Seattle should require vaccine proof at restaurants and bars

It is true that many local restaurants and bars have vaccination checks on the door anyway. I had to flash my CDC Bona Fides for the first time to have brunch at Oddfellows last weekend – and I’m glad I did. Fritters taste better when you are less worried about a breakthrough case.

But restaurants shouldn’t have to shoulder the brunt of the unvaccinated customers outraged by these guidelines, and food service workers – many of whom have faced unmasked diners for nearly two years – should finally get the relief a broader mandate can provide .

It’s simple: eating indoors remains one of the riskiest activities for transmitting COVID-19. The vaccines to reduce this risk are free and readily available. And if a city like New York with over 20,000 restaurants can implement a vaccine mandate for indoor dining, so can we. Then anyone who wants to complain about politics can scold the town hall instead of taking it out on a long-suffering host.

I asked the mayor’s office why Seattle wasn’t following New York City’s lead. In response, a spokesperson said, “Mayor Durkan supports all Seattle employers who need vaccines and all companies that require customers and employees to be vaccinated, except as required by law – these are right decisions that will save lives. “

I can think of another right decision that will save lives: A government-enforced indoor food vaccination mandate during a surge in King County’s Delta variant. When asked whether the mayor was even considering making restaurants mandatory to check vaccination cards, a spokeswoman confirmed that this was not the case.

There’s a huge gap between an unenforceable phrase of “support” and a New York City-style mandate – and there’s no reason we can’t close it. That delay in taking a necessary next step recalls March 2020 when our stay-at-home order was placed, despite the first reported cases of COVID-19 transmission in the country days after the one in California.

Washington has been good at spotting these types of threats early on, so hesitating later feels like following up. We know what to do. Nobody really wants to do it, just as nobody wanted to deal with a global pandemic in August 2021. But that’s the right step at the moment.

An inoculation order for indoor dining is not just about preventing rare breakthrough cases. Seattle passed the 70% threshold of the eligible population to be fully vaccinated back in June – a milestone we should be proud of and which should actually change the way we can lead our daily lives, including eating . But we are still too far from 100% comfort, and meanwhile the unvaccinated population must be protected from a dangerous new variant of the disease that is more easily spread indoors.

Elazar Sontag, an Eater associate who wrote the recent editorial “Just Mandate the Vaccine for Indoor Dining Nationwide,” pointed out to me that one purpose of such a request is to bring home how contagious the Delta is. Variant can be.

“It’s not just that it gives people an incentive to get vaccinated,” said Sontag. “It’s also about really making it clear that these activities are just too risky for people who are not vaccinated.”

Anyone connected to reputable news websites knows that Delta is far more transmissible than the original strain of COVID-19. Perhaps you have thought about R-numbers in your spare time or read about breakthrough clusters. These are activities made possible by the double luxuries of time and education.

But my own experience with a small handful of unvaccinated friends and family members suggests that many are unaware of the increasing risk. You go to the movies and eat in restaurants without realizing how much easier it is to catch the currently dominant COVID-19 strain than the 2020 version.

While I may nag, sometimes the only thing that can accomplish someone is a meaningful break in a routine. It’s easy to brush aside an annoying sister-in-law, rather than a mayor or governor who puts an extra step between you and the restaurant.

Call it liberal hectoring, call it excessive, but the more we can do to incentivize the vaccine and communicate the risks of not getting it, the better. There is no need to wait.