Originally Posted by
MisterWhippy
"Shops": I'd give two answers, one for massage, another for brothels/FS...
I'm calling early December for hospitality and health services like massage. It won't be the first thing to reopen, since the state government will try to drip feed back our freedoms as long as they can, because they know our inadequate public health system is going to be overwhelmed.
FS/brothels: remember in 2020 they almost didn't reopen (were somehow left out of the reopening schedule)? Apparently took some heavy back-room negotiation to get them to reopen at all (despite little or no actual evidence of sex work being a significant public health risk).
I'm going to be a pessimist and say they won't reopen, we're going to see the defacto re-illegalization of sex work using the pandemic and public health orders as the excuse. Don't underestimate the forces across the political spectrum -- from the religious right to the feminist left -- that see prostitution as a social scourge.