the first to leave masking up to the customer 100% and then take the chance that somebody claims they got Covid in the store due to lack of safety. At this point I really feel the continued signage is just a way for companies to protect themselves legally.

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I don't know whatnthe percentage is exactly, but there's also a percentage of the population that won't shop in person if a chunk of the people inside aren't wearing a mask.

So profit margins probably play a role too

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Totally. I honestly think it's mostly about profit margins with lawsuits being a minor concern, but a concern nonetheless. The issue with a lawsuit is that it would be the first time ever that a company would be blamed legally for harm caused by a virus. There is zero precedent for such a case. The bigger issue would be the bad publicity it could cause and which again could drive customers away who are scared or who just feel that masking is important. Those supporting masking policies have made it known on social media that they plan to avoid businesses that won't enforce the policy if for nothing for the principle of it. Probably the best thing will be to let a lot of the angst regarding the ending of the statewide mandate to subside a bit and end the policy as slowly as possible over a few months.

Right now it's a race between the virus and the vaccine. As long as some variant doesn't pop up and takes hold that's vaccine resistant...

And as long as it turns out there's not enough anti vaccine crowd to prevent herd immunity.....


I think this whole thing is largely over and becomes more like the annual flu at worst pretty soon

I know a lot of people are looking at graphs and seeing the seasonal trends in the NE, but I'm still not sure there will even be a seasonal increase here. We will have about 20-25% more of our population vaccinated by our "seasonal" time in June, if that is in fact correct, compared to what states like Michigan had when they began their spike recently. Michigan wouldn't see anywhere near the spike if they rolled out vaccines 2.5 to 3 months earlier, which is our timeline for June.

I mean, maybe some children spread it to one another where we don't have any of their age vaccinated, but they will end up in the hospitals at extremely low numbers. So they'll claim cases went up ever so slightly, but deaths/hospitalizations will remain really low.

By the end of May, with us are averaging 268k shots a day. On the conservative, lets say that reduced to 225,000 through the end of May, just assuming demand begins to do down a bit over the next 56 days.

In theory, that's 12,600,000 more doses. For sake of easy math, lets just divide by 2, 6.3 million 1st doses and 6.3 million 2nd doses. That would put us at 14.4 million, or 67% of adults and 50% of the population total with a single dose. All 14.4mm of this population is still roughly 80% less likely to spread it even if they don't have their 2nd dose, and 95-99% less likely to get a severe disease. And while it's 67% of all adults, it's closer to 80-85% of the high risk ages.

Then you will have 10.9 million of those 14.4 million who will have their 2nd doses. Or 51% of adults, and 37% of the population total. This population is 95% less likely to spread it, and virtually 99-100% less likely to get a severe disease

When you add in natural immunity, which would likely be about 25-30% of the remaining unvaccinated population(and maybe higher as people who are less likely to get in line to get the vaccine sometimes coincide with those that know they already had it), and factor in that much of that unvaccinated population is 0-18 years old, which again get less severe disease, are less likely to spread it, etc., I'm just not sure where the virus goes at that point. Our seasonal spike will be nothing in June.

you're assumption here is as good as your beer choice