Dr. Dana Lerman was on the verge of launching a mobile Botox service with her business partner Andrea Stone. They were hoping to improve the reputation of traveling Botox with their company Social Remedy, based in Denver, Colorado. They had a website, lawyers, insurance, and a planned launch date of the first weekend of June. Then the coronavirus hit. 

“My business partner and myself are very ambitious entrepreneurs, and we’re just not the type of people to sit and watch and just wait,” Lerman, an infectious disease specialist and entrepreneur, said. They knew they needed to pivot for the times.  

While their initial idea was to mobilize coronavirus testing (people “were sitting in their homes, terrified,” Lerman said), the concept evolved when they couldn’t get insurance. The Covid Consultants, a firm dedicated to advising entities from restaurants to nursing homes about how to reopen with minimal risk, was born. 

Now, as states have begun to reopen, businesses are desperate to serve customers in person and gain back revenue that was lost during the shutdown. Covid Consultants advises them on how to do so with minimal risk. Even beyond Lerman’s company, there is a huge market for coronavirus consulting. Many projects and deals from before the virus hit have been delayed, forcing consultants to adapt and businesses to seek help navigating the demands of the coronavirus. 

Vox spoke with Lerman about the tips she has for businesses and Americans to deal with the coronavirus safely as the country reopens amid rising infection numbers and fears of a coming second wave. 

“This is not a wave issue. This is a roller coaster, and this ride is not over anytime soon,” she said. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.   

What do the Covid Consultants do, and why is there a demand for your business?

Not only do you have these struggling businesses who are losing money left and right, but it’s impossible for them to get through these extensive guidelines. These people are not medical experts; they’re just trying to have their business survive, and they’re worried and scared and they want to make sure that they’re doing it safely or responsibly. That’s where we decided we would come in. We came together, created the Covid Consultants, and we are a consulting firm that helps businesses of any size and any function responsibly reopen. 

We do these extensive on-site evaluations, looking top to bottom and helping them correctly interpret the guidelines and get through those. We generate our own set of guidelines that compiles all the different ones and makes them readable. We understand that we’re all human beings, and we try to be realistic about expectations. Another thing that we do is we help people not waste their resources.

Now, a lot of times, people think that Covid Consultants are going to come into our place of work and they’re gonna recommend that we get UVC [ultraviolet germicidal irradiation] lighting and foggers and all these really expensive things, but that’s actually the total opposite of what we do. We go in and we help you to responsibly use your resources and not be wasteful about them. There is a lot of waste going around in a time when you really need to conserve those resources because everyone and their mother needs them. 

How do you communicate and meet with your clients? 

We go to their place of business, we walk through, we evaluate from the moment you can visibly see the establishment. We go to top to bottom. We comment on signage, we comment on placement of hand sanitizers, furniture. The list is endless. We look at your cleaning products. We run them through EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] websites to ensure that they’re coronavirus-certified. 

What does the day-to-day of your job look like?

For instance, yesterday we went to an assisted living facility and we met with the staff there, they gave us a tour, we discussed plans for the future. We discussed generating our own guidelines for them, [and] specific questions that they might have for their particular facility. Then, while we are doing that, our phone is ringing off the hook, because we also sell PCR [polymerase chain reaction] tests. 

How do you sell PCR tests?

There’s PCR tests that look for active coronavirus, and then there’s antibody tests, which look for previous infection. So we actually do both and continue to have antibody testing sites where we go to schools, athletic clubs, churches, and we offer those antibody testings to the community. We own our own centrifuge and we centrifuge the specimens on site, and then we ship them overnight to Washington. We get results within 48 hours. 

We also, in terms of looking for active coronavirus or screening asymptomatic people, we actually have a relationship with travelers to Alaska, because right now you cannot travel to Alaska, Hawaii, or French Polynesia without having a negative PCR test 72 hours prior to departure. So we partner with a laboratory in which we send clients a postmarked box; inside it is a specimen cup and directions. It’s a saliva test, so our clients spit in the cup, put it in the box, send it through FedEx, and that arrives in our laboratory in 24 hours, and we have results in 48 hours. It’s a luxury service that people are really appreciative of. 

There’s a lot of mixed information out there about antibody tests. How effective are they? 

I think it depends on which antibody tests you’re using. Obviously you want to use a test that is approved by the FDA under emergency use access, and then a lot of people that we test come in and say, “I swear January, February, I was so sick. I’ve never been sick like that before in my life. It ripped through my whole office; we all had it.” And then you get back your negative antibody test. 

What I think is happening is I think that they did have it, but you know we’ll never know because of the test inefficiencies that we were previously dealing with when this first happened. But I think that what we’re seeing now in some of the early data that’s coming out about antibody testing is that the antibodies don’t last long. So these people very well may have had it and their antibodies just went away. The common cold is [a] coronavirus. It’s just a different kind of coronavirus. You can get the common cold several times in the season, and that’s because you probably developed these antibodies; they’re short-lived, and then once they go away, you’re susceptible again. 

What is some general advice you give business owners about reopening?

You already know those tips. People know them. But we’re human beings, and they don’t act on them. 

I can go into facility after facility, a restaurant or whichever kind of place, when they see me come in, they put their mask on. And to me, you know, I think it’s lovely, thank you for putting your mask on to protect me, but also before I got there, you didn’t have your mask on. So people know what to do; it’s just challenging to do it. I’m human, and I understand. I don’t like wearing a mask all day either. It’s really uncomfortable, and it’s annoying to have to go wash your hands all the time and to not hug your friends and to maintain a social distance of 6 feet from all people. That is not how we are used to living, but that is how we need to live, at least right now, and I’m sure for the near future, at least, because this is not going anywhere, unfortunately. This is going to be here for a while. 

Can you tell me a little bit more about that? 

You’re seeing these cases and people talk about waves, but this is not a wave issue. This is a roller coaster, and this ride is not over anytime soon. I’m just being realistic, and my partners and I talk about this all the time. I would love for there to not be a need for my services. That would be really great for me, because I’m also a human. I’m a mom, I want to send my kids to school, I want them to be able to go to their jiujitsu class and be face to face with their music teachers, but this is just not the reality. We are all subject to this coronavirus, and that should really be bringing people together. People need to wear masks.

What a lot of people don’t know is that it’s not about you. It’s not about an individual person. It’s about transmitting it throughout the community, and that’s what people are really failing to understand. 

What have you noticed about restaurants reopening?

I went to my first restaurant last week, and I ate like I hadn’t had food in months. I sat outside because I think that sitting outdoors is safer than sitting inside. I strongly recommend outdoor eating over indoor eating, any day of the week. 

But I look inside, and I see that the tables are not 6 feet apart. That’s a real easy measure to implement — just rearrange the furniture. A lot of people don’t even want to go to a restaurant; a lot of people are not ready. But for those people who are ready, they should be able to walk into a place that has their best interest at heart and is educated and knows what they’re doing. Again, it’s not a challenge. Just move the tables apart. So that’s one thing. 

Providing hand sanitizer when you walk in, that’s another thing. Having menus that are not reusable. I personally have been to restaurants where I’ll look over and see someone ordering, looking at their menu, and they literally sneeze right into the menu. Then they leave that menu, and whether or not they wipe that down, who knows, and then the next person comes and opens, it touches it, and then goes and eats. So that is how people get sick. And it’s not just coronavirus right; it’s influenza, it’s all the other viral illnesses that are out there, and bacterial illnesses. Minimizing touchpoints is important, wearing masks when you can. 

What do customers need to know about restaurants reopening?

Just because it’s allowed doesn’t mean it’s safe. That’s a huge misunderstanding. We have friends who recently went out to eat together. They’re a group of 20-year-old kids. They did everything right, and a few days after that dinner, one of our friends learned that a few people at that dinner got coronavirus. While she knew she was exposed, she didn’t understand that she was supposed to quarantine. So people don’t even know the basic rules. 

If you went to dinner with people, and then a few days later you find out that they were all sick with coronavirus, that means that you could potentially have it too. And you could be asymptomatic and you need to stay home for 14 days and seek testing. But when you don’t know that, and you go out into the community, that’s how it’s spread around. It’s also understanding that when you go to a restaurant, that is a risk in and of itself. I’m not at all discouraging it, it’s just you have to know how to act. If the people at your dinner table all have coronavirus the next day, that means you need to act on that. 

How do you advise restaurants on reopening?

It’s about employees and it’s about restaurants’ patrons. We recommend that employees get temperature screened when they come to work [and] fill out a form of whether or not they have any symptoms, and if they have any symptoms at all they go home. Make sure your employees are safe at work, they’re not transmitting [the] virus to your other employees or people who come and eat at the restaurant. You might have a restaurant waiter or waitress who’s over 65 or who has diabetes or hypertension or heart disease. Those people are at increased risk of coronavirus, and maybe you wait until the next phase of reopening to bring back that vulnerable employee. 

We recommend that they have clear signage on the front door, this is what we expect of our customers. Wear a mask when you’re not eating, wash your hands, use our provided hand sanitizer upon entry. Please do not come into our restaurant if you have a fever or if you have symptoms of coronavirus or if you’ve recently been exposed to someone with coronavirus. Things like that. 

We also recommend that, like I said, they get rid of their reusable menus, condiments that are used by many people. We would prefer there are touchless condiment dispensers. I don’t know if people can buy those yet, but reusing those little packets with ketchup. While I do not want to create waste and I think this is gonna be an awful consequence of our times, I think right now that makes more sense than having a reusable ketchup bottle that everyone is grabbing. So it’s really those kinds of measures and socially distancing the tables. I think that those are the most important things. 

How has the experience of starting the Covid Consultants been? 

It’s just such an outrageous time as a physician and as an entrepreneur because the entrepreneurial playing field has just been leveled. I mean, before, it was so hard to come up with something novel and interesting, and because you’re competing with years and years of people doing the same thing over and over. But then when you have a viral pandemic and you happen to be an infectious disease physician from New York, it’s just so wild to me how I can have such an impact and help so many people. Even if Covid Consultants shuts down today and goes no further, besides my children, I think it’s my greatest accomplishment in my life. 

Most weekends from around 8 am to 2 pm, Lou’s Restaurant & Bakery is packed. Some choose to pick up a pastry and a cup of coffee at the quick service area near the front of the restaurant. For those who want to dine in, there are classic 1950s diner booths, but they’re often filled with hungry students. Most of the time, down the center of the dining room there’s a line of Dartmouth kids and locals waiting to be seated.

But since the coronavirus outbreak forced students to leave Dartmouth’s campus, the booths at Lou’s have remained empty. Hanover, New Hampshire, is a small town with a tight-knit community, where local businesses rely on college students to survive. 

“It still is a little bit eerie that the dining room is just empty all the time,” said Lou’s owner Jarret Berke. 

The Covid-19 pandemic forced college students around the country to evacuate campuses in mid-March. Many departed for spring break and never returned. Professors scrambled to move courses online, students moved home or off-campus for the remainder of the spring semester with no clear return date in sight, and seniors had their graduation ceremonies canceled as colleges and universities were forced to navigate higher education in a remote world. 

But when students left school, they abandoned more than just messy dorm rooms. Local businesses in college areas suffered economic losses as their regulars finished the academic year from their homes all over the world.  

“A big chunk of our customer base left town so it made it very difficult,” Berke said. “Initially, after the students left, when really the whole country went into lockdown, we saw about a 70 percent decline in sales.”

By innovating and finding new sources of revenue like takeout and revised menus, Lou’s now is able to maintain around 75 percent of its normal sales. 

“We’re still not doing great. We still would love to have the students back, but it’s enough that we can survive for a while,” Berke said.

In a 2017 article for the Atlantic, Alana Semuels explained how, in recent years, small colleges have been thought of as mechanisms to save and develop local economies: “The main benefits of educational institutions are twofold: They often produce research and technology that can be parlayed into new businesses, creating jobs nearby. And they bring to the area students, who spend money on restaurants and services, and attract professors and administrators, who do the same and also buy houses and cars,” Semuels wrote. 

As Gallup’s principal economist Jonathan Zeller told Vox, the reality of the pandemic and college students leaving campuses will significantly impact the cities and towns where they’re located. Zeller explained that college towns and neighborhoods are appealing places to move to because of local restaurants, coffee shops, and bookstores. But those businesses need students to be successful. 

“If that source of demand disappears for an extended period of time, those businesses are going to disappear, and that’s going to make that neighborhood a much less attractive place,” Zeller said. “It’s going to have just overall depressing effects on the local economy.” 

When students are away from home, they often find comfort and community in local restaurants and cafes surrounding college campuses. 

Tim Norris, the owner of Mom’s Dream Kitchen, a Southern cuisine restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi, said that students from nearby schools like Jackson State University often gravitate toward the home-cooked meals at his restaurant. 

“They wanted home cooking because they were away from home,” he said. 

But like other local restaurants, Mom’s Dream Kitchen suffered from the loss of student customers. 

“Since the pandemic, school pretty much shut down so a lot of our college students were no longer on campus, so we lost a lot of business,” Norris said. 

The sharp decline of local businesses in college towns has impacted Americans all over the country. Restaurants and shops near Bowdoin College were described as “reeling” after students left campus. Businesses near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill considered closing. The neighborhood surrounding the University of Pennsylvania “lost its life.” Some colleges and universities have even stepped in to help temper the effects of students leaving campuses by waving rent expenses for businesses that lease commercial spaces from them. Cornell University gave $100,000 to a fund in order to support Ithaca businesses.

Students and alumni have also made efforts to save local restaurants and shops as the pandemic costs them significant revenue. Middlebury College alum Nicholas Milazzo launched a GoFundMe that has raised more than $10,000 for five Middlebury, Vermont, restaurants. Milazzo, who formerly worked as an EMT and is applying to medical school next year, wanted to find a concrete way to make a difference without putting his family at risk of contracting the virus.  

“Middlebury already has trouble keeping its businesses going just because they’re so reliant on the students, and the students are gone for half the year,” Milazzo said. “So I figured, well, if restaurants in New York City are getting hit hard, I bet the same is happening in Middlebury.” 

Milazzo started distributing the money among five local businesses around a month ago, with each receiving more than $2,000. 

“Right away, a lot of people, before they left or when their families were picking them up, got gift cards or bought gift cards online,” said Matthew Delia-Lobo, co-owner of Royal Oak Coffee in Middlebury. The GoFundMe cash, he said, was “insanely helpful.”

Royal Oak, which Delia-Lobo opened around a year ago with his wife Alessandra, mainly employs students from Middlebury College. When their employees had to leave campus, the Delia-Lobos were forced to run Royal Oak alone. They also lost revenue they usually make from graduation events and summer programs, both of which were canceled. Royal Oak has two locations, and because of the lack of business, the Delia-Lobos had to temporarily close the one closer to campus.

“Both of us just hustled and worked every single day,” Alessandra Delia-Lobo said. 

Until students can return to college campuses, local businesses are finding new revenue streams to survive. Lou’s, for example, created a dinner menu targeted toward families, and Mom’s Dream Kitchen has been doing more delivery orders through GrubHub, Waitr, and Uber Eats.

As some colleges prepare to bring students back to campus in the fall, businesses are reimagining what their day-to-day will look like. At the same time, they are grappling with fears surrounding the risks of bringing students from all over the world back to college campuses. 

“A big kind of draw to any coffee shop in a college town is ‘I can sit and study or do homework,’ or, you know, sit inside and socialize,” Alessandra Delia-Lobo said. “So I’m a little worried that, you know, that draw won’t be there if we can’t open inside, because I’m worried things won’t improve fast enough.”

Business owners remain cautiously optimistic about their prospects while harboring fears about the dangers of reopening during a pandemic. While many colleges and universities are doing whatever it takes to get students back on campus, from dorms on tennis courts to contact-tracing apps, there is no way to ensure safety until a vaccine is widely available. 

“The thought of a couple thousand people from all over the country, all over the world, coming into Hanover where we haven’t had an active case in about four weeks, it’s a little scary,” Berke admitted. 

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, face masks have become a necessity, like keys or your wallet — you can’t leave home without them. For the reusable cloth masks popular with so many people, that means a lot of laundry. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends wearing masks in public settings, mainly to protect others from carriers of the virus. Many states, restaurants, bars, grocery stores, and major retailers also require patrons to wear masks in order to reduce the spread of Covid-19. 

Protective face masks have become a controversial touchpoint of the pandemic, with some Americans complaining and even having outbursts about wearing them. But science shows that masks are essential to preventing the spread of the virus. 

“We know the effectiveness of face masks already. There is the evidence base out there,” said Dr. Simon Kolstoe, a senior lecturer in evidence-based health care at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. 

But there’s one question that dogs mask-wearers: Do you really have to wash them after every use?

The answer is yes.

“It’s definitely recommended to wash that mask every day,” said Dr. Ravina Kullar, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist. Kullar points out that the purpose of the mask is to prevent the virus from spreading, so if there are virus particles on yours, wearing an unwashed mask is counterproductive. 

Still, despite this advice, surface transmission is not thought to be a major vector of coronavirus spread. The primary transmission mode is person-to-person contact. The recommendation to wash your mask comes out of an abundance of caution, as well as the object’s close proximity to respiratory output.

The CDC also recommends washing masks: “Masks should be washed after each use. It is important to always remove masks correctly and wash your hands after handling or touching a used mask,” the website says. According to the CDC, taking off your mask correctly means handling it only by the ear loops or ties, folding it to be placed in the washing machine, and washing your hands immediately after. 

Cloth masks can be washed by hand or in a washing machine. Surgical masks, another popular option, cannot be washed and should be discarded after one use. There is very little “peer-reviewed” information about how to wash an N95 mask. Some potential options include vaporized hydrogen peroxide, using dry heat, or UV light — methods that aren’t really suitable for experimentation at home. 

For cloth masks, if you’re using a washing machine, the CDC recommends regular detergent and “the warmest appropriate water setting for the cloth used to make the mask.” If you’re washing your mask by hand, you should prepare a bleach solution and soak your mask in it for five minutes, then rinse in cool or room-temperature water. Mask filters should be washed by hand. 

There are also certain practices to ensure you wash your mask effectively without wearing down the fabric too much. 

Patric Richardson, the self-styled Laundry Evangelist, said that a cloth mask can sustain around 100 washes if it isn’t run through the dryer, and 50 if it is. He also explained that the elastic parts of the mask are likely to wear down more quickly than the actual cloth. 

“Depending on the fabric, and of course that’s the million-dollar question with a handmade mask, but most fabrics are very durable for about 100 washes if they’re not in the dryer,” he said. 

Richardson also recommends wearing face masks made of cotton, which he said is most durable. While other materials like silk or even using bandannas are popular, they are often less effective and don’t last as long. In addition to picking a good material, Richardson stressed using detergent sparingly. 

“The skin on your face is pretty sensitive so you want to make sure that you don’t use very much detergent because you want to rinse it 100 percent clean,” he said. 

In addition to maintaining good washing practices, the type of face mask you use matters, too. Dr. Kolstoe made a video, testing different kinds of masks by attempting to blow out a lit match. If you can blow out the match, the mask is ineffective. And if you can’t, it works. 

“If you’re wearing this mask to stop you blowing your breath over other people, it makes sense that if you could blow a match out [or] blow a candle out that’s directly in front of you then the mask isn’t being particularly effective,” he said. 

Eventually, an overwashed mask could become more porous and lose its usefulness. When that happens, it’s time to get some new masks, either by buying them or making your own. Whichever you choose, just be sure you clean them after each use.

Weeks before the pandemic shut down the country, Robin Christenson woke up in the middle of the night. Initial fears about the virus had started to materialize, and she was worried. Then she came across an article about how there was a shortage of hand sanitizer. Christenson, one of the owners of Blinking Owl, a craft distillery in California, saw an opportunity for her businesses to grow. 

“So the next day, I ran to work and I sat down with my head distiller and I said, ‘Can we make hand sanitizer?’” Christenson said. 

In March, Americans panicked. They rushed to grocery stores, stockpiling everything from toilet paper to baking yeast, hoping to soothe their anxieties and prepare for the unforeseeable future. Hand sanitizer was one of the most in-demand items, with sales spiking 1,400 percent as early as January. While the Food and Drug Administration has said that hand-washing with soap and water is the best way to prevent the spread of infection, the disinfectant quickly became “something of a Holy Grail,” prompting worldwide shortages.   

Amid the growing demand for hand sanitizer, the FDA waived certain regulations for its production, paving a new way for the industry by allowing nontraditional manufacturers like distilleries and perfumers to produce their own sanitizers. For some business owners, that has meant a fast-growing new revenue stream. 

But the eased restrictions have also come with complications — just as states across the country are reopening, creating fresh need for sanitation. Although nowhere near the peaks of March, discussion around hand sanitizer is once again in the news, particularly around strange smells, faked products, and recalls. 

“They pinky-promised to follow the rules, but guess what? Some of them didn’t follow the rules,” said US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) consumer watchdog Teresa Murray of new hand sanitizer manufacturers. 

Those rules include what can be put into the formula. Some manufacturers have added methanol to their hand sanitizer formulas, which is toxic if it is absorbed through the skin and deadly if swallowed: “Methanol exposure can result in nausea, vomiting, headache, blurred vision, permanent blindness, seizures, coma, permanent damage to the nervous system, or death,” said an FDA press release. “Although people using these products on their hands are at risk for methanol poisoning, young children who ingest these products and adolescents and adults who drink these products as an alcohol (ethanol) substitute are most at risk.”

In Arizona, four people died and 26 were hospitalized after drinking hand sanitizer that contained methanol as an alcohol substitute. The FDA has now listed 87 potentially toxic hand sanitizers.

“There is some irony here that you’re using hand sanitizer to try and be safer, and in some cases, it can actually be making you sick,” Murray said. The US PIRG is advising people to stick with brand-name hand sanitizers in order to avoid contamination, or choose brands that manufacture other hygiene products like shampoo. Murray also suggested avoiding discount stores. 

There have also been complaints about odd-smelling hand sanitizers (due to lack of carbon filtration), excessive stickiness, and false claims by manufacturers. The FDA has accused one Iowa-based hand sanitizer company of promising that its sanitizer could “mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose, or cure COVID-19.”  

“If the FDA doesn’t get a tighter grip on this going forward as things reopen, we could end up seeing many more problems,” Murray said. 

Many of the toxic sanitizers on the FDA’s do-not-use list are manufactured outside the US, largely in Mexico. But recently, a hand sanitizer made by a Tennessee distillery was labeled toxic. 

While hand sanitizers that contain methanol have become an increasing problem since the FDA’s restrictions were eased and new players entered the market, there are many businesses and distillers committed to producing safe and usable hand sanitizers. 

Linda Evans O’Connor, VP and chief of staff for Lachman Consultant Services, has received an uptick in calls from businesses looking to get into the hand sanitizer industry, after Lachman released a condensed version of the FDA’s guidelines for production in layman’s terms.  

“We saw sort of a progression from these companies saying, ‘Hey we want to do this just to help us get through Covid and just under the emergency use authorization,’” she said. Now she’s hearing that these same companies want to stay in the hand sanitizer business “because this isn’t something that’s going away.” 

Christenson conducted thorough research and followed the World Health Organization’s (WHO) formula in order to safely produce hand sanitizer at her distillery. She also received help from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States’ online educational resources. 

“We continue to supply large, large volumes of hand sanitizer, more than we ever dreamed we would continue to make,” she said. “It doesn’t show any signs of falling for us.”

Owner of Black Momma Vodka Vanessa Braxton has also started making hand sanitizer during the pandemic: “I never thought I would make hand sanitizer. That was never in my view until the pandemic,” she said. 

Braxton’s company has a loyal customer base, with more than 60,000 online shoppers. She initially started making hand sanitizer after the American Distilling Institute requested she help supply the government and local community. Since then, Braxton has been closely following the WHO’s formula and is now registered with the FDA. She has also made it a priority to employ people in her local community and manufacture all of her products in the US.

“A lot of companies are making hand sanitizer but they’re not registering or getting a permit from the FDA to do it,” she said. “That’s how you make sure, too, that you’re providing a safe product.”

Since Black Momma Vodka has started producing hand sanitizer, the demand has skyrocketed. Braxton is now in the process of expanding her hand sanitizer line to include new scents like lavender, peach tree, sage, and lemon.  

“We’re selling hand sanitizers night and day,” she said. “I’ve learned the industry and I’m now perfecting the formula and doing research.”

It is no secret that the expansion of the hand sanitizer industry has come with dangers. But it has also presented entrepreneurs with a new opportunity for growth at a time when many businesses are struggling to get by. 

“I think that some of these recalls are going to weed out some of the players in the industry that are not conforming, and that the ones that are truly wanting to make the product according to the guidance are going to succeed,” O’Connor said.  

“All of us workers, we’re scared shitless,” said Shanga McNair, a bartender in Florida who recently went back to work.  

As states have aggressively pushed to reopen (and many too soon, according to experts), patrons are rushing to eat in restaurants for the first time in months. There are new regulations in place, varying by state and county, with some restaurants enforcing their own rules, including tables spaced 6 feet apart, reduced seating capacity, and disposable menus. But even wearing a mask is challenging in a restaurant setting: “You can’t wear a mask and eat your food and drink your drink,” said Kayla Harter, a server from Southern California. 

Restaurant work looks very different than it did before the coronavirus, and those returning to serve customers in person are putting their lives at risk. Many employees have been out of work for months, scrambling to make ends meet, and are forced to go back to their jobs no matter what it costs their health. Others lost their employment during the pandemic — with restaurants closing or winnowing staff — and still others have chosen, as reopening ramps up, not to go back to work. Vox talked to five servers, bartenders, and kitchen staffers about the fears and necessities of working in the food service industry during a pandemic. 

“We’re trying to do our best”

When we get into work we put our stuff down, we put a mask on, we clock in, and then we get our temperature taken. As long as we have a temperature under 100, we can start working. If it’s higher than 100, we need to wait five minutes and then try again because it’s really hot here. Once we’re ready to start work, we’ll wash our hands, put on gloves, and then open up our section.

Speaking through a mask, and people not always being able to understand what I’m saying, that means that there are sometimes errors in the order. So just being aware of that and learning, making sure I really clarify with my guests what they’re asking for as well as being spatially aware. I don’t have peripheral vision down from my mask. I’ve run into people way more than I have in the past, or tripped on things because I just don’t see below a certain point. But the guests have been excited to be back in the restaurant, and they often have, you know, empathy and compassion for us as we’re trying to do our best.

We’ve had a few issues with people almost wanting to get into fights with us about the fact that we only have five people sitting at each physical table. We’ve had multiple parties walk out or start a fight with the manager or just become hostile because of that rule. But other than that, people have been pretty compliant. 

—Michaela Frantz, server, Las Vegas, Nevada

“I chose not to go back”

I chose not to go back, because [my] restaurant is in downtown Huntington Beach, which has been the site of a lot of anti-mask rallies and protests. So I chose not to go back quite yet, and I’m actually very glad I did because I guess it has been, first of all, a shitshow. This last week, four of my coworkers tested positive for Covid. Actually, a lot of different restaurants in the Orange County area have had staff outbreaks in the last couple weeks. 

I only worked maybe two to three days a week, but it was about $1,500 to $2,000 a month and so it’s just been really interesting having to reallocate my funds and figure things out.  

I have a respiratory immune deficiency where I don’t have the antibodies to fight off pneumonia, and I also got a kidney removed in December. Since Covid causes pneumonia and affects your kidneys, I really shouldn’t get this. So when the cases go down, I probably will [go back to work].

Most of the staff was not comfortable to go back, but a lot of people had no choice. So I strongly urge all my friends [not to] be selfish and sit in a restaurant just because you missed it. You’re putting other people’s lives at risk and their families’ lives at risk. 

—Kayla Harter, server, Orange County, California

“People are still willing to come in and put in the effort to make sure the restaurant is going to survive”

Being back at work, it feels like more of a community push. Everyone at work isn’t necessarily there because they need to come back to work, and they’re worried about themselves. I’m in a fortunate situation where I work in a place where we’re all kind of gathered, or rallying around the business itself. 

People are still willing to come in and put in the effort to make sure the restaurant is going to survive. I think that is a big driving factor behind everyone’s push right now. Before, it never really occurred to anyone that the business would not be able to keep up, and now it’s on the front of everyone’s minds.

—Zach Van Horn, cook, State College, Pennsylvania

“I’m scared of getting sick and then passing it on to my family, but there’s nothing I can do”

We’re not making money like we used to, but we can’t not go to work. You have to go to work; if you don’t go to work, you can’t get unemployment. 

So, I mean, it’s just a shitshow right now. I’m scared, you know — I’m scared of getting sick and then passing it on to my family, but there’s nothing I can do. 

I’m 40, and I have a daughter. She’s 20 and she lives in Mississippi and she works in the service industry. So [one day] I’m behind the bar and I get a call from my daughter. So I pick up my phone and she was like, “Ma, I tested positive.” I didn’t know what to do because she’s far away from me. She’s in Mississippi with my grandparents, and my grandparents are almost 80. 

So I tell my boss, “Look, my daughter just tested positive, so I gotta go, I gotta figure out what to do.” And he was like, “If you leave, you’re fired.”

—Shanga McNair, bartender, Jacksonville, Florida

“The customer is always right, even during the pandemic” 

We don’t give out condiments anymore. We give out little portions of steak sauces and ketchup and salt and pepper packages, but we don’t give bottles anymore. And we get lots of complaints about that. All of the servers and everybody who’s out on the floor has to wear a mask, and we get complaints about that. And we’re just sanitizing everything more now. We don’t give out menus anymore, we give out paper menus, or there’s a QR code on the table that they can scan for the menu. Because I work in Texas at a steakhouse, a lot of the guests that come in think the virus is a hoax, and they’ll resent us for wearing a mask and they’ll complain about the way things are different. 

I’m making money again, but it’s my only option. I like being able to pay my bills, but they just kind of like threw us out there to the dogs; we’re not getting protected at all. We’re having to wear masks, we’re required to for the guest safety, but the guests can basically do whatever they want and we just have to take it, because the customer is always right, even during the pandemic.

—Kennedy Hogan, server, Temple, Texas 

Sam Chaudhry is closing on a $1.2 million house that the buyers have never been to. His clients, a husband and wife with a young child, are moving to Texas from South Carolina. The husband is working from home, and the wife is a physician. Because of the nature of the wife’s job paired with the risk of contracting the coronavirus and getting their child sick, the couple is not touring homes in person. First, they did a buyer consultation on Zoom. Then they had family visit the home and FaceTime them for a virtual showing.  

“Buying a home is a very emotional process,” Chaudhry, a real estate broker and managing partner at Remax in Houston, said. “Because when people walk in, they want to see their furniture in there, they want to see where their kids can be, or where they want to be growing their family.”

As the world has adapted to the coronavirus outbreak, the real estate market has shifted. Although it varies state by state, housing prices have not dropped significantly in the way some may have expected, and the future of the market still remains uncertain. While some have lost their jobs and are looking to downsize, others are packing up moving vans and upgrading to larger homes. A recent study from OJO Labs concluded that 80 percent of buyers postponed or stopped their housing search, Forbes reported. The same study showed that buyers are still looking at listing photos and taking virtual tours of properties. 

The coronavirus pandemic has left real estate agencies, brokers, and agents at the forefront of a changing market. Vox spoke to Chaudhry, who sells and acts as a rental broker, about his experiences during the pandemic and how real estate is “still on fire” (in a good way). This interview has been edited for clarity and length.   

How has your job changed since the coronavirus outbreak? 

Because of the coronavirus, we actually ended up going pretty much 100 percent virtual. If we were doing a buyer consultation, we were doing it virtually, because the majority of the sellers were actually at that time also not allowing showings. If we went there, we had to sign the Covid forms, and we would take all precautions with masks and gloves and sanitizers and all the rest of the details. 

There was a shock to the system for the whole real estate system, but they actually ended up adapting pretty good. 

How do you deal with home showings during a pandemic? 

Initially we still had some clients who were flying in from out of town, and any time they wanted to, we had to show the property. We would be taking all of the precautions: We would have face masks on, gloves on, and we will have hand sanitizer and try not to touch the surfaces. We kept a 6- to 7-feet distance between the clients, and we left the door open so they could come and take a look at it, yet we still were 6 to 7 feet apart. 

How has the coronavirus affected your business? 

One of the first things we actually ended up doing was reaching out to all the clientele and reassuring them that even though this is a temporary setback, everything should be okay, especially for the sellers we were working with. With the buyers, we had a few deals which actually terminated the contracts because of the Covid situation. But we stayed in touch with our clients pretty strongly, and our business is actually up compared to last year at the same time. 

What does a typical workday look like for you during the stay-at-home order? 

I would come to the office, of course, because we were essential services. We had transactions which were still in the pipeline. I would come in, but instead of more face-to-face meetings, it was Zoom calls, and a lot of phone calls with a lot of previous clients, or new clients we were reaching out to. We would reassure them of the market, and I did inform them that things might be different right now, but if they needed anything we were always a phone call away. 

How do you envision the real estate market will change over the course of the next few months? 

Real estate is still on fire. 

[In May], there was a decline in sales by 3.7 percent in Houston. The reason is that real estate is a lagging indicator. It takes approximately 35 to 50 days for a transaction to come through the pipeline or to show the numbers. So if we’re looking at the month of May, numbers which are negative, that means the months of March and April, all those people who could not go out for the showing or could not go out for the transaction. 

One of the biggest things that happened was they drained the inventory [of homes]. A lot of people wanted to show the property … but didn’t want anybody to come and touch the surfaces. Because they drained the market, it created a shortage of inventory where we are facing multiple offer situations whenever we are submitting the offer. And this is not all over the place, this is very, very patchy at a lot of different price points. Last month, all the price points were negative; it doesn’t matter if you were buying a $50,000 house all the way up to $1 million-plus, all the sales were down. 

But we’re anticipating a very solid month of June. Kids and families who want to buy a house, they’re out and about, and because of that it’s creating a very solid market, plus low interest rates. 

So you’re saying sales were down last month. Do you think prices will drop or remain the same? 

Prices will go up. If there is an incremental spike down, it won’t last long. But remember, every market is gonna be different. The Las Vegas market is a more service-oriented market, which is based on almost 75 percent hotels and casinos. And those people are not going there. So absolutely their prices are going to be affected. But on the other hand, it’s such a diverse real estate market out here in Houston. 

What are your clients’ biggest fears and frustrations? 

An appraisal which would usually take anywhere from seven to 10 days or so is now taking 14 to 20 days or so. That is becoming one of the challenging things for us. 

The other challenging thing — and this is kind of opposite to what you have probably heard — is with the high-end market. Over $750,000 or $500,000 is considered a jumbo market down here in Houston. A lot of banks stopped offering loans above a certain price point, or in jumbo financing, and we had to scramble. I have clients who are moving in from South Carolina right now and in this position, and the two or three banks we ended up going to were not offering jumbo financing. 

As things start to reopen, has that changed your business? 

My business has changed quite a lot, but we have become more remote and are doing transactions more virtually. So the world has pretty much changed for us. 

We are going to have a recession, which is coming. The only thing is a lot of people are not feeling it for the time being because they are getting such huge unemployment benefits. But that is coming to an end in mid-July. We believe that the spike in the market for unemployment is going to rise again. That will make consumer sentiment more negative. We might have some slowdown, but we’ll see. 

How do you think this might change the real estate world going forward? 

One thing people have recognized is that you can just do a transaction over the computer or over the phone. The process is going to still be the same because buying a house is a very personal thing, and clients still want to be reassured at every step of the way. Especially during pandemic time, good real estate agents become extremely valuable because they can guide and anticipate what can go wrong because of the pandemic. [Clients] still want to be reassured that they’re going to be okay.