One of the notable developments of the pandemic era has been the tendency to use public health as a pretext for some other goal that has little or nothing to do with public health. You can see this, in different ways, in everything from Neil Young's war on Spotify and Joe Rogan to teachers union recalcitrance to President Joe Biden's legislative agenda. But let's start with an issue close to my heart: the fight over to-go cocktails in the state of New York.
Until the onset of COVID, it was illegal to purchase a to-go cocktail in New York. Bars and restaurants were strictly limited to on-premise sales. Legally, you couldn't take your end-of-night Appletini home with you. But when local officials shut down indoor dining in 2020, they made an allowance: Cocktails produced in a bar could be sold for takeout consumption. Suddenly, that Appletini became a grab-and-go purchase.
