Andrew Cuomo opens Bills game, not restaurants

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing accusations of pandemic hypocrisy for revamping his public-health order to allow fans at next week’s Buffalo Bills playoff game while keeping a lid on the state’s struggling restaurants.

Mr. Cuomo’s decision last week to permit 6,700 attendees at next weekend’s playoff game was cheered by Buffalo boosters — no fans have been allowed so far at the Orchard Park stadium during the 2020 NFL regular season — but also prompted restaurant aficionados to call foul.

“Cuomo’s latest decision to allow fans — and himself — to attend the Bills playoff game is a slap in the face to restaurant owners and their employees whose establishments have been banned from providing indoor dining, just miles away from the stadium,” said Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the Job Creators Network, in a Sunday statement.

He said that of all New York businesses hurt by the novel coronavirus, “restaurants have arguably been hit the hardest” as they struggle under the latest ban on indoor dining enacted Dec. 14.

New York restaurant owners have filed several lawsuits against the shutdown order, arguing that the state’s own contact-tracing data from September-November shows that restaurant and bars were responsible for 1.43% of COVID-19 cases.

A survey last month by the New York State Restaurant Association found that 54% of state restaurants said they would not survive another six months without federal relief, compared with 37% nationwide.

Andrew Cuomo:

Restaurants must stay shut down!

Also Andrew Cuomo:

The Buffalo Bills can host thousands of fans!

If the NFL doesn’t have to follow lockdowns, why the hell should small businesses?

— Andrew Pollack (@AndrewPollackFL) December 31, 2020

“If Andrew Cuomo had spent more time in 2020 looking at the facts, instead of writing a congratulatory book about himself, he’d see that his latest restrictions are nothing more than a killing blow on struggling restaurants,” said Mr. Ortiz.

Mr. Cuomo said Wednesday that the state would allow the fans in the stadium under “strict COVID-19 protocols” developed by the state, the team and BioReference Laboratories, which include testing, face masks and social distancing.

“Bills fans have waited decades in order to attend a home playoff game and we have worked to build an innovative pilot program to make that happen safely,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “All season long, the Bills’ stellar play has captured a certain energy and charisma that is undoubtedly infectious, but we all need to be smart.”

The Bills last appeared in NFL playoffs in January 2018, losing on the road to the Jacksonville Jaguars, but next weekend’s game will be the first home game since 1996. The stadium can seat 71,000.

The governor’s order also bans tailgating, prompting skepticism from Staten Island Advance columnist Tom Wrobleski.

“Yeah, right. Members of Bills Mafia, one of the most hard-core fandoms in sports, will be watching their first home playoff game in years and they won’t tailgate,” he said in a Wednesday column. “These are the fans who jump on and throw each other through folding tables as part of their pre-game fun.”

He added that “if you can manage that risk, you can certainly manage indoor dining in New York City.”

Mr. Cuomo argued that sitting outside at a football game is less risky than indoor activities, while restaurant owners said that they have shown they can limit the virus’s spread by following the Centers for Disease Control guidelines.

“I want people to be able to make the same choice and come and support us, just as they’re going to go root on the Buffalo Bills,” Don Swartz of Veneto Gourmet Pizza and Pasta in Rochester told Fox News.

The state contact-tracing report showed that household gatherings are the primary spreaders of COVID-19 cases, not eateries. An Erie County judge ordered the state last week to compromise with Western New York restaurants or provide scientific evidence to back the indoor-dining lockdown.