Spent all day shopping yesterday (don't ask). Saw exactly one lady walking around without a mask at Costco, looking like a deer in the headlights. Not a single store had taken down their mask requirements (including Costco and Trader Joe's, both of which ostensibly are no longer requiring masks). Went hiking Saturday. Place was packed. I would say people without masks were about 1/3rd, in line with vaccinations. Most surprisingly, I saw several people chin-diapering it up: they obviously weren't defiant enough to not wear a mask, but they obviously weren't informed enough to put it over their goddamn noses. What if people are scared of the vaccine AND ALSO scared of COVID? My family totally rawked the hike without masks. We kept 'em on around the parking lot. Not because we were worried about COVID but because that's custom. It's interesting to me how little synthesis the public has been provided: if you farted and other people could smell it, you are in an environment where airborne transmission is a concern. This is about as relatable and understandable a metric as we could come up with and I haven't heard it anywhere, instead relying on folklore and rules and now we have a fan death-level understanding of epidemiology.
Hmm. Let me ask my brother and his wife, who actually work at Trader Joe’s, how many people they are seeing unmasked. It’s likely to be at least a somewhat-more anecdotally-useful perspective, considering yours is that of a consumer who only goes to TJ’s sometimes and only gets to see a sliver of what the experience is actually like, as determined by time and place of visit, etc, etc. Oh look — per their anecdotal reports which, despite being anecdotal, are more likely to be accurate than your own anecdata due to simply more time spent at the store and having a more extended perspective than that of a consumer looking to spend more than 15 minutes in a grocery — Signage about mask requirements has been 100% taken down as ordered by corporate And their reports of maskless consumers are up around 5x. Btw, they live in the PNW just like you. It’s a different state, sure, but what else is really different? Maybe you just must’ve missed it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You cannot take your outside experience as a consumer who is inside a grocery store for a minimal amount of time to be a true accounting of the difference this CDC announcement has made for the average grocery or retail worker. Full, fucking, stop. It’s real cool that you didn’t observe a change in behavior when you went out and visually observed the situation for a coupla minutes. It’s way different 24/7. Shut up about it
It's not accurate though. Smoke is a particulate with preposterously greater duration. Smoking areas require a 20' to 25' distance and everybody knows it, even if they haven't internalized the actual dimension. You tell people to get away from other people as if they were all smoking, and then tell them they can be six feet apart in a building, and the analogy is instantly nullified. Everyone's farted in a park.