I'm not an epidemiologist, unlike everyone else on the internet who reads a brief description of a scholarly article whose title reaffirmed what they already believed.
That said, it seems to me that two people speaking quietly at a restaurant where all the tables are well spaced is less of a COVID-19 danger zone than a place where every conversation resembles a furious baseball coach yelling at the ump. You shouldn't put your face close to someone else's and expel a fine mist of personal fluids, but in loud bars, you have no choice.
I always hated bar din, but it was the price you paid. Your friend says:
"Hey, you want to go somewhere that sounds like a jackhammer testing facility and talk until we have nodes on our vocal cords the size of Ping-Pong balls?"
"No. Why?"
"There'll be girls!"
"Let's go."
You show up at the bar, note that the volume is set somewhere between "permanent damage" and "war crime," even though there are six people in the place. Eventually you work up the nerve to talk to a stranger, and it goes like this: