Why you might not want to rush to that newly reopened restaurant, salon or gym yet
Come Saturday, you can legally go get a haircut in Idaho for the first time in more than eight weeks. You can dine inside a restaurant. You can work out in a gym.
“Go get your hair cut Saturday at 12:01,” Gov. Brad Little said Thursday as he ended a news conference announcing that “close contact” businesses could reopen at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, the beginning of Stage 2 of his four-stage plan to reopen Idaho.
But you might be better off if you don’t. Some Boise-area business owners, worried about infections of workers and customers inside their buildings, won’t open Saturday despite Little’s decision.
Research shows that the coronavirus can spread readily among people in a room from just one infected person, who may not even have symptoms.
Mere breathing expels viral particles from an infected person into the air. An unblocked sneeze can hurl as many as 200 million viral particles at up to 200 mph in about 30,000 tiny droplets, most of which can easily travel across a room, according to research cited in a blog posted last week by Erin Bromage, an associate professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts — Dartmouth.
“As we are allowed to move around our communities more freely and be in contact with more people in more places more regularly, the risks to ourselves and our family are significant,” Bromage wrote.
Vista PAL Boxing Club, 5342 W. Franklin Road in Boise, is the type of business that would be allowed to welcome customers for the first time in nearly two months this weekend. Little’s state stay-at-home order closed it on March 25. His Stay Healthy order, which set the four stages for reopening for the state, kept it closed through Stage 1, which ends Friday.
But Zachary Lopez, head coach and co-owner, say the club’s doors will stay shut.
That’s in part because USA Boxing, which sanctions the gym and provides its insurance and registration, has set difficult and potentially expensive reopening requirements. Each athlete would need to provide his or her own equipment and stay in his or her own 15-foot square. At Vista, that would mean only four athletes could come back at a time.
But it’s also because the gym’s owners worry about the health of their students, who are mostly school-age children.
“It’s a tough choice,” Lopez said. “It’s sitting there, and it’s costing us money. But I can’t put that over the risk of having a big breakout with a bunch of kids. If five or 10 or 15 of our kids got sick from being around each other, I don’t know that I could deal with that. I’d rather err on the side of caution.”
Coronavirus ‘waits for you to make a mistake’
The virus spreads through respiratory droplets, many of which fall to the ground, but some may stay airborne.
Research in China cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied an outbreak at a restaurant where the virus circulated through the air conditioning system. One infected person with no symptoms sat a table with nine friends for about 90 minutes. Four people at the table later got sick. So did three of the four people at the next table downwind from the carrier, and two of seven people at an upwind table.
At a call center in South Korea, an infected worker may have led to nearly 100 other workers getting infected, although it’s possible the infection spread through shared door handles and elevator buttons as well.
Dr. Paul Pottinger, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said that when businesses reopen, the safest way to prevent the spread of the virus is to do what everyone has been told for the past couple of months: wear face coverings, stay 6 feet away from others and follow proper hand hygiene. Sick people should stay home, he said, and those who are healthy should only go out if they have to.
In close-contact businesses, such as salons, these and other precautions can help healthy people interacting with other healthy people stay safe. Even when closely following all guidelines, however, it is still possible for the virus to spread.
“The virus doesn’t care if you’re bored, if your business is going down the tubes, if you’re tired of homeschooling your kids,” he told the Statesman in a phone interview Wednesday. “It waits for you to make a mistake.”
‘It’s public safety and the health of our employees’
A mistake can mean employees or customers get sick. That’s in part why some restaurant owners, like Dave Krick, owner of Bittercreek Alehouse, Diablo & Sons and Red Feather Lounge in Boise, will wait and see..
“The truth is, I’m not ready to go out and eat in a restaurant,” Krick told the Statesman last week. “And so will our guests be ready to come and eat in a restaurant, when I myself am not ready to go out and eat in a restaurant?”
Opening Boise dining establishments this soon, Krick said, “feels rushed.”
Rediscovered Books, 180 N 8th St. in Boise, won’t let customers in the store for some time.
In a store like Rediscovered, it can be hard to maintain distance from others. People come in and browse. They touch stuff. They move things around. To cut down on that, the store shifted to a model where people can order books and pick them up from a table outside the store. That keeps customers and employees apart.
“Our biggest concern is public safety,” Rebecca Gottberg, events coordinator, said in a phone interview. “It’s public safety and the health of our employees. We’re a small business. If one of us tests positive, we shut the doors and we’re done, because we all need to quarantine.”
The store may soon start accepting appointments to allow customers to browse, but until then Gottberg said the physical store will remain off-limits.
“We want to make the safest environment we can for the world and for the people who move through our store,” she said.
‘Be responsible and stay safe’
People must remain cautious as stores reopen, Pottinger said. While older people seem to be at higher risk for more serious complications from COVID-19, younger people can get seriously ill as well, or pass the virus to others.
If people behave irresponsibly as businesses reopen, cases could spike again. If that happens, the state could slow its reopening or even move backward in its stages.
“You don’t want everything we’ve been through to have been for nothing,” Pottinger said. “Be responsible and stay safe.”
Business Editor David Staats contributed.
This story was originally published May 14, 2020 at 1:38 PM.
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