Althouse: "Restaurants are fragile; they compete with each other, but the collective of local restaurants is antifragile for that very reason."

August 16, 2020

"Restaurants are fragile; they compete with each other, but the collective of local restaurants is antifragile for that very reason."

"Had restaurants been individually robust, hence immortal, the overall business would be either stagnant or weak, and would deliver nothing better than cafeteria food — and I mean Soviet-style cafeteria food. Further, it would be marred with systemic shortages, with, once in a while, a complete crisis and government bailout. All that quality, stability, and reliability are owed to the fragility of the restaurant itself."

A quote from the 2012 book "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder," that I quoted before, in a comment on a 2013 post of mine called "Notes on success from 2 Scotts — Adams and Fitzgerald — and one Bob."

The quote is newly interesting in this time of the coronavirus! Individual restaurants are dying like mad — "One in three New York restaurants won’t open after the pandemic." Does that "Antifragile" quote inject optimism into this horrible experience? The "collective of local restaurants" will do well because the individual places go under? Does that still apply when a third of the restaurants go under within one year... and the ones that survive are disabled from picking up the slack? The customers who would pack the remaining restaurants are building up the desire to come back whenever it's possible to eat out again.

Why was I reading that old post? I saw that Scott Adams tweeted a link to a post of mine yesterday, and it made me wonder how many times I'd blogged about him. Answer: 204. Most of that is from January 2016 and later, but there are 2 earlier posts, one from 2011 (about boredom) and the one from 2013 with the "Notes on success." Fitzgerald is F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Bob is, of course, Bob Dylan.

61 comments:

tim maguire said...: Most restaurants come and go after a few years. A third or a half of current restaurants going under is a disaster for the restauranteurs and the public choice will suffer for a year or two, but those spaces will quickly be filled by new restaurants and the cycle will continue. We may even see some new choice open up amid the opportunity created by this disaster.; 8/16/20, 7:22 AM
PB said...: That quote was nonsense. When government dictates all you get soviet cafeteria food. When the free market is allowed to operate, you get variety, quality and innovation. Fragility had nothing to do with it.; 8/16/20, 7:22 AM
mezzrow said...: Restaurants are like pop bands. I have friends both in the music business and the restaurant industry, and they are all in the same boat. Those who don't bail out and do something else like I did way back when will reform into something new or reinhabit what existed before if that can be made viable. Life will go on and they will succeed or fail.

How can we apply these lessons to the educational establishment? The institutional overhead is so much greater there, and the relationship between consumer and provider is supposed to be different, but they are basically on recess due to the same forces. What happens if or when their compensation is reconfigured to reflect the actual instruction that is taking place?

What element does this play in the fears we see playing out today? I have good relationships with loads of public school teachers - both family and lifetime friends. There is a divide between those who can't wait to get back in a classroom and those who behave as though they are slated to be cannon fodder at the Somme. I see front page pieces in the local paper with photos of public school teachers who are writing their wills and obituaries before the school year begins, for example.

Some of these folks are impossible to parody. Fiction cannot match their lived experience.; 8/16/20, 7:34 AM
Dave Begley said...: Omaha is a very big restaurant town. We might lead the nation in restaurants per capita. Some have closed but it looks like most will survive.

I went to The Drover last week with one of my best friends. Good crowd for a Tuesday night. Great whiskey steaks!; 8/16/20, 7:49 AM
tcrosse said...: The late Anthony Bourdain gives a fine explanation of the NYC restaurant business in 'Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly' (2000).; 8/16/20, 7:55 AM
Tommy Duncan said...: "Does that "Antifragile" quote inject optimism into this horrible experience?"

The human species as a whole is "antifragile". Individuals are quite fragile in the face of COVID-19, but the species will eventually thrive. So yes, there should be optimism at the species level.; 8/16/20, 8:13 AM
Temujin said...: As someone who spent half of his life in the restaurant business, ran a number of operations, owned his own, and opened over 40 others, I can tell you that it is not a business for the faint of heart- even in the best of times. Success is rare and fleeting. When you consider those restaurants that last 10 or more years, its a tiny, tiny percentage of the overall businesses in the industry. The average is 3 years. Not a good field for those without full commitment.

I used to chuckle at the number of dentists, lawyers, real estate tycoons, and others who were very successful in their chosen fields, thinking how fun and simple owning a restaurant would be. You could almost predict how many months they would go before being brought to their knees from the realities of food costs, labor costs, competition, theft (you have as many 'partners' as you have employees- funny how that works), the thin margins of profit, and mostly the unexpected that arrives at your door daily.

You have to be able to think and respond on your feet- instantly (Obama would not have been a successful restauranteur). You have to be a hostage negotiator, a diplomat, a motivational speaker, a serious numbers person, a creative soul, understand food science enough to at the very least, know how to not poison dozens of people. You have to understand meats, seafood, wines, spirits, etc., stay in front of dining trends (ever see so many gluten-free options?), go in early, leave late- every freaking day. And you do all of this for a tiny margin of profit- if you're lucky and good.

This is a business that has no margin for error. Yet, I did it- and they do it still, for the love of it. It can be fun, rewarding, inspirational, creative, and...it just gets into your blood until it bleeds you both financially and physically. Then, you wake up one day and say- I wonder what it would be like to be at home on Thanksgiving. Or to have a Saturday night with my wife instead of Mrs. Smithers and her party of 6?

The pandemic is reeking havoc on thousands of businesses- large and small, restauraurants and many other segments. We don't even know the full damage yet and we will not until the dust settles some months from now. But you will see empty streets in every city where a restaurant, with its owners dreams and money, used to be, but is now closed with sign on the door that simply says, "Thank you".; 8/16/20, 8:19 AM
tim in vermont said...: Nobody can take their skills away in bankruptcy court. They will open new restaurants once this is over. COVID is not going to change that unless somehow it never goes away and we never come up with a modus vivndi. What might kill big city restaurants is the rot in the foundations of the cities, which otherwise would weather the storm generally unscathed. It almost sounds like the Bornze Age Collapse, where a lot of bad things happened to Bronze Age capitals, including roving bands of looters, but what really destroyed them probably was the advent of cheap iron weapons which overwhelmed their advantages in monopoly on expensive armor and weapons. Read the description of Goliath’s armor in the Bible, and watch how he is cut down by David. It’s probably a metaphorical account of an event that likely happened. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you gigabit ethernet even in East Bumfuck, Tennessee.; 8/16/20, 8:23 AM
Oso Negro said...: Yes, your Scott Adams fangirl phase started in 2016. At that point, Bob Dylan began to suffer. Maybe Scott Adams is a regular reader? Who’s to say?; 8/16/20, 8:27 AM
rhhardin said...: I haven't eaten in a restaurant in two decades. I'd suggest microwave rental booths for travelers, and supermarkets.; 8/16/20, 8:29 AM
Fernandinande said...: Using the words "fragile" and "local" seems pointless, but I guess they're both Newspeak dog sirens nowadays.

...the collective of local restaurants is antifragile because people like to use restaurants.; 8/16/20, 8:42 AM
Birkel said...: Taleb had no idea government would set out to kill restaurants.
But government has done just that.
Nothing survives government attack for long.

The cartridge box may be the only box left.; 8/16/20, 8:49 AM
Joe Smith said...: @Althouse...

I don't have a Twitter account but I started to read Adams' page online because of your mentions.

Of course I knew his as the Dilbert guy, and his life in tech was similar to mine...idiot projects done for idiot boxes. He nails the life of a tech 'cog-in-the-wheel' employee.

But on social stuff and current events he is very interesting. He's a smart guy who doesn't come off as pompous.

He also lives near me somewhere (I'm sure he has multiple homes) but I've never seen him around...; 8/16/20, 8:57 AM
Sebastian said...: "come back whenever it's possible to eat out again."

Believe it or not, but in many places around the U.S., particularly those not oppressed by Dem governors, it already is possible.

The local Chick-fil-A franchise has been doing very brisk business throughout.; 8/16/20, 8:57 AM
bagoh20 said...: Sounds like bullshit to me too. In a fragile situation things move to survival mode which is minimal expense and experimentation. The sudden loss of so many restaurants will allow those remaining to get away with subpar effort and still get plenty of business, not to mention that they have to operate at 50% capacity which kind of guarantees a full house no matter what they do. It's when things are open and competitive that businesses try harder to find new ways to move customers to their restaurant and keep them. This writer is doing the same thing. He is trying to come up with a new angle, because there is so much money available in the publishing business and so many to compete against, so he's trying the old counter-intuitive, counter-factual thing that people fall for all the time. My favorite one is people believing that you can boil water faster if you start with cold water rather than hot. People say "yea that sounds like a thing".; 8/16/20, 9:36 AM
Narayanan said...: "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder,"
-------------================
the perspective that sees disorder and the perspective that sees order are not the same!

that "the collective of local restaurants is antifragile" is definitely good news for the bureaucrat who is thinking of tax base Or "You will do something Mr. Rearden"

Try this on for size - "the collective of home owners is antifragile" or any other variation involving individual private choice and initiative.

- I hope all Reardens is eyes wide open on Nov 3; 8/16/20, 9:40 AM
bagoh20 said...: What makes the restaurant business fragile is that it simultaneously is a very difficult business model, and everyone thinks they can do it. Most of us have cooked a dinner for someone, but of course that's not the same thing. It's one of the few businesses that most of us have actually done, but on a very small scale.; 8/16/20, 9:42 AM
Joe Smith said...: "Of course I knew his as the Dilbert guy, and his life in tech was similar to mine...idiot projects done for idiot boxes. He nails the life of a tech 'cog-in-the-wheel' employee."

...him...bosses...

Jeez...it's early and I hadn't had any coffee...; 8/16/20, 9:50 AM
Browndog said...: I think maybe many are missing the larger point-

All that remains standing are the corporate conglomerates. It reminds me of the state of retail portrayed in Idiocracy.; 8/16/20, 10:00 AM
Martin said...: I think Taleb would say that the reataurant system was antifragile because the customers were making judgments as to whether each restaurant served their needs, which when scaledthat better serve the market, to the uiltimate benefit of restaurants as an industry. Rather an evolutionary perspective.

The government take a sledgehamme to the entire industry indiscriminately closing them all and then allowing limited re-opening based on things like availability of outside seating, rather than letting individual restaurants and their patrons decide how to act during an epidemic, is outside the domain he was talking about.

From the aforementioned evolutionary perspective, the govt acted like the meteor at the end of the Cretaceous.; 8/16/20, 10:06 AM
rhhardin said...: Coin-operated microwaves in supermarkets would work.; 8/16/20, 10:12 AM
Narayanan said...: mezzrow said...
Restaurants are like pop bands. I have friends both in the music business and the restaurant industry, and they are all in the same boat. Those who don't bail out and do something else like I did way back when will reform into something new or reinhabit what existed before if that can be made viable. Life will go on and they will succeed or fail.

How can we apply these lessons to the educational establishment?
------------===============
there are no lessons that will be learned - unless it is that until and unless each parent is responsible for the education bill and value received; 8/16/20, 10:22 AM
Nichevo said...: tim in vermont said...
Nobody can take their skills away in bankruptcy court. They will open new restaurants once this is over.

Ayn Rand said...

"I don't see why there's so much fuss about that Equalization of Opportunity Bill," said Betty Pope aggressively, in the tone of an expert on economics. "I don't see why businessmen object to it. It's to their own advantage. If everybody else is poor, they won't have any market for their goods. But if they stop being selfish and share the goods they've hoarded-they'll have a chance to work hard and produce some more."; 8/16/20, 10:43 AM
Nichevo said...: rhhardin said...
Coin-operated microwaves in supermarkets would work.

8/16/20, 10:12 AM

I hardly need to restate this, but you are not a human being and so you don't care what food tastes like. Much less understand concepts like atmosphere or service. But by all means carry on.

I don't often say this, but a world run under your principles would not be worth living in.; 8/16/20, 10:47 AM
tim in vermont said...: There is a huge difference between a restaurant in a lightly populated area and a restaurant in a 27,000 people per square mile city like NYC was a few months back before this hit. Sure Chick-fil-A will do fine. There are restaurants thriving right now in Vermont too; it’s not the same thing, but it probably is the future.

Pandemics suck, government tinkering is around the edges. Have you talked to a New Yorker who has lived through these past few months? Telling restaurants there that they are free to open as they please is not going to bring people back. It’s delusional to think it will. They are all moving out. Omaha is a different matter, I suppose.; 8/16/20, 10:49 AM
tim in vermont said...: "From the aforementioned evolutionary perspective, the govt acted like the meteor at the end of the Cretaceous.”

Sure, whatever. The virus that killed so many New Yorkers that they were having difficulties dealing with the sheer volume of the dead had nothing to do with it.; 8/16/20, 10:51 AM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: The local Chick-fil-A franchise has been doing very brisk business throughout.

8/16/20, 8:57 AM

The fast-food outlets and pizza places have done just fine during the lockdowns because much of their business was already take-out and delivery.

It's finer dining, especially quirky, intimate little restaurants, that has suffered. People are fine bringing home a chicken sandwich and fries in a bag. Bringing home a medium-rare steak or grilled salmon or cassoulet and creme brulee packed in cardboard or plastic containers to plop on your plate at home is different.; 8/16/20, 11:10 AM
Paco Wové said...: "a world run under your principles would not be worth living in."

I always mentally append a mechanical "beep boop" sound to the end of every rhhardin comment.; 8/16/20, 11:15 AM
John henry said...: Even before the pandemic, 60-80% of all new products failed.

Several have mentioned that a similar percent of restaurants fail in 3 years.

Venture capitalists budget to lose money on 15 of 20 projects, break even on 2-3 and make all their money the remaining 2-3.

Donald Trump was pretty unusual. Started something like 100 businesses. Went bankrupt on 4 and no creditor lost a nickel. How many others have records like that?

John Henry; 8/16/20, 11:30 AM
John henry said...: I just spent 2 weeks in Charlotte NC. It's pretty well open, no shortage of restaurants to choose from.

I could have billed my client $30-50 daily for meals.

I wound up cooking and eating all breakfasts and about half my suppers in the room. Homewood Suites have a decent if small kitchen.

It just seemed like a lot less trouble than going out.

John Henry; 8/16/20, 11:34 AM
Birkel said...: The governor who ordered Winnie-Xi-Flu-positive elderly people back to nursing homes killed loads of people.

The advice around these parts was to segregate the vulnerable.
Cuomo did the opposite to calamitous results.

I want to see the plan that absolutely tames the physical world to human advantage.
Or do viruses and bacteria not care about your politics?
Are they controllable?

Evidence?; 8/16/20, 11:36 AM
Birkel said...: Was it $55 million spent on a hospital that treated 82 people while grandma and grandpa were sent back to the nursing homes?

Tragic?; 8/16/20, 11:38 AM
mikee said...: When eating out is safe again, people will eat out, and where there is a strong market for eating in restaurants, some entrepreneurs will build restaurants. What galls me is that the state will probably once again make it illegal to get an ice cold takeout Margarita along with my enchilada plate. Because the drive home will be hot again next summer, just like this summer.; 8/16/20, 11:38 AM
Yancey Ward said...: We should shut the economy down in a panic every five years if we want to have economic success.

The broken window fallacy arises again, but in a unique way in the citing anti-fragility.

In short, the restaurants aren't failing because their business models were bad, or they were unprofitable- they are failing because we allowed the media and the Democrats to panic the country into seriously self-destructive behaviors. What is hilarious to me (yes, I do find it funny), is that the left is finding the downside in the restaurant business about the only thing they can write about.

We will be dealing with this colossal over-reaction for at least the next decade. And if Trump wins in November, the Democrats and the media will repeat this every flu season from here on because, basically, they have to now.; 8/16/20, 11:48 AM
rcocean said...: I"m on a big F.Scott Fitzgerald kick. As a good writer as Hemingway, but lacked Hemingway's strength and judgement. Papa was selfish S.O.B. who could abuse alcohol, power his way through several wives and mistresses, and incur numerous injuries without any lasting damage. Fitzgerald, OTOH, couldn't let go of Zelda, and was debilitated by alcohol and his Lung problem. After 1925, he had waste his time working on short stories and screen plays to pay the bills and only finished one novel after the Great Gatsby.; 8/16/20, 12:07 PM
tim in vermont said...: "we allowed the media and the Democrats to panic the country into seriously self-destructive behaviors. “

I guess it would have been better to censor the fact that so many people were dying, not exclusively in nursing homes.; 8/16/20, 12:12 PM
Jupiter said...: "The virus that killed so many New Yorkers that they were having difficulties dealing with the sheer volume of the dead had nothing to do with it."

As I understood the matter, there were no logistical difficulties. Those who contracted Covid were shipped to nursing homes, where they passed it on to the highly vulnerable population. The resulting multitudes of extremely sick people were shipped to hospitals, where they were sedated and fastened to expensive and useless ventilators to die. All paid for by medicare. Meanwhile, the "homeless" are accommodated in luxury hotels, paid for by FEMA. Cuomo and DeBlasio are very good at that sort of thing.; 8/16/20, 1:01 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Adams used to co-own a restaurant. I don't know if it went under or if he just got out of it.

Anyway he's on record as saying that this is a cariacture of his co-owner.; 8/16/20, 1:02 PM
rehajm said...: In addition to the correct info from posters above, a little secret: foodie restaurants in big cities, the kind with 'celebrity' chefs and the chefs who worked under them in the kitchen- many are set up by wealthy patrons. VC and PE guys who like food and wine and are friends with the chefs, they write checks to set these things up, never really expecting ROI except a table and a good meal once in a while...; 8/16/20, 1:38 PM
rehajm said...: Three more 'secrets':

When these foodie chefs are successful they tend to be wildly successful economically. Not just from the restaurant itself but the ancillary stuff. Enough to fund some of the losers...

Many big city restaurants run on free or below market rents. In a class A building a good restaurant sells square footage upstairs.

It's all about the booze...; 8/16/20, 1:46 PM
mikee said...: Yancey: The Dems marxist/progressive wing was scared enough of a 2nd Trump term to essentially self-destruct their strongest stronholds, urban centers, in another futile effort to hurt him, and to use the pandemic to hurt the country economically. This despite their party being the sole folk identified with the Antifa/BLM rioting, and the overzealous lockdowns of business. They are terrified of Trump winning in November, and rightly so. His second term will be EPIC.

And the Democratic Party will not be decimated by his win, it will be devastated, and perhaps destroyed.; 8/16/20, 1:49 PM
Jim at said...: I was supporting a local restaurant by ordering curbside pick-up during the lockdown.

I stopped when they went all-in on BLM. Obviously, they don't want my business.; 8/16/20, 2:02 PM
mikee said...: Yancey: The Dems marxist/progressive wing was scared enough of a 2nd Trump term to essentially self-destruct their strongest stronholds, urban centers, in another futile effort to hurt him, and to use the pandemic to hurt the country economically. This despite their party being the sole folk identified with the Antifa/BLM rioting, and the overzealous lockdowns of business. They are terrified of Trump winning in November, and rightly so. His second term will be EPIC.

And the Democratic Party will not be decimated by his win, it will be devastated, and perhaps destroyed.; 8/16/20, 2:08 PM
Yancey Ward said...: "I guess it would have been better to censor the fact that so many people were dying, not exclusively in nursing homes."

This is entering K(ar)en B territory, Tim. We shouldn't have shut everything down, that isn't censorship, Tim. People were always free to take their measures of self-protection without making it one size fit all. However, we shut everything down, and guess what- New York and New Jersey still managed to kill 60,000 people. If we had never shut down, we would be past this right now, and without a damned fucking difference in the fatalities.; 8/16/20, 2:17 PM
Yancey Ward said...: And, Tim, what about this coming flu season? Do we shut everything down every Winter and Spring from now on? Because if the answer is no, I want to hear your justification for not doing so if doing so could save even just 20,000 people from dying this coming year.; 8/16/20, 2:19 PM
Birkel said...: https://www.aier.org/article/how-a-free-society-deals-with-pandemics-according-to-legendary-epidemiologist-and-smallpox-eradicator-donald-henderson/

Imagine that.; 8/16/20, 4:25 PM
Birkel said...: My guess is that "tim in vermont" will not dead that link.

He prefers a world in which government solves problems.
And the physical world can be controlled by humans, completely.

#Science-ish; 8/16/20, 4:29 PM
Caligula said...: Most restaurants (other than corporate owned-and-operated ones) are small businesses, which are almost invariably under-capitalized, and I'd expect few will weather the virus-storm. And with the return of cold weather in many locales, many that have survived with outdoor dining will find even that opportunity vanishing.

Of course, restaurants have always been high-risk: the public is fickle, and what's trendy can and often does become un-trendy overnight. But, the ferment whereby failed restaurants were quckly replaced with new ones is just not happening in this time of the virus.

The real question remains whether behaviors would revert to pre-virus, were the virus to vanish tomorrow.

How much do people still value the experience of dining at the restaurant, as compared with now-ubiquitous take-out? And if take-out is the future, why wouldn't supermarkets (esp. the more upscale ones) capture much of this business, at least on the lower-end?; 8/16/20, 4:58 PM
bagoh20 said...: "I guess it would have been better to censor the fact that so many people were dying, not exclusively in nursing homes."

What we did was censor (lie about) how many people were dying directly due to Covid, which we still have no idea about. We just know that lots of people die as usual, and lots of people catch Covid.

The problem is with the big unscientific lie that because they are part of both groups: the dead and the Covid+ that correlation is causation. That's just dumb, and we ruined our economy and chose the wrong responses because of that stupid, unscientific, methodology that you bought hook, line, and sinker without any skepticism, despite the huge financial and political motivations of those in the health care industry, those reporting on it, and those gaining power from a crisis.; 8/16/20, 5:10 PM
Paco Wové said...: "another futile effort to hurt him"

That remains to be seen. However, no argument that the Democrats are attempting to destroy the country in order to save it.; 8/16/20, 5:13 PM
tim in vermont said...: What I responded to: ""we allowed the media and the Democrats to panic the country”

Then you change it to this:

"We shouldn't have shut everything down, that isn't censorship”.

My question is how then do you prevent the media from reporting all of those deaths in NYC which far outstripped that of any flu epidemic since the Spanish flu without censorship?

Put somebody else’s name on your straw men, please. I can see that this is highly emotional territory for you, which is not surprising given the history of pandemics.

Here is kind of an interesting article on the Asian flu and how it was treated, that acknowledges a lot of the cultural differences between then and now, and the ‘Woodstock flu” you guys like to talk about only killed 100,000 Americans total in two runs at the country.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/why-life-went-on-as-normal-during-the-killer-pandemic-of-1969/

BTW, death counts from flus are never precise, they are the best approximations that can be come up with to allow officials to manage a crisis. If you ever had a job where you were required to make decisions when it was not possible to have perfect data, you would understand this. You have to come up with numbers that correlate to whatever the real number is closely enough to allow you to make good decisions. Only children and morons believe that in a country of 330 million people, exact numbers are possible.; 8/16/20, 6:18 PM
Johnathan Birks said...: How many songs did Dylan write about restaurants? The only one that comes to mind is "Watching the River Flow."; 8/16/20, 6:42 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Tim,

That is not what the media did- they advocated relentlessly, and still do today, for shutting everything down until the virus disappears (which it will never do). They and their Democrat masters stampeded us into economic disaster. The Republicans were nothing but inanimate bystanders watching it all go by. This would never have happened if Hillary Clinton had been the president- in that circumstance the media would have spent every waking moment advocating for not over-reacting and for keeping most of the economy open the entire time. Rather than taking down videos supporting, for example, the opening of schools or the use of hydroxychloroquine, Google would have spent all their time taking down videos advocating panic and shutdowns.

Even today, we are struggling just to reopen the damned schools, and apparently will be wearing masks indoors for the next 10 years.; 8/16/20, 7:53 PM
Yancey Ward said...: "Only children and morons believe that in a country of 330 million people, exact numbers are possible."

This was always an argument for not doing what we did. Every single new flu comes with exactly the same kind of uncertainty as did COVID- we lived through one almost as bad just a fucking decade ago without overreacting to it. With the new paradigm for fighting respiratory infections, we logically should now shut down every Winter to prevent 20-100K people from dying from the flu and pneumonia. So why shouldn't we do so? You didn't answer my question- what would be the critical difference?; 8/16/20, 8:00 PM
Birkel said...: tim in vermont dutifully ignites a link to a pre-Winnie-Xi-Flu analysis of pandemics by an expert.

Noted.; 8/16/20, 8:38 PM
Birkel said...: tim in vermont dutifully ignores a link to a pre-Winnie-Xi-Flu analysis of pandemics by an expert.

Noted.; 8/16/20, 8:38 PM
I'm Not Sure said...: "How much do people still value the experience of dining at the restaurant, as compared with now-ubiquitous take-out?"

Take-out: Order steak and baked potato, get it delivered 20/30 minutes after it has come off the grill/out of the oven. Unpack it, put on plates to serve and then wash plates afterwards. Cost: $25+ per serving.

Prepare at home: Steak and baked potato go on bbq. Put on plates to serve right off the grill, and then wash plates afterwards. Cost: Five bucks per serving.

Not a tough choice, if you ask me. Sorry about your restaurant going out of business though.; 8/16/20, 10:18 PM
tim in vermont said...: “That is not what the media did- they advocated relentlessly, and still do today, for shutting everything down until the virus disappears (which it will never do).”

Whatever, I don’t watch them. It’s pretty clear that everybody reporting on this pandemic has a political agenda which comes in above concern for public health. I agree that this virus is probably never going away, that it was probably cooked up in a CRISPR machine in Wuhan, but I prefer not to catch it, thank you very much for asking. I only have ever advocated for people to wear masks in places where vulnerable people who don’t have the means to avoid it are forced to go, like the supermarket. In Vermont you are free to eat in a restaurant inside if you wish. I think movie theaters are closed and concert venues, I don’t know.

You seem to have a certain knowledge that no vaccine is coming or effective treatment even, so people should just get the dying over with. I think it’s possible that a vaccine will be developed. Death awaits us all and always has and humans always put it off as long as they can.; 8/17/20, 5:41 AM
tim in vermont said...: "we lived through one almost as bad just a fucking decade ago “

You are delusional.; 8/17/20, 5:42 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Tim,

There were more excess deaths in the Winters of 2017 and 2018 combined than there have been in 2020, and all due to the influenza outbreaks that spanned those two years. This year has been about twice the normal flu deaths in a bad flu season. I realize nothing I say will convince you, but the fact is that COVID-19 has been only a little worse than the bad flu outbreaks of the past, and not even close to the Spanish flu.

And, I will just point out something that hasn't been mentioned in these threads before- excess deaths were really low (as in statistically negative) since the Winter of 2018 up until the COVID outbreak. It is quite likely, given the age profile of the people who died, that COVID's death tally is partially the catch up to March 2018-January 2020's lagging mortality rate (it is also a factor of the higher rates in 2017-2018). It is quite likely that we will again be negative in excess deaths by next year given the death toll in the higher age brackets this year.

But fine with me if you continue to want to believe this was a pandemic worthy of shutting everything down by fiat.; 8/17/20, 11:16 AM
hstad said...: "One in three New York restaurants won’t open after the pandemic." Interesting comment, but absolutism doesn't work especially in the restaurant industry. The assumption in the comment is that NYC goes back to pre-pandemic normalcy. That's a big question mark? Will corporations need all that office space? The forced experiment of working from home, via the wonders of technology, has historically not had such a incredible laboratory event (pandemic) to show the results. Since technology was pushing this movement away from employee aggregation prior to the pandemic, it looks like it is now a real viable option. The trade off obviously, are the costs of working at home vs. in a central location worth it today vs. tomorrow. Well, we'll find out the results soon. I think a large percentage of the companies can't be deniers anymore. Especially in riot torn cities where aggregation of huge work forces is a negative - e.g., 50,000 Amazon employees work in downtown Seattle, WA. Unbelievable idiocy from a risk point of view? Not very smart on Amazon's or Bezos part. If a major earthquake where to hit Seattle - Amazon would be in trouble.; 8/17/20, 3:05 PM