Why would it be OK to go to a regular restaurant, but buffets are bad because people touch the same utensils? Are we envisioning an “aftermath” of COVID-19 where it is still spread by contact with droplets, but not by airborne droplets?
Buffets will come back. In the long run nothing in everyday life will change.
I’m not sure how much of a difference it will make, but presumably the restaurant staff has had training in safe food handling techniques and will take steps to ensure the food is safe, for no other reason than they want the business to succeed. The general public has no such training and will not even employ common sense to avoid contaminating the buffet. Although I’ve never been to the Golden Corral (a huge buffet restaurant), I’ve heard stories about kids doing things like repeatedly putting their fingers in the chocolate fountain and licking them off. I’ve personally seen people at a buffet grab a serving spoon that has sauce on the handle, lick the sauce off their fingers, and then continue along the buffet. I’ve personally seen people in the buffet line pick something off their plate with their fingers, put it in their mouth, and continue along the buffet. So as a consumer, I’m way too concerned about contamination by the general public to patronize a buffet as long as Covid-19 is an issue.
I (like others in this thread) don’t see any rational reason why buffets are any more problematic than plenty of other places. Sure, dozens of customers handle the same serving utensils; find me a public place where dozens of customers don’t handle the same doorknobs, or the same something else.
RickJay may or may not be right that “in the long run nothing in everyday life will change”; but I don’t see people permanently afraid to come within 6 feet of each other, touch things that other people have touched, etc.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’ve seen articles speculating on how offices are going to change, how people aren’t going to want to live in big cities and various other changes to people’s lives. I don’t see it, not based on what was, basically a once-in-several-lifetimes event.
Imagine buffets on cruise ships! :eek:
Ahh, the old “all you can hold down” buffet. Many fond memories in my youth. My mother brought me and my brother regularly - easy way to feed two teenagers.
I agree some tweaks are going to be needed and perhaps public health regulations in the future will reflect these (such as, no community serving utensils). I think these are approachable and workable solutions will emerge, so buffets (not my preference, either) will probably still be around.
By extension, as others have mentioned, there is also the table condiments (ketchup, mustard, soy sauce, hot sauces, etc) - are those going to be expected to be disinfected, along with the table itself, as well as the seats/booth - between each use? Or maybe they will be removed and offered upon demand, in small bowls. There are going to be creative solutions that minimize the risk.
Edit: salte and pepper shakers gone? Convert to packets?
Coleslaw, mashed potatoes and gravy, ravenous swigs from the chocolate fountain…
lol, no. Like hell am I not going to HuHot once this is all over.
People use their hands for the first two? :dubious:
It would be sad if this hurt Ethiopian restaurants.
I agree. I think in the short term, some people will probably be reticent to handle communal utensils, etc… but considering the amount of bitching and derision I’ve heard about people having to wash their hands for 20 seconds (the standard guidelines that have been around FOREVER), I can’t imagine that suddenly the majority of people are going to freak out about using a spoon after someone else.
Especially considering that the virus isn’t actually spread effectively on surfaces- the thinking is still that it’s predominantly transmitted through the air via little droplets of spit or snot or something.
Just the thought of that made me throw up a bit in the back of my throat.
I doubt buffets are ‘finished’ because there is a whole demographic of people who seem to live for the “all you can eat” buffet, but really these are not only a contagion free fire zone but they also feed the peculiarly American desire to overindulge to an extreme on mediocre food of often poor nutritional value. Of developed industrial nations the United States is near the top in terms of per capita incidence of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, both of which are strongly correlated with obesity and poor nutrition. While I don’t think as a nation we can or should attempt to regulate the behavior of individuals when it comes to their own diets, taking some steps to prevent food providers from indulging in the base addictive instincts of people by offering low grade, highly manipulated food products is something that can be done to reduce the number of obesity-related deaths to something less than those expected to die from the COVID-19 epidemic in the country.
Stranger
Agreed. The whole hand washing thing is nice, but the virus is transmitted through breathing the same air as an infected individual. Other transmission methods are EXTREMELY unlikely.
Just have to mention…
Back when I lived in California, my workmates and I would often go out to lunch. Sometimes we’d go to Blue Hair Buffet (or whatever it was called – it’s a chain), and one coworker would say ‘Buffet? Ugh Steaming troughs of food!’
I suspect that buffets will come back, but it will take a long time for things to get back to normal and buffets will probably be among the last, requiring public confidence that COVID is gone for good. Buffet style of serving is not just limited to restaurants – the same applies to grocery stores that routinely use it for store-made baked goods, salad bars, bulk foods, and other such things.
One grocery chain that just opened up a new store near me built the store to be as modern as possible, with emphasis on energy efficiency, lower labor costs, electric car chargers out front – the whole bit. One innovation they introduced was that not just the salad bar, but most of the prepared hot food was now self-serve; only things like roasts that were carved to order were behind a counter. There was also a much bigger variety of self-serve hot soups. It’s ironic and unfortunate that the pandemic hit just shortly after their grand opening! All the salads and hot foods are now pre-packaged and with a much smaller selection than before, and it’s all much less appetizing that the mix’n’match stuff I used to be able to do myself from great big steaming trays. Hot soups are gone altogether, and everything in the bakery section is pre-packaged and sealed. I think the regular routine will eventually come back, but it could be years.
Agreed. The whole hand washing thing is nice, but the virus is transmitted through breathing the same air as an infected individual. Other transmission methods are EXTREMELY unlikely.
Do you have more info about that?
Transfer of pathogens via fomites (droplets containing pathogens) is very common for many serious infectious diseases. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is very likely frequently transferred via aerosol, but aerosol concentrations tend to disperse quickly outside or in open areas quickly reducing viral load. Fomites, on the other hand, may survive for hours or days on common surfaces such as door handles, utensils, et cetera, so hand-washing and other hygiene measures are still strongly recommended because even if you can’t avoid breathing, you can avoid sticking your contaminated hands on your face or in your food.
Stranger
Everything I’ve seen so far has said that the virus can survive for hours or even days on surfaces. But I haven’t seen any definitive information about how likely someone is to actually get infected from touching these surfaces. The impression I get is that we still just don’t know how much, or which, contaminated surfaces are a danger nor how many people actually get infected from touching surfaces. As a potential source of infection, it might be negligible, it might be huge, it might be somewhere in between.
Anybody know more than that?
No, things will return to normal by 2021 if not this year.
The reason you have not seen “any definitive information about how likely someone is to actually get infected from touching these surfaces” is because we lack adequate epidemiological information to even make good estimates of the number of infected people. Even when we know that, the actual modes of infection will be subject to much debate for years to come; people are still doing studies on infection modes for the 2003 SARS outbreak.
However, for many infectious diseases that are not aerosol or airborne, transmission via fomite is the primary mode, and even for those that are contamination of surfaces is still a significant factor, hence all the provisions made in hospitals to eliminate door handles, disinfect all instruments, wearing of gloves et cetera. And people routinely touch their faces, handle food, and put objects like pens in their mouth without sanitizing either their hands or the objects. A lot of buffet food is “finger food”, e.g. chicken wings, chicken fingers, and so forth, so it should go without saying that transfer from utensils to hand to mouth is a very likely mode of infection.
Stranger