By Eric Valentine
Last Friday—and as of press deadline this coming Friday, too—20-plus Hailey business owners gathered to discuss how COVID restrictions have impacted their respective businesses. The aim of the meeting wasn’t to complain about the real or perceived politics of it all or opine on the effectiveness or lack thereof of masks. Rather, it was about finding a scientific way to approach business reopenings, resulting in the best of both worlds: killing off the coronavirus while keeping businesses alive.
“We are trying to solve this with a scalpel rather than a blunt (expletive) hammer,” explained Oliver Whitcomb, the owner of Gravity Fitness and Tennis, a Hailey establishment that has spent thousands of dollars upgrading its air quality with a state-of-the-art HVAC air filtration system.
The “we” Whitcomb refers to is the recently named Hailey Business Owners Alliance. The scientific solution they want to ultimately propose to city and county officials involves scrapping the (for the most part) one-size-fits-all approach to business restrictions and to create tiers and categories more specifically focused.
For example, Whitcomb said the members would like to see tiers of business such as high-risk, medium-risk and low-risk. For each group, categories of required and optional COVID mitigation measures could be developed. But they could even take it a step further. Case in point: Whitcomb’s gym. If a business has put in an air filtration system where virus and bacteria cannot exist, then they would be allowed a higher number of maximum people allowed in a space at one time, or mask-wearing would become optional.
Whitcomb recently hired an air quality tester from Boise who took samples from Gravity just last week. They are awaiting results to establish a baseline for how the gym’s HVAC is performing. In the meantime, Whitcomb is also deep-diving some things we take for granted, like disinfectant. He’s since learned that each product has a different “dwell time”—the amount of time it takes for a product to destroy germs before it should be wiped off. Some products are effective in seconds, others take minutes and should not be wiped off right away. A categorical system could require businesses that wipe down areas between customers (like a restaurant) to use a product with a seconds-only dwell time. A business that doesn’t have a regular flow of clientele and only cleans areas at the end of a shift could be allowed to use the disinfectants that work better when they sit for minutes and air dry.
“The point is we can do this scientifically and that’s something that will actually help stop the spread,” Whitcomb said.
If you are a business owner, partner or manager, you are invited to attend the group’s next meeting. Details on time and place are available from Whitcomb at (208) 720-6088 or by email at mundonim@gmail.com.