Thursday brought a new round of lockdowns and shutdowns for California after Gavin Newsom alerted the public that COVID hospitalizations were surging. Newsom told Californians that he would be eliminating outdoor dining and other services in regions that were nearing 15% of ICU capacity (which conveniently includes most of Southern California, which he seems to hate for some reason).

Of course, the governor never tells his constituents what the contact tracers are finding or where the real outbreaks are or what the demographics of COVID deaths might be. Those numbers won’t panic you. If you know California is at a perfectly typical ICU capacity rate for flu season, then you might not be terrified to leave your home. If you know that the majority of deaths are among those over 70 and with co-morbidities, you might not be terrified to go for a walk outside without a mask. If you know that no one really knows much of anything, you might not be so willing to listen to every directive out of the governor’s mouth.

We are over 300 days into “30 days to slow the spread” and the COVID fatigue has set in, aided in no small part by an elite, political class who continually break their own rules while stepping on the necks of the unwashed masses.

One California restauranteur has had enough of the constantly shifting COVID goalposts. With Newsom’s and L.A. Mayor Garcetti’s latest orders shutting down outdoor dining, Chef Andrew Gruel took to Twitter to inform the wardens powers-that-be that, after following every previous order to the letter, he refuses to shut down his last source of income – outdoor dining.

Gruel, who owns Slapfish Seafood, said he was sick of “haters” accusing him of being a “grandma killer” and wanted to add some much-needed logic (and maybe try to elicit a modicum of compassion from the lockdown apologists) to the shutdown discussion.

“Here’s the situation: do we take this pandemic seriously? Of course we do. Am I saying we shouldn’t close down outdoor dining? Yes, I am. At every single juncture along the way here from the beginning shutdown to today, we’ve listened to all the advice of our government officials only to be shutdown over and over and over again and then not compensated for the elements that we put in place in our businesses to protect our customers.  We shut down indoor dining. No problem. I gotta warehouse full of plexiglass right now, ok? We went outdoors…all right. Now that’s getting shut down. I just put thousands of dollars into outdoor heaters. There is zero scientific evidence that proves that outdoor dining is contributing to a rise in cases relating to this.”

Gruel went on to say that the reason he feels comfortable and safe keeping outdoor dining open is that people can get on airplanes and fly and eat, or even go to Walmart whenever they want (even without pants!), and everything is fine by the government. Big corporations like Amazon and Target are making tons of money, while small business owners who have been following health protocols to the letter are being punished and losing everything.

“Outdoor dining doesn’t lead to any of that [spread] therefore screw that, we’re staying open outdoors. It’s that simple. I’m not an asshole. The governor is.”

Amen, Chef. A to the freaking men.

Slapfish Seafood has locations across the country, in case you feel motivated to support logic and the American small business owner.

My message for all the haters. Please share the logic. Sorry, haven’t had a haircut since March. pic.twitter.com/SOjy3bt4l5

— Chef Andrew Gruel (@ChefGruel) December 3, 2020