“Have it Your Way”: The WuFlu Safety Kabuki Theater at Burger King (and Everywhere Else)

TMEW, the Grandson, and I had to go run a bunch of errands yesterday (and pretty much all day). And at the end, TMEW and I looked at each other: “yep, fast food.” It was, again, getting late and neither of us wanted to wait for food to cook at home. So, we picked up Burger King.

Related: What if COVID is in 2020 What Climate Change was in 1980?

Now, I had noticed this before but decided to outline that while it may SOUND good, it really doesn’t matter what they are doing:

1. Drive up to the outside kiosk
2. Put in the order (Original Chicken sandwich, if it matters)
3. Drive up to the window
4. Take out my debit card
5. Put it into the proffered  open plastic box
6. Window employee, wearing gloves, picks it up, processes it
7. Puts it back into the box
8. I pick it up again
9. Employees make the meals, fold them up, put them into bags – not wearing gloves
10. Window employee takes the bags touched by other employees, puts them on a try, offers the tray to me.
11. I take the bags off the tray and drive off.
12. Eat the meal, touching and unwrapping the food that other hands touched, perhaps breathed on.

Seriously – “Contact-Free“?  Same deals with the Domino ads (“Frisbee into your car!”), Walmart “contact-free” pick up – and any number of other folks saying “Look, we’re safe!“.

Er, no.

In the above, my card goes where everyone before me has touched the inside of the box. Not everyone throws their card into it (Step #5) as some, like me, sometimes just place it – and touch the box in the process. I didn’t see anyone cleaning the box. Ditto for Step #8 – I have to reach in to get the card which is lying flat in the box so I MUST touch the box in order to pick up the card.

Everyone touches their cards – and the Window employee touches all those cards. Now, s/he may be protected against virus particles via the glove – but just the contact of putting the card into the box means s/he has to pick up the card along with any contaminating virus particles from the cardholder.

And then the workers making the food. Not everyone wears gloves (I’ve been inside). So even if the bags are on a tray, they only get there by the Window Employee reaching for them (again, particles on gloves!) and putting them on the tray. Unless EVERY employee is wearing gloves AND masks/shields, there is still “virus points of contact” possible.

So, is the process safe, or just a bit safer? The process of flying put me through the TSA Kabuki Safety regime many times over my career – did it make flying safer or only the presentation of being safer? A bit safer but not as much as they wanted us to believe.

And right on cue and in this same vein, this in from Commenter Purple Butterfly for a chuckle: