Fort Worth’s rules on bars, restaurants were too loose; now, they’re getting tighter

Fort Worth officials are planning, within the next 24 hours, to revamp the restrictions on public gatherings announced Monday to reduce the spread of coronavirus, including limiting bars and restaurants to takeout service only.

That’s good. Monday’s announcement landed with a dull thud and raised many questions. Fort Worth limited crowds to half a building’s capacity or a maximum of 125, just hours after the president suggested social gatherings be capped at 10 — and not long after Dallas announced a complete closure of bars and no sit-in dining for restaurants.

City officials defend how they arrived at Monday’s guidance, announced by Mayor Betsy Price, amid a rapidly changing situation. But they acknowledge the cap on crowds needs to come down.

“We’re not waiting for cases to go up. We’re looking for risks of viral transmission that would lead to numbers going up,” Brandon Bennett, the city’s director of public health and code compliance, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board. “We’re ready to go to the next level. … That won’t be the final level.”

Bennett said restaurants in particular have been cooperative, and the next front will be looking at limits on crowds at grocery stores, malls and shopping centers.

“We will need to look at some of the areas that have not been fully touched by other orders in other cities,” he said.

Price said Tuesday on Facebook that grocery stores, in particular, will be asked “to be more diligent on social distancing.”

Fort Worth’s previous announcement seemed wholly inadequate, even with a relatively low level of known virus spread in Tarrant County so far. Price acknowledged that the best thing anyone can do is stay home, suggesting board games and binge-watching instead of going out. So it was odd to see officials leave a relatively loose cap on crowds in place.

After all, what happens in Dallas County and the rest of the metro area is bound to end up here. We’re too connected and too mobile. And Fort Worth can’t risk drawing more people to drive over right now because more bars and restaurants are available.

Fort Worth Fire Chief Jim Davis said his department is monitoring signals of health conditions, such as emergency response requests, what hospital and emergency-medical teams are seeing and the level of flu-like symptoms, not waiting for tests to determine if the virus is more prevalent than we realize.

“Right now, the curves are pretty flat,” Davis said, citing a “little increase in flu-like symptoms.”

City officials seem to recognize it’s time to step up as communities try to slow the coronavirus’ spread to ease the burden on the health care system. The sooner they enforce robust new plans, the better.

“We’re trying to do this with the community and not to the community,” Davis said. That’s a good strategy, as long as compliance continues and officials are prepared, if necessary, to enforce stricter provisions. This is a time to err on the side of caution.

News from Washington often overwhelms us, and we sometimes forget that our system of government is designed for states and communities to tailor policies for what works for their citizens. In an enormous, diverse country, that’s appropriate in almost all cases.

But an epidemic doesn’t pay attention to county or city lines. If the virus is spreading in Dallas — where total reported cases jumped to 28 early Tuesday — it’s almost certainly spreading in the entire metro area, which is mobile and far-flung.

Don’t take our word for it. Tarrant County public health director Vinny Taneja, while not commenting directly on Fort Worth’s orders, told county commissioners Tuesday that the first case of “community transmission” of the virus in Dallas was a big factor in Tarrant deciding to declare an emergency.

“Even though they are a separate jurisdiction, we are all one community,” Taneja said. He added: “We all eat at each other’s restaurants.”

Experts agree that we’re headed for an exponential explosion in the number of cases as more tests become available. The steps we’re taking now are meant to slow it down so that, as Taneja said, the health care system isn’t overwhelmed. It’s called “flattening the curve,” and it’s the No. 1 public-policy imperative everywhere right now.

That’s not to say policies have to be uniform. But being an outlier from what other areas are doing raises the risk.

Part of the problem, as Bennett noted, has been the speed with which guidance has changed. On Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested social distancing and isolation efforts would need to go on for at least eight weeks, with gatherings limited to no more than 50 people. The next day, the president warned that the ordeal could stretch well into the summer and made his crowd-limit recommendation of 10.

No one wants businesses to suffer. But economic consequences are inevitable. They’ll only be worse if public officials don’t take all necessary steps to limit the virus’ spread and if all citizens, not just the sick and vulnerable, don’t do their part to minimize contact with others.

This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 4:47 PM.