Closing restaurants would be shortsighted

Pitkin County Board of Health,

You largely have three options, keeping restaurants open, closing restaurants, and shutting it all down. I understand there’s a fear of being seen as not adequately reacting to the situation.

But of the three, closing restaurants is actually the one that displays the least insight and leadership. It is the one that says, “Well we’re not really sure what to do, so might as well try this even if we know it’ll harm many people.” That option is guaranteed to hurt a large segment of our community, and also not be an effective solution.

Shutting it all down, at minimum, would be effective (if we are only looking at incident rate, which is a very narrow view of the situation), but also overkill given our empty hospital. We are trying to manage the well-being of our community, right? That means more than looking solely at incident rate and taking an active role in balancing the health of our citizens.

Keep restaurants open.

Greg Van Wagner

Aspen