California’s Health & Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly admits the ban on outdoor dining is about control, not science.

If you watch the vid, go to 26:14 for this

“As it relates to the question about indoor dining or outdoor dining, I think one thing that I have tried to message and emphasize is that right now we’re seeing such high levels of transmission that…every activity that can be done differently and keep us at our homes, not mixing with others, is safer. Those are going to be the tools that help us get this under control.

“So the decision to include, among other sectors, outdoor dining, and limiting that, turning to restaurants to deliver and provide takeout options instead, really has to do with the goal of trying to keep people at home, not a comment on the relative safety of outdoor dining.

And we have worked hard with that industry to create safer ways for outdoor dining to happen, to keeping tables farther apart, to ensuring masking happens as much as possible, to create opportunities for air circulation to continue. All of those factors make sectors like outdoor dining lower risk. But right now, with the levels of transmission that we’re seeing, we advise against anything that you can do in another way, in a lower risk way, that avoids you either leaving your home or only leaving your home in a way that doesn’t expose you and cause you to mix with others.”