Recently New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu announced that specific businesses can begin to loosen some COVID-19 restrictions, according to WMUR-9. In the announcement Governor Sununu said that retail stores can now operate at full capacity. Governor Sununu also pronounced that restaurants and bars can now allow small bands and bar games to operate, while barbershops and salons can now have walk-ins and open waiting rooms.
The Equinox firmly believes that restaurants and bars being allowed to have their small bands and bar games to operate may be a bit premature. We feel that New Hampshire allowing restaurants to have their patrons play games while dining at their establishment is a risk that we shouldn’t be taking because the COVID-19 pandemic is still going on. Despite the fact that more and more people are becoming vaccinated as New Hampshire continues to roll out their mass vaccination efforts, we think that there are not enough vaccinated college students to allow bars and restaurants to loosen restrictions on playing games while dining.
One of The Equinox’s biggest concerns with bars now being allowed to have patrons play classic bar games like pool, darts, and karaoke is that the majority of people that go to bars in Keene are college students. Since a large majority of college students are still not fully vaccinated, there is a higher probability that they would spread the virus easier.
While The Equinox believes that restaurants and bars shouldn’t be able to have their customers play games while dining, we believe that the New Hampshire government loosening their restrictions on retail store capacity is perfectly fine. We feel this way because the majority of retail stores have not really been keeping track of the capacity limit numbers when customers enter and leave their stores. One of the few major retailers that has been monitoring the number of customers entering and leaving their stores is Walmart. The Equinox believes that even though many retail stores do not keep track of the capacity limits, most of these stores don’t have anything close to the limits on an average day.
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began, there has been a whole variety of precautions and restrictions that businesses have been implementing to prevent their customers and employees from contracting the virus. While some of these restrictions are more effective than others, The Equinox believes that they should still be left in place because they are there to keep everyone safe. We feel that there are not currently enough college students vaccinated to take away these restrictions.
The Equinox believes that the NH government lifting the restrictions for retail stores isn’t a big issue.
