If Or When Things Loosen Up, Will We Ease Or Dive Back In to Life
With a lot of time on my hands to contemplate things these days, I have been able to think about more than just my belly button. And one topic may be one you are thinking about, too. If and when things start getting back to normal, how are we going to make it happen? Do we just dive in? Or do we kind of take it easy, and be very very wary, when entering public and social situations?
A poll conducted in late April and paid for by a large Michigan liquor distributor (Great Lakes Wine and Spirits) found that a substantial amount of Michiganders planned to ease back in. Which, given all the screaming, shouting and protesting may surprise some people, but think about this. If the poll was taken in late April, how much more anxiety is there among us now, a month later?
Essentially the poll results said this: Within the first week of reopening, only 32% of respondents would be willing to go to a restaurant and the numbers go all the way down to 11% for a sporting event.
The survey says after a month, slightly over half (51%) would be willing to go to a restaurant, but only a quarter or less of the respondents would be willing to go to movie, a bar (21%) or a sporting event (17%).
One thing bars and restaurants should be prepared to have are hand sanitizers, require social distancing, and maybe actual physical barriers, and servers wearing face masks. The only result registering at less than 50% was taking customers' temperatures (46%).
While these numbers are still ominous from a business perspective, the sporting event numbers would be devastating for organizations like college football, where a big portion of the athletic budget comes from gate receipts, as opposed to the NFL, where they have a multi-billion dollar television contract.Over and over, poll results says a big majority want a vaccine available or at least an antibody testing system in place before they'll venture to a sports event.