But there's an important key to remember. The fact that restaurants or bars CAN be open doesn't mean that they're going to get customers showing up.
Bars and restaurants base their ability to stay afloat partially on a certain occupancy level, and even if every state and locality completely eliminated their restrictions, I would guess that those bars and restaurants wouldn't hit those occupancy levels because people are trying to be safe.
Here in California, I don't care whether they open up indoor dining or not; I have no intent on going to eat indoor in a restaurant. A few weeks back I had a day off so my wife took a day off and we did a Friday date lunch. The restaurant said when she made the reservation that they couldn't guarantee outdoor seating, and my wife told them "that's fine but if there aren't tables outside when we get there we'll go somewhere else."
A lot of people are like us; they aren't going for indoor dining anywhere. A lot of people may go for indoor dining, but are trying to keep their nights dining out to a minimum or only for very special occasion due to the risk. A lot of people who may have paired indoor dining with other date events (movies, concerts, theater) don't have those other events to go to, so they're not going to go to a restaurant.
None of this requires that people stay home 100% of the time, but if every person that normally would go out X amount of times per month are only going out to eat 25% of X per month, it kills the restaurants anyway.
As I've said before, this is going to be a shit sandwich for restaurants and bars regardless of what we do regarding government-mandated lockdowns or occupancy limits. Because I believe that enough people are changing their behavior voluntarily that many of them will go under regardless of what the government says. It'll be blamed on lockdowns, of course. But that doesn't mean that they would have been full if there were no lockdowns in the middle of a pandemic.
I think our June/July spike in Texas proves that if the bars are allowed to reopen, they'll be well patronized.
Is that a good idea? I won't comment. But it's already been proven out once, about 3 months ago.
Perhaps we should be focusing our efforts on mandating improved ventilation/filtration for indoor venues. And then reassuring the public that they're safer than they were before.
And also reassure the public that outdoor spread is minimal under most conditions, and that outdoor venues are pretty safe, to remove some of the misinformation and disinformation that's been spreading and causing FUD over the past 9 months.
I'm not exaggerating when I say, this will be over-- COMPLETELY OVER-- one way or another, when Spring rolls around. So if public safety is truly a concern, then steps in the right direction are warranted. Insisting that gatherings > 10 people are not allowed, won't fly forever. It's barely flying right now. And all the rest of the measures.
Mask mandates I think can remain in place for a longer period of time, but again, wearing a mask whilst in a bar or restaurant consuming, isn't really possible or realistic.