by Vivian Jones
Nashville’s restaurants are limited to 50% capacity and subject to a 10 p.m. curfew on food and beverage service despite no record of COVID-19 case clusters being connected to a restaurant since June.
The new restrictions by Nashville’s Metro Public Health Department, which were announced last week by Mayor John Cooper, went into effect Monday.
According to a new case clusters report released by the Metro Public Health Department, the department has not traced any cluster of more than 10 cases to any restaurant since June 26. A total of four clusters of more than 10 cases have been traced by the department since March. Clusters of below 10 cases are not reported by the department.
Only one cluster has been tied to a bar since June. The department traced 15 cases to a cluster at Miss Kelli’s on Oct. 1. A total of eight case clusters have been connected to bars by the department since March.
Despite few cases being tied to bars and restaurants, both continue to face restrictions on how they are allowed to operate in the city.
These restrictions add to Cooper’s limitation on gatherings of more than eight people in public or private, which went into effect last week.
One state legislator has introduced a bill that would limit the lawmaking powers of Tennessee’s six metro health departments, giving the power to issue public health rules to the county mayors instead of unelected health department bureaucrats.
The Nashville Public Health Department did not respond to a request for comment.
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Vivian Jones reports on Tennessee and South Carolina for The Center Square. Her writing has appeared in the Detroit News, The Hill, and publications of The Heartland Institute.
In an ideal world, we would need no Covid restrictions. In fact, in an ideal world, we would have no Covid, period! But the fact is that we are in a serious EPIDEMIC that requires us to social distance, to wear masks, to wash several times a day, and to do our part not to further overburden our already overburdened hospitals who now do not have enough beds for new admittances. I don’t like these restrictions any more than you all do, believe me. I desperately want to resume traveling overseas and domestically, but I know that is not feasible right now unless I want to quarantine for several days, which I cannot afford to do as I don’t want to jeopardize my job or come down with the disease where I could unwittingly contaminate others. If you conservatives really RESPECT the grocery assistants, truck drivers, city transit drivers, sanitation workers, health care staff, etc., you will do all that you can to not endanger them by careless and thoughtless social gatherings. If we treat all essential workers as EXPENDABLE workers instead, several scenarios could emerge: they all get too sick to work; they all die WITHOUT replacements; or, they rise up against their greedy owners who bet with each other whose employees will die first; and so forth. But, maybe you conservatives have a secret death wish to get these workers to rise up against those who abuse them on the job and who prevent them from having enough benefits and wages to enable them to support their families. Some family values you support!
You may step down from your pedestal now.
Do NOT give the power to the county mayors!!!! That only makes things worse when those tinhorn bureaucrats are given more authority. Refer to Anthony Holt of Sumner County for a prime example.
That is what is great about COVID avoidance. You can literally put any restrictions you want in place due to an abundance of caution to prevent positive “cases.” At the private healthcare company I work for if I claim cost savings due to avoidance I have to jump through hoops with a data analyst and have a corporate finance team sign off on everything before I get credit. Wouldn’t it be great if government was required to operate in the same manner?
Cooper is a jackass! To hell with Cooper and those idiot morons ass kissers of his in the Health department!