The governments caught between a rock and a hard place here. They cant keep such a huge number of employees on furlough indefinitely. The Government, and these business owners dont want their businesses collapsing. Its a tax income for the Government and also the local councils and all the employees and 3rd parties that supply such places will be out of a job and on the dole.
So the government puts a scheme in place that encourages folk to leave the safe confines of their homes and to venture out to these places but only after there is a set of rules and procedures in place. Ie deep/deeper cleaning, PPE and distancing.
The Government would be blamed if they did nothing for these businnes, they are getting blamed for allowing this to happen and eveyone and their dog will moan about the tax hikes coming to pay for it all.
We made use of the 'eat out to help out' scheme. The missus, my 17 year old and the 2 and 1 year old. Only the three of us ate, the 2 and 1 year old picked at our food and just wanted out into the park to play. When the Bill came they gave us a tenner off the bill for all 5 of us. The wee ones got paid to turn up. Bonus!
The restaurant followed guidelines and procedures to the letter. Distancing, details taken, cleaning, face masks on employees and no ordering at the bar. We'd have a far hiher chance of getting C-19 in Tesco's.
I agree wholeheartedly with your last comment. It seems more and more like the Government is using this 'pandemic' to test, probe and analyze what we will and will not put up with as a population and then broken down into age brackets and demographics. So now the Government is targeting the young, the very group with virtually no deaths anywhere on the planet. Soon we'll have a curfew in place, all in the name of the boogeyman that is C-19. We'll be policing it ourselves though fear and media conditioning backed up with overeager officials and the police. The Government must be laughing all the way to the gulags. Never before have they had such success in fear manipulation, control and compliance from something that although exits has killed virtually no one. Almost every major player on the planet has viruses like this locked away in labs. I can almost envision a transition away from making the worlds most deadly viruses to making mild ones like C-19. Highly contagious but kills virtually no one but puts the fear of god into everyone. You dont even need any boots on the ground. Its quite genius really.