10 PM - Witching Hour?

 For a number of months....while watching California, NY City, and major metropolitan cities of Germany....engaged in control of bars and restaurants....I've come to this odd moment of reality.  There is apparently some type of belief that once you go past 10 PM....the Covid-19 'witching-hour' then approaches. 

Naturally, I've thought a lot about this.

Growing up in a dry-county in the rural regions of Alabama....generally, most folks didn't ever think about 10 PM meaning much except for the local news passing on weather alerts (tornado situations), bank robberies, or urgent news about school closures.  The idea that 10 PM represents something about the local bar-b-q shack closing, or the local honkey-tonk across the county line (where they serve booze until midnight)?  Well....that might be a moment of discussion, but it goes nowhere.

I've traveled a lot around Europe over the past thirty years, and generally found that most folks eat between 5:30 PM and 8 PM (unless you hang out in Spain, then it goes to a much later hour).  Course, in the same environment, folks finish up eating and then drinking starts to occur....going easily to 11 PM onto midnight.  Generally, folks don't over-drink or get slushed-up on booze (well, unless you are talking about Germans on holiday on some Greek or Spanish isle). 

This current idea of 10 PM being the magic hour that solves Covid-19 issues?  On the 2nd of November in Germany....that problem got fixed.  All bars, clubs and restaurants went to full-up closure, unless you were ordering a dinner for pick-up.

Coming the 1st of December?  No one is really clear on the idea if bars, clubs or restaurants will re-open.  The political chatter is mostly....don't go expecting anything to happen.  The general public chatter is that one month of shut-down is reasonably OK, with grumbling being part of the landscape.  As we approach 1 December?  Well, I suspect that 50-percent of the public will now ask questions over 1 January, and if this trend continues on until spring of 2021.

The 10 PM discussion coming into play?  No one says much.  Maybe they could open the bars, clubs and restaurants.....with closure coming at 10 PM, to make the politicians happy.

So you come to the real crux of this discussion....is there any science to 10 PM being a 'witching hour' or opening up matters for Covid-19?  The answer?  No.  I'm sure that 10k German PhD candidate students would like the project and would readily discuss being beer/food consumers for a study on eating and drinking before 10 PM or after 10 PM.....but the professors would probably start laughing over the idea of this being worthy science to jump into.

If this sounds awful stupid....well, yeah it is fairly stupid.