Am I the only one who sees no difference between a restaurant and a sealed tent on the sidewalk?

[lindysalsagal]

This is only about covid transport.

I keep seeing sealed, heated tents that are not actually illegal, but they're every bit as dangerous as being inside.

The science shows the droplets can be carried upwards of 20+ feet when air systems move air channels.

What's the difference if the roof is wood and shingles, or vinyl? The droplets still move between people.

Am I the only one thinking these sealed tents aren't ok?

[samnsara]

1. when it gets much warmer hubby and i are gonna try one of those locally..

...i think sitting out on a deck in a breeze with a drink and some hot wings is what i need. Of course thats months down the way...

[hlthe2b]

2. Of course... I can't even imagine a setting where I would "eat-in" for the indefinite future

[MissB]

4. This.

Takeout for the foreseeable future.

[lindysalsagal]

6. right.

[ShazzieB]

23. Yep.

[Laelth]

3. I wouldn't call them 100% safe.

But they’ve got to be better than a crowded dining room, no?



-Laelth

[SoCalNative]

17. I would guess that the crowded dining room

might have better ventilation in most cases.

[we can do it]

18. No. They are sealed off, outside. No ventilation.

What’s the point of sitting inside a tent as opposed to inside, makes zero sense. Open sided with heaters are good.

[dem4decades]

5. If they're well ventilated, cleaned after each use and scheduled with a down time

Between each use they'd be less dangerous but i'm not getting into one of those, or a restaurant for that matter.

[d_r]

7. hell, where I live

the restaurants are full of people eating inside

[exboyfil]

10. Same here

My family keeps going to restaurants. I have opted out most of the time. It doesn't matter for exposure because, once they get it, I get it. My youngest has gotten the vaccine though (she is a nurse).

[brooklynite]

8. Laurie Garrett hates them...

We won't eat in any outdoor space that doesn't have open air exposure

[RainCaster]

9. In my state, the tents have to be open on two sides

Completely open, not just a vent.
Washington state, BTW

[Pobeka]

13. I see some like that, many completely closed --south sound.

I won't go near a closed tent. It's just like indoors, except colder. COVID exposure is not really going to be different in a tent where you've restricted airflow.

[RAB910]

11. In many ways the sealed tents can be worse

In the restaurant, they might actually have an HVAC system that is circulating and filtering the air

[unblock]

16. filtering the air may be good (to some extent, anyway) but circulating air might actually be bad

depending on the actual flow of air within the restaurant.

there was a study someone posted here a while ago that showed someone got infected from someone else in a restaurant 20+ feet away after only 5 minutes because the airflow carried the virus from an infected person to the person who caught it. i think that was just from ceiling fans, but any way a breeze is generated can be problematic or helpful.

ideally, i guess you would want airflow one way only (fresh air comes in one side of the building and out the other) and to position people so no one is downstream from anyone else. otherwise, still air might be better as the virus would tend to stay closer to the people already infected.

actually, if airflow could somehow be designed to go down -- fresh air from the ceiling and out through holes in the floor -- that would probably be best. haha, maybe that will catch on...

[ProfessorGAC]

24. You're Actually On To Something

I know you were tossing ideas out just musing.
But, larger restaurants with forced air exhaust for the kitchen have to bring in outside air, otherwise the joint would become a vacuum.
So, they could close down the recirculation damper, and draw more outside air!
It would be more energy intensive in hot & cold weather, but they probably could turn the building from a volume every 2 hours to 3 volumes per hour.
That increases dilution by a factor of 6. That has to help!
I think we may have something here, unblock!

[Warpy]

12. There might be a marginal difference in air exchanges per hour

but yeah, I wouldn't go into one with a crowd inside unless the sides were open. Even then, I'd hesitate and double mask,

People are getting desperate out there. You are simply not going to be able to enforce isolation and distancing much longer, no matter how bad an outbreak is. The best hope is that we now have competent people in government who listen to the experts and that vaccines will be on the way soon, meaning vaccine outreach that allows us all a chance at the jab.

However, trying to contain the virus is a dead issue and has been for some time. I'm an extreme introvert and even I am getting a little frayed around the edges at the continued isolation, 11 months of solitary confinement are too many even for me.

[Mattgoetznolovefromm]

14. You are not the only one

It is totally ludicrous

[PSPS]

15. There is little difference, but the die was cast when churches were exempted from the rules.

The only rational difference is that, presumably, only one table is in each room/tent. That may be better except for the waiter who must be considered infected (a proper mask would handle that, mostly.) The bigger problem is those additions some restaurants made as "outdoor patios" for "outdoor dining" that share a common roof with multiple tables. Those are no different than inside the original building at all.

[Orangepeel]

19. the only unmasked people are the people you live with?

I haven't been to a restaurant since March, even outside and have no plans to do so.

But I think the thinking, correct or not, is that inside a restaurant, there are a bunch of unmasked strangers sitting relatively near you. Whereas being in a sealed tent with your family is kind of like eating at home, except a masked server brings you food fresh from the kitchen.

[RobinA]

21. Actually

when you eat in there is generally no one anywhere near you. That's my experience, anyway. I'm in SE Pa, NOT Philadelphia, the rules there are different.

[ProfessorGAC]

25. Like Us

Everything shut down March 13th. Our 40th anniversary was March 15th.
We're closing in on 10&1/2 months late on our anniversary night out!
Waited this long! We can wait longer.

[RobinA]

20. No, I Had This Same

question. A friend and I are supposed to go out to dinner to celebrate a birthday. Personally, I will eat in, but my friend won't. I'm OK with that, we'll just wait a couple months. But she's Ok with the heated tents and porches, which I kinda don't get, but whatever. We haven't gotten to dinner yet, because she's afraid it'll be too cold even with space heaters. It'll be July.

[gldstwmn]

22. I'm with you.

[Vivienne235729]

26. exactly! no difference bc it is about ventilation and it is the same. That would be a hard pass

for me too.

[ProfessorGAC]

27. I've Seen One That Made Sense

Popular fancy restaurant in the city of 160k twenty miles north.
There is no seating inside. But they put a roughly 40 by 30 tent attached to the front.
There's what looked like about a 4 foot wide exhaust fan and because it's winter, I could tell it's blowing out.
I'm guessing some of the make up air comes from the building so that plus some radiant heaters would keep it tolerable. (We've had no subzero days so far this winter.)
The size of that fan made me think there's a LOT of air turnover and zero recirculation.
But, absent that much design & engineering, I don't see that it's much safer than eating inside.

[redwitch]

28. I miss dining out so much!

But until I can safely do it I will eat at home.