Servers kept those jobs because they could make enormous profits in tips. But now tipping is under attack, and Covid cut that income source, so there isn’t any upside. 

It’s not that simple.  People had to work if they still had jobs and were allowed to go.  They have family members who could not be alone.  Those of us who spend time online are probably more self sufficient as a whole, but I have friends who are not on social media or forums ar all, and who were literally going out of their minds from isolation and from not seeing faces.  During the entire pandemic they took road trips, they met some people without masks and for the most part, did not get Covid.  I met a group outdoors and maybe half were not wearing masks.  I solved that by bringing a chair and keeping myself distanced more than 6’.  No one who was there got Covid.

I understand that some essential people had to work but those essential workers took precautions.  I am referring to those folks that could have easily taken precautions and chose not to because they either think this is a matter of "personal freedoms" or they were conned into thinking that the virus was a hoax.  Those are the people who were likely responsible for the spikes in infection. Some were lucky and escaped infection but many weren't so lucky (I have a friend who lost both of her parents within a few days due to COVID).  None of us WANTED to wear masks. None of us WANTED to stay isolated in our homes.  This is a public health crisis that requires everyone's cooperation to get through, so when I hear someone saying "we should be able to remove the masks because we're tired of wearing them", that tells me the person has no clue of the science behind the virus, nor do they care about the welfare of themselves or anyone around them.

Except paper and cloth masks don’t really do much to prevent the spread.  They also knew that.  The best are N95 and we know how that went.

I was out today and very few people are still wearing them, even indoors.  The employees must but patrons don’t have to.  It’s feels very strange.

Showtalk said:

Except paper and cloth masks don’t really do much to prevent the spread. They also knew that.

Initially the public was asked to wear cloth and paper masks so that there were enough of the N95 masks for healthcare workers.  Cloth and paper masks are not the best protection but they do help in stopping droplets that can infect others.

They can help some.  Of both g else comes out of this, hopefully people with colds and flu will stay home when they are contagious.  

WALTER784 said:

Ahhhh... but the hassles you have to put up with unprepared companies!

And often totally unprepared for other things - like ransomware when you are running one of the most important pipelines in the US that supplies nearly all the gasoline to the East Coast, and some bunch encrypts all the files everywhere needed to function.

I still think that they need to track down whoever masterminded that, even though they did manage to hack back a good part of the bitcoins - grab him, and then give him a good old fashioned Wild West style public hanging - but in the 21st century, hang him on camera and post it everywhere as a warning to others, much like the legend of Vladimir the Impaler, who also left particularly gruesome and stark warnings to his enemies of what happens to those who might dare think to cross him.

Here's a modification of that skit that Bill Engval did in the mid 1990s.

I just hate stupid people. They should have to wear signs that just say "I'm stupid". That way you wouldn't rely on them, would you? You wouldn't ask them anything. It would be like, "Excuse me, oops, never mind. I didn't see your sign."
.
My conspiracy theory neighbor found out I got my Covid shot.
He asked, "Does a magnet stick to your arm now?"
I replied, "Nope. But now my 5G is absolutely fantastic. And here's your sign."

Why can't they get the picture?
Why don't they understand?
We're not dealing with the planet of apes
We're talking about the modern man
So you people with them itsy bitsy teensie weensie tiny minds
Here's your sign
Here's your sign

YWN666 said:

Initially the public was asked to wear cloth and paper masks so that there were enough of the N95 masks for healthcare workers. Cloth and paper masks are not the best protection but they do help in stopping droplets that can infect others.

And if you modify a cloth / paper mask to add a layer of microfiber cloth inside, you increase the stoppage of droplets and even loose virus by a factor of 10 or so. In electronics we would call that a 20 decibel insertion loss of virus that doesn't get through the material versus the paper / cloth without the microfiber insert.

(skipping a bunch of technical physics as to how it works) in essence, the microfiber ends grab onto dry virus by electrostatic charge, and can utilize the VanDerWaals force to hang onto them. The second effect is that all the air passes along nearly a quarter inch of dense ultra-fine hairs on the cloth surface, lengthwise, to pass through. This provides a lot of opportunity for droplets much smaller than the spacing between fibers to touch at least one, and immediately the surface tension causes the droplet to stick to the fiber fuzz.

The surface area of clean microfiber is staggering - some of the finer microfiber cloth can have a half acre or so of surface area, all folded up into this tiny square of material inserted into a mask. Each of these fibers are only a few microns across. Even though viruses are measured in tens of nanometers, smaller than a wavelength of light, the electrostatic effects are enormous, and the droplets most of them are floating inside of are several hundreds of times larger, in the multiple micron size.

The virus doesn't survive being dried out very well.

But using the electronics / radio communication analogy further, essentially a cloth / paper mask can attenuate the virus stream entering your body by about 3 to 6 decibels. This can make a big difference in whether or not there is a sufficient initial viral load to take hold infectiously, versus a much lower initial load that either results in a mild case or asymptomatic infection, or what is often called an "incomplete infection".

The decibel scale is logarithmic. So each new layer that reduces by, say, 6 decibels, you cut the number that get through that layer to 1/4 the number that reached that layer in the first place.

Social distancing is another decibel attenuation process. So is outdoors with wind or with very high ventilation rates - the air changes quickly shorten the half-life time of a viral load expelled into the air that could potentially reach your nose and mouth.

The combination of masks, even simple ones, distancing, and avoiding indoor crowds, add up to a lot of decibels. 30 decibels is only 1 in 1000 viruses that can get through. 40 decibels, 1 in 10,000. 60 decibels is 1 in 1 million. 90 decibels is 1 in 1 billion.

Even a reduction by a factor of 1000 is enough to halt the chain reaction spread by bringing the number that one infected and contagious person can spread it to, to a number somewhat smaller than 1.

It will still spread, but it no longer has a case explosion that progresses exponentially like a nuclear weapon undergoing prompt neutron criticality. You have reduced the number of new plutonium atoms struck by neutrons that also undergo fission - um - new uninfected victims getting viruses and becoming infected and spreading them to more - to a rate where it peters out.

He won’t be hung, but may be cancelled.