Stop Promoting Businesses Refusing to Follow Safe Reopening Protocols
Let’s stop with the free advertising and giving voice to business owners who want to put their staff and customers’ health at risk.
For the past three weeks, I have been watching the news come out of my home state of Maine as businesses begin to reopen “post-coronavirus”. There has been one restaurant in particular that continues popping up week after week.
So what happened?
Starting on May 1st, the restaurant owner decided that he would open up even before the state government had released a plan to allow this reopening. With the reopening came repercussions and the restaurant lost its licenses for health and liquor. Despite this clear disregard for the state’s law, the owner appeared to speak and was praised by both local and national media including Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight.
In the days following the business’ loss of licensing, the owner tried several times to reopen once again.
A week after Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, released a 5-page checklist for restaurants in less-impacted rural counties to follow while reopening. Many commonsense and professionally-backed prevention measures were listed in this document. Some of these measures include:
- Employees wearing face masks and practicing hand sanitation procedures.
- Customers and employees maintaining physical distance when possible.
- Limiting the number of customers per room to 50.
Looking at the list of measures, anyone could see that they are reasonable and have employee and customer safety in mind.
On May 20, the same restaurant owner had his licenses renewed and began to reopen legally with other businesses. Two short days later and news broke that his restaurant lost its health license and is being ordered to shut down or face fines by the state.
Three weeks of this same restaurant owner playing with the health and safety of his staff, customers, and community is way too long. The most frustrating part of the situation is the enabling caused by media outlets.
This man is clearly just trying to get some free advertising and attract more customers who feel that the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax. It is tiring to see this restaurant show up in my feed every few days to receive more views and to be regarded as a champion of freedom by viewers.
The media needs to stop highlighting these businesses that are being careless and purposefully disregarding the rules that will keep our communities healthy. Stop amplifying the voices of these individuals as they bash the politicians and professionals who are treating this time for what it really is: a crisis.
Finally, they need to be looking for examples of businesses that are truly making an effort to reopen in a safe and respectful way and focus on them!
This is how we move forward and how we can start discovering the new normal that will exist post-coronavirus.
