Temperatures dipped into the mid-twenties last night, only underlining the disastrous seasonal challenges facing downtown Bethesda restaurants. Montgomery County rules now in effect disallow indoor dining, and outdoor temperatures are not at all friendly to al fresco seating. Yesterday, Bethesda Urban Partnership began erecting large, heated tents on the Norfolk Avenue Bethesda Streetery.
The tents, now seen all over the country, remain controversial. They are enclosed spaces by any definition, and hold sizable numbers of diners. Some have noted that the air circulation and filtration in the tents may actually be worse than dining indoors. UCLA Professor of Epidemiology Anne Rimoin seems to agree with them. "Tents don't have ventilation the way an indoor restaurant would," Rimoin told ABC7 News in Los Angeles. "So these outdoor settings are not actually outdoors."
The Centers for Disease Control oddly does not answer this important question head on, nor definitively, at a time when the public is seeking guidance. All I can find on their website is the following advice, suggesting private or commercial users of outdoor tents "consider leaving one or more sides open or rolling up the bottom 12 inches of each sidewall to enhance ventilation while still providing a wind break." ABC 7 reported that experts say you shouldn't dine in those small bubble/"igloo" enclosures unless they are left vacant for at least 20 minutes. I have yet to hear government officials at any level make a definitive, science-based declaration on the safety or risks of outdoor dining tents, pods, bubbles or igloos.
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