I’m in what was one of the hottest hot zones during the worst of it. I was going into the houses of the dead and dying and sometimes had to perform CPR on them. We are a very blue state that had a mask mandate that was adhered to very well. There were isolated stories of people protesting it but whenever I was out I saw 100% compliance.
Now almost nobody wears a mask myself included. It doesn’t feel unusual if I see someone that is but they are infrequent. Went to a Broadway play last week and ate in a Theater District restaurant. I was in a casino a week ago. Very few masks. But also at work very few to none respiratory distress calls.
I guess that depends on one’s pov. I wear mine most of the time in public indoor spaces and, cost-benefit-wise, for me there’s no cost. My wife, however, is a cancer-free survivor with a crappy immune system and we’re both in our 60s so the cost of not wearing a mask in such situations is just too high AFAIC.
Today I visited Minneapolis for work. Just into the airport & right back out to Dallas.
Zero people we carried from Miami to MSP were masking. Zero of 180. Probably 10-15% of the folks who got on in MSP were masked. Interestingly, many of the maskers appeared to be college-aged. Some oldsters too, but far from all.
Once we got to Dallas and debarked, they were lost in the sea of passengers changing planes to and from gosh-knows-where. Where masks were 1 in a hundred if that.
I’m now eating dinner in a hotel restaurant / bar in Dallas. Probably 100 people in here from kids to business-folks / conventioners to oldsters. Not only zero masks on faces, but zero evidence people have them on their arms, in their purses, etc. Staff certainly aren’t wearing them either.
Not sure what it all means, but masking and air travel / hotel facilities are no longer an inseparable pair like PB & J.
Maybe they’re like me, and decided that bringing in a mask to a restaurant for when you’re not eating is pointless, considering all the time you’ll be spending unmasked while eating?
Way back in May 2020 I decided I would stop doing things like masking when the state weekly average new case rate dropped below 100. (Threshold pulled from my standard statistical orifice.) I’m just stubborn enough to stick with it. Was starting to think that the state would stop reporting before it hit that limit. But yesterday’s number was 95. So according to my personal, completely non-scientific standard I can now stop.
I’m the kind of agoraphobic misanthrope for whom the pandemic was the perfect excuse to skip all that social stuff, so I’m not sure I’m eager to fully rejoining society. It did always feel odd to be one of the 1% or so of people still masking in Utah (all the other maskers seemed to be elderly).
Was in Japan last month when the mask mandate expired. Masking there is as total as it is non-existent here. I didn’t feel the need to wear one while outside and not near anybody, but when you see people biking alone with a mask you feel some pressure. Ending the national mandate didn’t seem to have any effect on how many were masked. Expect it will slowly go back to people with colds and allergy sufferers like it used to be over the next few years.
Not intending to second-guess your actions. Just curious about one thing. If the case rate climbs back above 100 is your intention to go back to masking?
Not according to the rule I made up for myself. I’ll just wing it. If cases seem to be really exploding I will. Masking, being a 99% stay at home shut-in has kept me covid free so far (that I know of, asymptomatic cases have been common since the beginning, are even more likely now vaxed and boosted).
I still don’t go out in public too often, and I tend to forget to put a mask on until I’m walking into a business. But I always keep one with me, and put it on when I walk indoors with strangers. In my state, there are still 390 new cases and about 14 new deaths per day. That will have to come down before I feel comfortable stopping.
A recent thyroid crisis has me especially vulnerable to infections of every sort, and even the smallest injuries take forever to heal. I’ve got a litany of health conditions, as do my housemates. So it’s not just covid I’m hiding from right now. When the thyroid meds get titrated properly, and we go a week without a covid death in my state, then I’m likely to go without a mask in public.
But I’m curious why you would choose state-level statistics versus county level. And why absolute numbers versus rates per populace. Or are they not available where you are?
In my state the statewide case rate number is 34 active cases per 100K population. But the county rates vary between 10 and 50 cases per 100K depending on which county.
If I was concerned about catching it, I’d be a lot more worried if I lived in a 50/100K county than in a 10/100K county.