Flash back to April 2021, Meet next week in Jupiter, Florida?:
We’re escaping to the Florida Free State for the Maskachusetts school vacation week (April 18-25). A journey of 1,000+ miles is the best way for the kids to get a “mask break” (under what would be the “law” if it had been passed by the legislature instead of merely ordered by the governor, walking outside one’s yard, even at midnight in a low-density exurb, is illegal without a mask).
The post cited an NBC article on the continuation of the #Science-driver outdoor mask order in Massachusetts and referenced Relocation to Florida for a family with school-age children (explains the rationale for Jupiter).
We stopped in Savannah, Georgia on our way to Jupiter. They were still under an outdoor mask order:
The kids learned about fishing from unmasked folks at Juno Beach Pier (Florida):
Having left the wet cold masked Boston spring, we encounter a crowd of unmasked people in shorts eating dinner outdoors in downtown Abacoa:
While folks in Massachusetts continue social distancing, a crowd gathers at the bow:
On the return trip, we stopped in Asheville, North Carolina, where they were solidly in masks-required territory more than a year after coronapanic began:
Biltmore tour group:
Back home to Hanscom Field, one part of the Boston area that I miss. Inequality in white:
Also in masketology, this photo is supposedly from 2020, but where was it taken? Google Image Search finds some examples of it from 2020 so it wasn’t done with AI and the date is correct, but does anyone recognize the city?
Congrats on the anniversary! That was smart and courageous move (to Florida)!
The minivan is the great irony on Greenspunville. Infinite wealth, $3M house, airplane, 2/3 traveler, but a Honda minivan driver.
lion: I would love to have “infinite wealth” by Palm Beach standards. I think a good example of that condition is Chicago refugee Ken Griffin, $50 billion net worth of which about $1 billion will be spent on his Palm Beach house. https://nypost.com/2023/10/18/inside-ken-griffins-plans-to-build-a-1b-megalith-property/ (he has roughly $500 million in additional real estate: https://robbreport.com/shelter/celebrity-homes/lists/inside-ken-griffin-property-portfolio-1236886449/ ).
Please share what’s a better-engineered vehicle for carrying kids and bicycles than the Honda Odyssey? Need to hold 2-3 bikes on the roof and 2 in the back while still having room for at least 5 people. It needs to have a smooth ride and low interior noise (on textured Florida pavement, I hate to admit it, but the Chevy Tahoe that I rented was much quieter; the Honda is perhaps smoother over bumps since it isn’t trying to be a truck and I think the cargo area in the Honda is much taller, good for carrying bikes inside).
Also in masketology, this photo is supposedly from 2020, but where was it taken? According to grok,
This photo is from the “Reopen California Freedom Rally” on April 23, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Protesters gathered on Civic Drive outside the San Bernardino County Superior Court in Victorville (High Desert area), with counter-protesters holding the exact signs visible in your image.
But looking on google maps this does not appear to be accurate.
Google says it is Seville fountain, Kansas City.
Coronavirus: China calls for ‘solidarity’ as Missouri sues over pandemic | World News | Sky News https://share.google/dvjZUUhLSU6E9qS9I
Google for the win!
> While folks in Massachusetts continue social distancing, a crowd gathers at the bow
…having made the cars at the drawbridge wait for their party barge to pass. Thanks to sound Science, Phil’s minivan smartly shuts off to save fuel. It’s always 5 o’clock in Jupiter and environs.
I’ve done a bit of smuggling,
I’ve run my share of grass
I made enough money to buy Miami,
But I pissed it away so fast
Never meant to last, never meant to last
— Jimmy Buffet, A Pirate Looks at 40
Phil, what was so wrong about what you describe as “coronapanic”?
Every single country on earth except for Sweden went through it. It’s not like the US was particularly draconian for that you should look at China. And thankfully it ended and we all moved on. The end.
A new disease is scary, we all got scared, then we got vaccines and we got out of it
As they say on Reddit:
🍿
Anon: There is nothing wrong with panicking when Science tells you to panic. And certainly the most rational thing to do when hearing about a disease that has been killing people at a median age of 80 is to close schools for 8-year-olds for 18 months, including about 9 months after the last 80-year-old received the precious vaccine.
What IS wrong is to “get out of it” as you say, merely because you’ve been injected with eight COVID-19 shots. I’ve been in Harvard Square/mid-Cambridge for less than 48 hours and I’ve already seen at least 50 outdoor maskers (young, slender, and apparently in perfect health).
Separately, I’m sure that you will be able to find a strong correlation between a country’s COVID-19 vaccination rate and either the country’s excess death rate or COVID-19-tagged death rate. See https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2023/02/26/where-is-the-population-wide-evidence-that-covid-vaccines-reduce-covid-tagged-death-rates/ as a starting point.
Well Anonymous, when you are a teenager or young adult years matter. You don’t just clip three years out of your life at that age and think there is no effect.
“Quality life years” is a standard public health metric that was completely ignored by health officials when they realized how much fun it is to get famous on TV.
The use of masks past the pandemic seems to be a very much US based phenomena. I have seen old folks with masks here (Finland), but that is rare, not even infrequent The use of masks *to protect oneself from infections* is a famous misunderstanding of how it works, but I am not going to get excited when old people do something of dubious actual effectiveness that gives them some sort of psychological comfort.
What vaccine? You mean…the experimental gene transfer therapy…for the disease you don’t have.
Go ahead, enroll me in the Phase 3 trial.
Put me in the ‘control’ cohort.
Mask wearing is a sign of piety, like the smudge on Ash Wednesday or the, dare one say, wearing of the kippah. Show some respekh.