Noted public-health policy scofflaw Mayor Breed recently announced that proof of vaccination will no longer be required to enter restaurants, bars and nightclubs. She framed this as helping our businesses. Well, this business does not need or want that kind of "help". And I know of quite a few other San Francisco bars and clubs that feel the same way.

DNA Lounge's policy is unchanged: we will continue to take steps necessary to reduce the risk of infection to our staff, families and customers:

• Proof of full vaccination is required for entry.
• Fully vaccinated means 2 weeks after your booster, if it has been 6 months since your first round.
• Masks are required inside.

The Mayor and SFDPH are playing politics with peoples' lives. Pretending that the pandemic is over does not make it so. These are the facts:

• SF is only 65% fully vaccinated -- not 83% as the mayor continues to disingenuously claim.
• If you aren't boosted, vaccine efficacy drops to 50%. These days, unboosted is the same as half vaccinated.
• The BA.2 variant is outstripping Omicron in our wastewater samples. It is 30% more infectious.
• Most SF cases are breakthrough infections.
• Long COVID is a real threat to everyone, even the young and healthy, and it is still poorly understood.
• The bars are going to be packed for St. Patrick's Day.
• Kids are going to go away for Spring Break, return, and spread their new infections to schools, families and workplaces.
• Then cases will spike again, just like last time!
• When you are 3/4ths of the way to the finish line is not when you stop running.

Short of another lockdown, the most effective ways to fight the pandemic are:

• Vaccinations -- we require them of our staff and customers.
• Masks -- we require them of our staff and customers.
• Airflow -- ours is very good.
• Testing -- we continue to test all of our staff weekly.

Also, just a reminder: CDC recently re-colored the maps to declare victory. These two maps represent approximately the same data:

They made the new "low" threshold be twice the old "high" threshold.

That old map, the all-red map on the left, is a map of new infections per 100k people: it correlates well to your chance of exposure and infection. CDC's term for this is "Community Transmission".

The map on the right is the new one that they say we should be paying attention to instead: the "Community Levels" map, which is basically new infections DIVIDED BY available hospital beds.

So they're saying that it's ok to unmask as long as there is still freezer truck morgue capacity available in your city.

This is all just so exhausting. We are finally almost back down to pre-Delta-surge levels, and that's when they decide to go full YOLO and eliminate every possible mitigation measure. Like all of you, I would also like the pandemic to be over. But, again, wishing does not make it so.

In other news, DNA Pizza opened 11 years ago today. Happy birthday to us!

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Update: I have disabled comments on this post because it had become a honeypot for antivaxxers and out-of-state trolls. If you have questions, comments or suggestions about our policies, you can email me directly. Thanks, and stay safe!