Inspection data doesn’t support indoor dining ban

(I) READ WITH interest your article (July 27) on the rapid-response inspections New Mexico is conducting with respect to business employees suspected of having COVID. I had read the same data you did on N.M. Environment Department’s website. It was a good article, but despite what it notes about rapid-response inspections at restaurants, it in no way gives support to the governor’s order to shut down indoor dining.

First, the rapid responses are about employees in businesses, not customers. The fact employees at restaurants are infected — quite likely due to contacts elsewhere — provides no evidence about transmissions between restaurant customers — such potential transmissions being the reason the governor shut down indoor dining. Apparently she has no data on customer-to-customer transmission, or if she does, it doesn’t favor her actions. Otherwise I’m sure we would have heard it.

Second, restaurant employees make up about 11% of the N.M. workforce, according to the National Restaurant Association, so the fact 15% of inspections by rapid response teams are to restaurants is not surprising.

Then I note about half of the restaurant rapid responses went to so far are fast food — mostly national chains — not comparable at all to traditional dine-in restaurants. Of the other half, about half of those are national chains.

So our local, traditional restaurants are doing pretty good, but once again the governor disfavors local business, shutting down their indoor dining while the data she cites — the rapid responses — indicates national companies are mostly the problem.

The ban on indoor dining is insupportable and needs to stop. How many local businesses are we going to kill, and how many locals are we going to put out of work with this unsupportable policy?

SAM HAAS Santa Fe