> my understanding of the justification is that restaurants can relatively easily space out/put dividers up between their tables (such that risk of transmission

> my understanding of the justification is that restaurants can relatively easily space out/put dividers up between their tables (such that risk of transmission between parties at different tables is lower) Because air doesn't move? It doesn't mix? On the contrary, the virus persists in the air for longer than an entire room air turnover. Since Feb 2020, the studies show HVAC's air patterns in restaurants do infect other tables, quickly even. Roughly, air handling collects contaminated air and spews it on some tables in concentrated form (those tables experience all the air fast, not just subset of diffuse air more slowly; then in time all the air is mixed). Similar findings in 2021 for classrooms where student desks at risk are heat mappable based on HVAC configurations. Grandparent post is right. You see other polls saying e.g. 60% of people being extra careful now with Omicron, at the same time, nearly 60% still going out to eat. So either people are stupid, or just don't understand because nobody's informing them. I'd suggest your post falls in the under-informed category: dividers are for how droplets work, but not for how air works. Ridiculous we still don't deal with the air situation, but (a) way too much narrative was set back in the "it's not airborne" days for the media or masses to be interested in grappling, and (b) no landlord wants* to fix the air handling which was all sized for energy cost reduction not health. * On HVAC upgrades, it's initially interesting that HVAC firms aren't upselling HEPA filtration etc. -- why isn't capitalism solving this problem? Surely they're lobbying for the new business! But then one remembers that 'venue shopping' or 'advice shopping' is a thing. Any HVAC firm under contract to workplace building owners is putting the relationship at risk if they tell the landlord or occupants on the record to spend a bunch of extra money. On the contrary, their incentive to keep the building contract is aligned with the landlord's incentive to not hear about having to spend 10x the original cost of the system on upgrading it.