Ah; yes it is. It has it’s own entrance and i forget it’s in the same building.
Wildfire is closer to the strip than to Henderson City Hall; it may actually be in unincorporated Clark County.
And Henderson is part of Las Vegas, just like North Las Vegas is part of Las Vegas. We largely ignore distictions when they are meaningless.
If churches are full of people who all know each other, and bowling alleys are full of small groups of people, which groups are strangers to each other, surely that would make bowling alleys more dangerous than churches, not less. The people who know each other in church will also be seeing each other outside of church, and so, if any of them gets infected, the others are likely to as well, even absent the church itself. But a bowling alley where many different groups come together is an opportunity for the virus to spread between those groups, an opportunity that would not exist absent the bowling alley.
The Catholic churches here are following all those rules with the exception of communion - and the recommendation is that it be received in the hand, not on the tongue. They only allow 25% of capacity, there is one door to enter, another door to exit, no entrance procession , no choirs or singing by the congregation, no handshake, pews are marked off for a six foot distance, there are markers for the communion line and masks are to be worn at all times except when receiving communion.
Can I swear that all the congregants are perfectly compliant? Nope. But there isn’t anywhere that people are perfectly compliant - not stores or restaurants or casinos or even people on the street
That sounds great…but unless the law makes an exemption for Roman Catholic churches(and wouldn’t that create a stink of Biblical proportions?) the fact that far too many other churches would not only be lax in enforcing the rules but would openly defy them is what is screwing the pooch in this case. Got a solution to this dilemma?
I don’t agree with this reasoning at all.
Several hundred people in a church congregation may all know one another somewhat, but often principally through the church. Why would you assume (in the current environment) that these people are all flouting social distancing guidelines and coming into close contact outside of church gatherings? A mass indoor church gathering is the one place where close contact would be likely to occur between a lot of people who know one another somewhat, principally through the church, and would not otherwise come into contact. It’s a situation where one infected person mingling could infect dozens of others. And there are numerous actual cases of this happening.
In a bowling alley at low occupancy (empty lanes between groups) it’s easy to maintain 2-meter separation between the social groups, and little natural tendency to flout that separation when groups don’t know each other at all.
I am probably at a little bit of a disadvantage (since I live in NYC) , but although I had heard about churches holding services when they weren’t permitted at all, I was unaware that there were any churches defying the rules under which opening was permitted. No solution to that other than the one being used in NY for restaurants that don’t follow the rules- shut them down.
Why would you assume (in the current environment) that these people are all flouting social distancing guidelines and coming into close contact outside of church gatherings?
Why would you assume they wouldn’t? It may not be your experience, but it is for a lot of people. For example, my mother’s friends are almost entirely people whose children attended the parish school with me (and I’m 57) and so they all attend the same church. Between mid-March and early July, none of them went to church. They did however go to each other’s houses and have outdoor gatherings where I assure you they did not keep six-feet apart. Some of them are currently planning a Labor Day weekend trip that will involve people from different households traveling in the same car. Spending a half-hour in church every Sunday is not going to make much difference- they aren’t going to be in any closer contact at church than they have been on other occasions. If they keep six feet away at the park, they can stay six feet away at church. If they’re in close contact at church, they will be at the park as well. I don’t know which is more common, but I don’t think we can make an assumption either way.
In a bowling alley at low occupancy (empty lanes between groups) it’s easy to maintain 2-meter separation between the social groups, and little natural tendency to flout that separation when groups don’t know each other at all.
Like I said earlier, bowling alleys don’t always follow the bowling alley model. I haven’t seen anything from any city or state that has bowling alleys opening in different phases- one for recreational (open bowlers) and one for leagues and tournaments. Even if they open for leagues/tournaments with an empty pair of lanes, there will not be the sort of separation you’re talking about . Because some (in the case of a league, most) of the people on different lanes will know each other.
So your argument is that people who are members of church congregations are irresponsibly failing to follow basic social distancing guidelines outside of church, therefore we may as well let them carry on and do what they want inside?
In any event, I think you’re wrong. The issue was with gatherings of more than 50 people. In a typical congregation of several hundred, I don’t believe that it’s typically the case that all those hundreds of people are socializing together outside of church, even under normal non-pandemic circumstances. It may be true that many of your close friends go to the same church; but not that all people at the church are close friends. In a typical congregation of hundreds, any one member will generally only socialize with the majority of the other people at church meetings. It’s the perfect opportunity for a super-spreader to infect dozens of people that they wouldn’t otherwise interact with.
It’s not an argument that we should let them do what they want. I just don’t think we should make an assumption one way (they see each other all the time so no extra risk) or the other (they only see each other at church , so extra risk if they socialize there). It’s likely to be different for different people and different congregations, so it probably shouldn’t be a factor in decision making.
Are you really denying that the social structure of 300 people in a church congregation is not generally quite different from the typical social structure in a bowling alley, movie theater, supermarket, etc.?
The existence of variability and exceptions to general patterns of behavior and social structure is not a good reason to ignore those generalities in policy decisions during a pandemic.
I have no idea which is generally true - I only know what has been my experience in the congregations which I have belonged to, which is that people don’t generally socialize with near strangers before, during or after the service. They might comment to the person next to them about the air conditioning/heat or ask someone to pass a hymnal but with the social distancing and hymnals being removed, I’m sure that isn’t happening anymore. They talk to friends, neighbors, other members of groups they belong to afterwards in exactly the same way they would talk to those same people if they ran into them at the supermarket or a movie theater or on the street. Maybe your experience has always been with churches that have a single service and a social hour afterward - mine has not.
Then why is it a hardship to restrict gatherings to 50 people?
At the congregations I have belonged to, the problem with a 50 person limit is that there would have to be at least three times as many Masses to accommodate the total number who attended one of the six each weekend pre-pandemic and there aren’t enough priests to do that.* It seems like you think the objections to the 50 person limit are only because people want to socialize and never for practical reasons.
*it’s actually not a problem because the restriction here is 25% capacity and the church holds at least 1200 people so everyone can attend at one time or another.
I don’t see a dilemma specific to churches.
The question of enforcement is problematic regardless of the nature of the business. Bowling alleys, restaurants, hardware stores, grocery stores, etc can all be lax or openly defy them. We have seen examples in the news of just that happening. It has been as extreme as a couple reported cases of businesses that refused service if you wear a mask.
Why are churches so special in your mind?
For the same reason it’s an inconvenience to larger businesses. A larger church will have a lot more members. That’s why they have a bigger sanctuary: to accommodate them. If you limit all churches to 50 people per service, then larger churches need more services.
Yes, you can argue they don’t need to meet in person. I argue that myself. By allowing in-person services at all, you are saying that being there in person provides some value. So, then, how do they decide which ones get to be there in person and which ones don’t?
Church interactions are indeed different than business interactions. I’m fine with them being regulated differently because of that. But I can’t see what is gained by treating the small church that can only hold 100 people the same as the larger one that can hold 10,000. If you can hold more people at a safe distance apart, why not allow that?
So either a lot more people in the larger church can’t attend, unlike those who go to a smaller church, or the larger church has to have a lot more services. The latter is not practical, so the result is the former. People who go to larger churches get to attend less than those who go to smaller ones, for no reason.
Not so much under current conditions. We’re not having a free-for-all where we invite everyone we know over. Maybe some close friends might meet up in person, but we’d keep our masks on and keep socially distancing. Only the very closest would we decide, after a period of quarantine and being reasonably sure neither of us has caught anything, would we meet together like we would normally, giving hugs and all that. Mostly that’s just those who live with us, whose germs have already been shared.
And it’s not something I do because I want to, or a risk I choose for myself. It’s my responsibility to others, one my religion obligates me even above any social duty. To follow God, I have to do what I can to protect those who are vulnerable. And I would hope that most people who care enough about church to try and go also believe this way.
Granted, there are a lot of selfish “Christians” who don’t live up to the values they claim to hold. But those of us who do are not getting together like we used to. The whole value of going to the church is that we can see those people–from a safe distance of course.
Apologies if this is a bit overwrought, but this whole thing about my fellow “Christians” not putting others before themselves and even condemning those who do–it’s really getting to me. When pastors are too scared to point out that wearing a mask when required is the Christian thing to do, and have to be all “don’t fight too much,” there is a huge problem.
Maybe because we don’t continually get stories like these that are about bowling alleys?
Note that Nevada has no sales tax. The taxes on the hospitality business, gambling in particular, are the major revenue stream for Nevada. The state can literally not stay in business without that.
They happen to be the topic of this thread?
