Masks work. But thanks to Donald Trump politicizing them, many people reject masks and boost the spread of the coronavirus around the United States. We’re in a third surge that is about to swamp the previous two, disastrous ones, and many of the people in affected areas are not willing to change their behavior for their own safety or for public safety.
For instance, “North Dakota has the highest covid death rate per capita in the world right now,” the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s Christopher Murray told The Washington Post, yet data suggests that less than 50% of people there wear masks. When Dr. Deborah Birx was in the state on Monday, she told reporters, “Over the last 24 hours, as we were here and we were in your grocery stores and in your restaurants and frankly, even in your hotels, this is the least use of masks that we have seen in retail establishments of any place we have been.”
An average of more than 800 people a day are dying of COVID-19 in the United States, but you’ve got people stomping around Florida protesting against masks, even burning them to grab some media attention, saying, “I don’t see this as a political thing. It’s about freedom.” The freedom to infect other people with a deadly virus, apparently.
Masks work.
When we wear them.
It’s going to be a hard winter filled with death. But hey, according to the White House, Donald Trump has ended the pandemic.