Open your doors to alcoholics

LET MY PEOPLE GO…IN –

July 9, 2021 – Many venue owners are, simply, refusing to follow the science for the sake of reassuring their skeptical primary audiences. For example, before COVID, a meeting I regularly attend took place in a senior citizens’ center. Now, that gathering takes place in the parking lot, a clunky-at-best setup considering the group’s size and, of course, dependence on fair weather. We’ve gone from freezing in February to frying in July.

Given what we now know about how COVID spreads, the risk to the venue’s core constituency — seniors — in allowing that meeting to congregate indoors is essentially nil, especially if the building insisted that attendees wear masks, a perfectly responsible request at this still-nascent stage in society’s reopening.

It’s not as if the two constituencies — in this case seniors and AA meeting attendees — are mixing. We gather among ourselves behind closed doors and, further, AA has a long history of respecting venues that rent spaces for meetings. We are never seen, rarely heard and, with the vast majority of COVID cases transmitted in close quarters, certainly aren’t going to get anyone sick.