You haven’t been to the mainline churches recently. In our sanctuary an average Sunday service moderately attended would be less crowded than a vons let alone a Costco. 60 people who could be scattered on 3 levels and the Dias and that’s before the covid scared don’t show up.
Bad News Thread
- Thread starter kickingandscreaming
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You also clearly haven’t been to a Costco on sat afternoon recently. Weekdays you have a point. Ralph’s? Ok. Costco on Saturday no.
Hüsker Dü
DA
As bad as trump got/is getting spanked by the courts? What’s the batting averages?
Neither would make single A with their averages.
Actually Trump's pre-election batting average is pretty good, his post election batting average is virtually non-existent like Newsom's Covid case batting average.
There is actual data available.
A church typically has about 15-17 square feet per person.
A retail store is usually limited to one person per 60 square feet. Less for big box.
So, for airborne disease risk, a retail store at full capacity is roughly equivalent to a church at 1/4 capacity. (Assuming no singing at either )
Which is exactly the point. A costco is brimming to the top on Saturday afternoons. Our mainline church is at 1/4 capacity in the sanctuary on a regular Sunday pre COVID (we usually worship in the chapel as a result and only to go the sanctuary for high feast days when visitors and family comes in).
A typical Costco is 150,000 square feet and 750 parking spaces.
That’s about 200 square feet per person when the parking lot is full.
Unless the chapel at your church is 12,000 square feet, your church with 60 people is considerably more dense than Costco.
Costco on a Saturday afternoon I’m shoulder to shoulder with people and have a hard time moving in my cart particularly at the checkout, pharmacy, meat, and prepared foods areas. At church my family and I can sit in an entire section on the second floor by ourselves even if you spread the 25 or so families that may go during covid and minus all the old people.
the church separates by family. Costco can’t even separate by individuals. Once again the theoretical math fails in a real world situation.
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
Osterholm is an epidemiologist who had counseled presidents and governors, right? Maybe Kavanaugh just used the percentage of the time epidemiologists' predictions were reasonably close. That seems to be giving them more credit than they deserve, honestly.
I didn’t read the case brief, but certainly recall restrictions on retail at 25% capacity for other ‘non-essential’ entities.
The Costco/Grocer comparison is a red herring and not a relevant point of comparison as they were considered ‘essential’.
If you want to evaluate epidemiologists as a whole, look at the original Imperial College estimate. 2.2 million dead if we did nothing.
We managed to delay the main surge by 8 months, which gave us time to create better treatments. Despite that, we still had 600K dead. I’d say the original estimate was pretty solid.
If you don’t want to listen to epidemiologists, who do you want to listen to, and what did they have to say back in March?
The main contrary voice was the guy who said, “It will all be over by Easter.”. Did you want us all to listen to that advice, instead?
It’s not theoretical math. The aerosols in Costco have a much larger volume of air into which they can disperse. The aerosols in a church have far smaller volume into which they can disperse, so concentrations will be higher.
This is the kind of thinking that public health officials do well, and lawyers do poorly.
Example: Your above post thinks in terms of distance to the nearest person. Why? Two weeks ago you made a big point that, indoors, 6 feet and 60 feet are similar. So learn from it. If you believe your own point, then you should be paying attention to the risk from the ambient air at your church. Having a whole balcony to yourself doesn‘t matter. You’re still breathing air that comes from the other 25 families in the room with you. If you all are masked and 6 feet apart, then the risk is proportionate to the average concentration in the airspace. (And it’s time to do that theoretical computation you hate so much. Math is good for things like “average concentration”.)
Ok…so of that 150,000 sqft, how much is dedicated to retail space and how much to stock and offices? Of that retail space, how much is occupied by inventory and how much is dedicated to “traffic”. My best educated guesstimate is about 75,000 sqft dedicated to “traffic”. So now do your math based on that area versus the total space of the building if you want a true picture of sqft/person.
I get where you’re coming from. but the assumptions are false. Volume of air is relative to the structure in question vs the maximum occupancy from a fire code (floor space).
Either way we’re still in the ‘red herring’ zone... Costco/Ralph’s occupancy is not relevant as essential businesses vs other entities.
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
Some of those early "predictions" of risk were BS - outdoor activities and surfaces. It was shocking how slow the march was to the conclusion that the virus was airborne. But, yes, the advice, "it's a virus, so stay away from others" was wise, if not a bit obvious - to most.
It is fair to exclude stock space and office space, just as you should exclude the office and utility space in the church. For Costco, this changes very little. The vast majority of their space is in the main shopping area.
But you don’t exclude inventory space in the main room. That volume is still part of the main airflow, and that volume still helps the aerosols disperse. Similarly, you should not exclude the pulpit or the chancel in the sanctuary. It’s part of the airflow in the main room.
Measured by people per square foot or cubic foot in the main room, Costco is far less dense than almost any church. Any church with 150 square feet per parishioner is probably very close to closing. (that would be a living room worth of space around every couple attending church. Eerily quiet.)
Main point is that fire occupancy is the wrong way to think of airborne disease risk. Cubic feet per person or square feet per person make more sense. The court’s standard is a-scientific nonsense.
The issue with the case is that religion is essential to some people and its not the states job to say it’s not
As kicker points out not everywhere in the Costco is being used for shopping. What’s more is there is a prolonged concentration of people next to each other at bottle necks such as the check out (10-15 minutes on a Saturday afternoon). So I’m breathing in the air not just of 25 families but 200 that have been concentrated in that area for the last hour. Plus I might be standing right next to someone for 15 minutes who is actively ill. Again it’s all nice in theory but the real world simply doesn’t work that way. And as usual I point out it’s why businesses do not put the theoreticians in charge of making the final call because you all get lost in the math.
The concentration of people and the amount of time spent in a Costco on a Saturday afternoon is excess of the truncated service of 25 families spread out in a large sanctuary. You even started out by conceding that in your post up above but changed your mind when the result didn’t line up with your thinking, as always.
But in any case, to circle around, a standard that emphasizes neutral standards of time and concentration of people would likely survive scrutiny from the courts. Standards that declare churches non essential or single out churches from other establishments would not. You can argue whether that’s wise or should be the case but that is the way the ruling breaks down.
Mainline churches were constructed with large crowds in mind. You are very clearly not aware of the decline they’ve gone through. Ours has a huge sanctuary built in 3 levels + choir loft + the Dias. There’s no taxes on the place and it’s all paid for with repair costs the biggest expense. On Easter Sunday and Christmas, the sanctuary first floor, with no open spaces between families, would be 1/2 occupied
this is not true of course for Mormon or evangelical churches but it’s their call whether the ministers want to offer multiple services. It is true of many Catholic Churches using sanctuaries built before 1960 when the churches began to go into decline.
the point is the standard whether church or store is required to be neutral. Either way my own church by fire code or cubic feet per person, knowing 1/2 the congregation (most over 50) would not show up, would easily pass muster. And yes services in the sanctuary on a holiday weekend would be eerily quiet as they would in many mainline churches. It’s why we normally worship in the chapel which is usually crowded and would not pass muster under this test
