When you have a big family as we do, there are few things you know you’re not going to have. Your children generally won’t have their own room. And you probably won’t have vacations that you have to fly to.
We take this in stride as a small price for the blessing of having a small army. About once a year, we go out to dinner at a restaurant as a family. Typically we use points from my campaign travel to reserve two adjoining rooms at a Holiday Inn on the beach at Ocean City, Maryland. And then we use Holiday Inn’s “Kids Eat Free” promotion to feast on burgers, fries, and personal pizzas, plus a dessert to go for a stroll down the boardwalk.
That was the plan this year. But the reality was a little bit different, thanks to Maryland’s brain-dead coronavirus law.
Dining indoors is legal in Ocean City. The ceiling of the restaurant where we were eating ranges from 25 feet high to 50 feet high. We wore masks when not seated and even sometimes while sitting. We ate at 5 p.m., when we knew it would be mostly empty.
That’s when we were told that, by law, we couldn’t actually eat together as a family.
Does it actually violate Maryland State law for my family of 8 to sit at one table at a restaurant? pic.twitter.com/bLVurd4Q71
— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) July 27, 2020
The hostess told my wife that no groups larger than six were allowed at a single table. We replied that we understood the logic of that rule but that every rule has a reason. In this case, a rule barring seven or more people is aimed at preventing large parties of friends, or multiple families, since such parties run a higher risk of spreading the virus. It’s an extension of the common COVID-time prohibition on large gatherings.
But that logic does not apply to a single family that all lives in the same household. We are sharing adjoining rooms at their hotel. We had just traveled three hours from the Washington, D.C., area in the same minivan. We live in the same house and have spent all day, every day together for the past 4.5 months because we can’t really see our friends, and just this once, we want to be able to eat as a family outside of our home!
The manager came and explained to me that this rule was state law. He is correct. Under a state order issued in June, “no more than six people may be seated at a table.”
The result: I ate with three kids at one table, and my wife ate with the other three at another table. Forcing us into this arrangement in no way reduced the danger of coronavirus spread. It did the opposite, actually.
- Because we were at two separate tables, my table was closer to another family than we would have been had we been allowed to sit together. Were either family infected, this rule would have made it more likely that the other family would get infected.
- My wife and I had to speak louder, across part of the restaurant, in order to communicate. Were we infected, this rule would have made it more likely we would have infected the other family.
Finally:
- Arbitrary rules that do not reduce the risk of viral spread undermine the legitimate rules.
Consider Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser’s rule that people alone in the middle of a baseball or soccer field or on an empty sidewalk in the district are required to wear a mask. Everyone knows these rules don’t stop the spread. Having such rules and either enforcing them or blatantly not enforcing them, makes people have less respect for other rules that might be effective.
So if you care about stopping the spread of the virus in Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan, you’ll end your required family separation rule and legalize big families eating chicken fingers and fries together.
