Judy Yu hasn’t given herself a paycheck this month. She estimates business at Sichuan Jin River, the Rockville restaurant she co-owns with two partners, has been down by about 35 percent so far this year—a trend she links to fears about coronavirus in the local Chinese community.

“I think it might be an overreaction,” Yu tells DCist, citing the fact that the confirmed cases of the virus are overwhelmingly concentrated in China’s Hubei province. (According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 34 confirmed cases in the U.S., and none in the Washington, D.C. area.)

Fears surrounding Chinese restaurants are largely misguided, according to public health experts: The virus—a respiratory illness spread through saliva, coughs, sneezes, and direct contact with those infected—isn’t transmitted through food originating from China. Customers are just as likely to contract the new strain “whether you’re at a pizza place or a Chinese restaurant,” Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School Center for Health Security, told the Washington Post.

And it’s not just fear—some owners say that sadness and concern about the outbreak in China made many customers less interested in celebrating during Lunar New Year.

Whatever is motivating the decrease, the consequences have been real for some local business owners. Yu says if the downturn continues, she’ll be able to pay her employees for another three or four months.

“After that it will be very tough,” Yu says. “We still have to pay the rent.”

Yu notes that she had friends who traveled to China during the holidays and then avoided public gatherings for two weeks because they were self-quarantining (as travelers from China have been asked to do).

Others, Yu thinks, have been avoiding community events and spaces because they don’t know who may have traveled to China recently.

“I think American people are concerned, but not as concerned as Chinese people,” Yu says. “I don’t know why. Maybe just people being careful.”

It’s not just establishments in the D.C. region that have seen a dip in business. Restaurants in Chinatowns across the country—including Boston, New York City, and San Francisco—have taken a financial hit due to panic over the novel virus.

However, a number of businesses DCist reached out to report that there hasn’t been a dramatic change in customer turnout since the outbreak. Larry La, the owner of Meiwah in Chevy Chase, says his restaurant hasn’t really been affected.

“We don’t see that much of a difference,” La says, noting that a significant portion of Meiwah’s clientele is non-Chinese. “But I can tell you that some restaurants that serve a lot of the Chinese community, mostly the dim sum places, they do have a difference in the people that come to the restaurant.”

A lot of community gatherings, La says—“anything that has a lot of Chinese people together”—have been cancelled.

The city of Rockville cancelled its Lunar New Year celebration in January. A statement from the city said “the decision to cancel the event was made out of an abundance of caution,” citing concerns from partners in the Asian-American community and event participants. (D.C.’s Lunar New Year Parade went on as scheduled.)

La suspects that misinformation about the virus is spreading on WeChat, a popular social media platform. The SARS outbreak of 2002 and 2003, he says, happened “at a time when not many people had a smartphone.” Now, things are different.

“Social media is so popular and so easy, and everybody just has their own news,” La says. “I think they scare themselves more than the real threat.”

Chris Zhu owns China Garden, a restaurant in Rockville that specializes in dim sum and is a popular space for large events. She estimates business has been down at least 40 percent this month. She doesn’t think it’s because customers are afraid of getting sick, though.

“People will feel sad for China and cancel or postpone the celebration, because a lot of people may have relatives or family over there” Zhu says. “It’s not the fear.”

Eight large Chinese New Year celebrations slated for China Garden were cancelled, Zhu says. Each of those parties could have hosted a maximum of 200-300 people.

Zhu says business on the weekends has gotten better over the past two weeks, and she thinks the upcoming season of weddings will help the restaurant catch up, but the downturn is “of course” affecting the bottom line.

To quell customers’ fears—unfounded as they may be—Tony Lee, manager of Mama Chang, says his staff has done even “more sanitizing than before,” doing extra cleaning of the tables, silverware, and floors of the Fairfax hotspot.

“This month, we have felt the effect,”  Lee says. “Asian customers haven’t wanted to come out. The sanitizing makes customers have more confidence to come to us.”

The outbreak hasn’t affected revenue enough to make the owners consider shuttering the restaurant, Lee says, and he hasn’t heard of specific numbers at other restaurants. Still, he says, “It’s a tough season for everybody.”