Josh Marshall

But let’s take the example of a fancy restaurant or really any in-person restaurant, whether it’s a crazy-priced fancy place or just your local sports bar with table service where you’re ordering wings and onion rings and sodas with free refills. To me at least a lot of the pleasure of that experience is the carefree-ness, the focus on the pleasure of good food and time with the people you’re with. If we’re all wearing masks and sanitizing the silverware and we’re six feet away from the next table and the waiter is decked out in some level of PPE, a lot of the point of the exercise is lost. At a basic level I’m constantly reminded that I need to take steps to avoid getting a potentially life-threatening disease; and that’s a pretty big buzzkill.

A lot of what I think we’re getting in those activities is precisely the ability not to worry about things. A certain level of focus on hand hygiene and physical distance and masking just defeats the purpose. To take the example in the article photo above, if going to a bar means having an improvised plastic sheet built on PVC piping separating me from the person to my right and my left, is that really going to a bar that has any of the fun and sociality most of us associate with it? If that’s working for you maybe you have a drinking problem.

-Josh Marshall, Navigating our New Hazmat Normal