If You Open It, They Still Won’t Come: Restaurant Edition

In case you haven’t already seen it, here is the OpenTable restaurant reservation data from 3 Confederate States that “reopened” their economy at the end of April: 

(Click on image to enlarge)

Even though restaurants were open again, reservations were still down over 80% from a year ago.

This highlights an important behavioral aspect of the pandemic: people did not wait for their State governments to order lockdowns in order to stop the face-to-face economic activity. In all States - those that locked down early, late, or not at all - people dramatically slowed down non-“socially distant” participation:

(Click on image to enlarge)

This also explains what we see in the Florida data (which has other issues: e.g., snowbirds who have died in Florida haven’t been counted in its data):

(Click on image to enlarge)

Cases of coronavirus peaked in early April (no later than the 8th), the same week that Florida finally and belatedly went to a Statewide lockdown - I.e., too early for the lockdown to have made the difference.

The evidence is that in general seniors in Florida continue to be seriously concerned about their vulnerability to the virus, and are staying home, regardless of what their governor’s actions.