We risked death-by-variant-COVID-19 today at the Watertown Mall, meeting friends for dim sum. Although the Massachusetts state of emergency persists at least until June 15, a combination of 69 governor’s orders as of yesterday boiled down to “masks are no longer required indoors”. (Or at least, “you can’t be arrested or fined under state law for not wearing a mask indoors”; maybe a city or town could order you to wear a mask.)
I would have expected an enterprise that makes money from inviting the public to share an indoor space to deemphasize the risk of sharing an indoor space as soon as that deemphasis was legal. To the contrary, however, the shopping mall operator and some individual stores had kept up their sign barrage. We walked by at least 40 COVID-related signs between the door to the small mall and the restaurant itself (waitstaff still fully masked). How does this help their business? Wouldn’t an intelligent person who believed all of these signs decide to stay home and order everything from Amazon rather than take the risk of in-person shopping?
A sampling:
The mall includes a Target and 100 percent of the shoppers whom I observed were masked, both in the Target and in the rest of the mall.
I asked two of our (adult) friends how many COVID signs they’d walked past in getting from their respective cars to the restaurant. Both answered “none”. One was sufficiently mindful of COVID-19 that he arrived in a double-mask (fabric over N95) while the other sported a plain N95 mask. Yet their minds hadn’t registered the signs.
Note that the public health experts who have technocratically managed the Massachusetts plague such that our COVID-19 death rate, adjusted for population over 65, is only 3X that of Florida’s (a Robert S. McNamara-style victory?), still advise subjects to wear masks, especially for those who are not vaccinated.
(A few days ago we went on a bicycle ride with the kids in a quiet exurb. Slender apparently health people aged 10-20 would jump off the sidewalk in order to maintain at least 10′ of distance and if they weren’t already masked would rush to raise up their chin diapers.)
Similar in NYC. Seems that about 95% of the pedestrians on the street are masked, about 95% of the drivers seem masked and in the large shopping mall occupying the old world trade center seems about 99% of the pedestrians are masked. The shops mostly empty welcome customers with a no mask no service sign or something charmingly similar. In the elevator (occupancy limited to 4 people wearing masks) a woman of an age and social class no doubt vaccinated helpfully pointed out that my mask was not properly covering my nose.
Dim Sum and then some!
The airports still have 9/11 fear porn signs up, expect covid fear signs to be up long past the coming fake alien invasion.
Not sure if these guys are really afraid of virus, demonstrating their Biden loyalty, or proving their rightousness. Mask wearing was already common on BART, years ago. The true believers are probably going to the grave with their masks now. Having said that, Calif* continues to have a lot more cases than it did in the early months when panic was maximum.
A lot more cases of what?? Mask wearing, or the virus?
https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/
Head on up to the Mall of New Hampshire if you want a maskless redneck experience!
Today I observed roughly a 60%/10%/30% proper mask/chin mask/no mask ratio.
It’s funny how many families and even couples were masked except for the oldest male (i.e., the one most at risk).
There’s also a remarkably obvious political correlation. For example, I observed a Karen tourist with a “Live Free or Die” shirt wearing a tight fitting mask, wheras a young lady with a “Virginity Rocks” sweatshirt was walking around naked-faced.
The New England Republicans are mostly unmasking, as long as they are out of screaming range of the Boston Karens.
I needed supplies for our RV trip and went to the Seattle suburb Costco few days ago. Prior to that Costco proudly announced that you don’t have to wear musk if you are fully vaccinated. On my arrival it was clear that the policy turned out to be short-lived. Out of curiosity I inquired of employee what was the current policy. In somewhat confused and prolonged explanation, I learned what can be summarized as following: “King County orders superseded CDC orders and allow unmasking only if vaccination proof is presented. Costco cannot required vaccination proof. On the other hand Costco cannot prohibit unmasked person to enter”. I went in without mask and was only one of the four unmasked in the entire store.
I loaded purchased supplies into RV trailer and we headed out to the Silverwood Theme Park in Idaho. Everyone is without masks, everything is normal. There are some rare COVID signs still left though. This weekend they just opened new monorail roller coaster, third such system in the world. They were able to build it in the record time because the company that build it was about to go out of business due to cancelation of orders and they jumped on the opportunity.
Today, we went to Not Your Average Joe’s in Waltham. We walked in with masks on us but the waitstaff didn’t have one. I asked, if masks are required, she said “no” — we all took ours off in a heartbeat. I looked around hard and didn’t find anyone wearing a mask. Not only that, they didn’t block out tables for “social distancing” — it was like the good-old-days. It was a good experience to be in a place with no chin diapers.
Yesterday, I was over at Home Depot in Waltham. Everyone was wearing a mask, including in the parking lot.
It’s an OK place. We used to go there for lunch because our office was located about a hundred yards from Joe’s. It’s the one on Main, right ?
@Ivan, the one on Main St. is in Watertown. We were at the one on Market Place Drive in Waltham (where Market Basket). I been to both. Joe’s used to be much, much better years ago. Like you said, they are OK now.
Speaking of food, the best place and the best food I ever had all around is at Fogo de Chão [1] a Brazilian steakhouse.
[1] https://fogodechao.com/location/boston/
Oops, you are right.
The one on Main street is in Watertown. I confused it with “Joe Sent Me” which is on Main in Waltham 🙂 Both Joes have somewhat descended over the years and are just OK now.
Thanks for the recommendation. We’ll try it next time we are in Boston.
> I would have expected an enterprise that makes money from inviting the public to share an indoor space to deemphasize the risk of sharing an indoor space as soon as that deemphasis was legal.
Maybe, but there’s a lot of inertia that has developed. My local (privately owned, non-chain, totally independent) convenience store took down their “mandate” sign on the front door and customers are being served unmasked without being scolded. However, the store owners are still wearing masks and so are the employees, for at least some time to come, until the owners change their minds and decide it’s “safe”. Their decision is fine, BTW with our local Board of Health, because they asked, and the BOH said, basically: “It’s up to you. If you want to wear them and require your employees to wear them as a precaution, that’s your prerogative.”
The owners work in the store and have recently lost a relative to COVID in India, which was painful, and they are being cautious. I have the feeling that death is weighing on them heavily and is very fresh in their minds.
I don’t know how long they intend to keep requiring their staff to wear them. I would guess another two weeks to a month, unless there is a resurgence. I was unmasked when I visited today for the first time in more than a year, and I got no grief and gave none.
I was in South Dakota this past week. Very few people were wearing masks. Even in places that had “masks required” signs up, still almost nobody was wearing a mask.
Tarzan guy died in a Cessna 501 crash shortly after takeoff. Overweight?
Watertown Mall is still in business? I moved away from Boston and Massachusetts 15 years ago after having gone to college and lived there 10 years. Watertown Mall was an unpleasant place back then. Can only imagine it now.. Do they have a Spencers?
Somewhat OT: At least all the school closures in MA weren’t a total loss:
https://patch.com/massachusetts/medford/s/hlgxs/braintree-teen-makes-video-game-art-of-braintree-police-cruiser
“Chenette said he started by making fictionalized police and fire vehicles, but when Braintree police got their new Chevrolet Tahoe cruisers, he wanted to create something for the game based on reality.”
“Braintree police also caught wind of Chenette’s art and gave it their stamp of approval on their Facebook page.”
Welcome to the brave new world.