Day 87: Who Was That Masked Man?

Today was a day of round numbers. The world is at 3 million cases and 211,000 dead, while the US is at a cool million with 56,000 dead. Italy is very close to 200,000 cases, and Russia has finally exceeded China's case count, with a significant leap to 87,000 cases. (Next up is Brazil, currently at 66,000 cases.) Massachusetts had a good day with a 3% rise, though our death count is now at 3,003, and the Boston Globe ran 21 pages of obituaries this Sunday.

It was a sad day in Middlesex County. We still retain our lead in cases, though this is due to no germy merit of our own but merely a consequence of a population twice the size of the next largest county. Our county case rate is a middling 800 per 100,000 cases, despite a few hotspots like Everett, Lowell, Medford, and Malden.

No, it's a sad day today because the mayor of Somerville will no longer let residents walk around outdoors at a safe distance from other people without a mask. Somerville, a city of over 80,000, has had only 415 cases for the entire pandemic. This is a rather low case rate of 512 per 100,000 residents (though not as low as Brookline, with 335 cases per 100,000 residents and a similarly severe mask policy). Sadly, Somerville residents will now need to commute to Cambridge, Arlington, or germy Medford just to take a walk in the fresh air in compliance with CDC and WHO recommendations for mask usage rather than panicked non-medical mayoral fiat. (Alternately, the internet notes that you are not required to carry ID to walk around Somerville, nor are you required to reveal what particular medical condition prevents you from wearing a mask.)

PlagueBlog reminds readers that cloth masks pose their own real dangers (unlike the imagined dangers of fresh air and sunshine), and that the below-average citizen is more qualified to judge a distance of six feet outdoors than to use a ersatz mask safely for unnecessarily long periods.

P.S. I updated the county map for the occasion:

P.P.S. In an after-hours show of counter-productivity, Cambridge joined Somerville in inventing unnecessary face covering requirements outdoors, rather than following the CDC or state guidelines. PlagueBlog notes that Cambridge's case rate is comparable to Somerville's.