In theory they can, but in practice they don’t.
I mean, this is sound logic to anyone who has been out on the town late at night. As the night wears on people get intoxicated on being around others and, well, just plain intoxicated. Social distancing precautions that were easier to observe at an earlier point in the night become less so. People revert to old habits.
There’s the fact that people tend to bar-hop past a certain hour thus bringing them into contact with more different groups of strangers.
And the simple fact that being in the bar from 10-2 (hypothetically) means 4 more hours of potential exposure even if we assumed everyone was following proper precautions (since even following proper precautions doesn’t reduce the risk of transmission to zero, it only lowers it).
There’s nothing much these orders can do to stop people from taking the party to a private residence for example, but at least then they’re less likely to be mingling with a whole bunch of strangers.
