Day 166: Masked Lives Matter

While the US remains comfortably in the lead with our 3.6 million cases, Brazil is nearing 2 million cases and India is approaching 1 million. Iraq has passed the China point; up next: Indonesia. In the US, Florida has topped 300,000 cases with Texas trailing only a few thousand cases behind.

Massachusetts is up a fifth of a percentage point again today. The MDPH has restructured the weekly cities and towns report yet again, so maps will have to wait until the PlagueBlog punch-cards have been re-punched to match.

While you're waiting, consider the sudden flurry of mask requirements—not from state governments with health departments devoted to population-level health issues, not even from marauding mayors with health departments in their heads devoted to randomly contradicting the real health departments' decisions, but from overpriced coffee shop chains and purveyors of cheap Chinese crap products.

It started reasonably enough with the airlines, who are flying passengers from jurisdiction to jurisdiction without a lot of federal guidance. But then Costco got involved, as if this were some Twitter fad that they had to have an opinion on, and not a local regulatory matter like what hours they get to sell beer (if at all).

Before you could say masked lives matter, Starbucks joined the fray, requiring masks at "company-owned locations"—as if a customer can tell a company-owned Starbucks from an independent vendor of their distinctively nonsensical range of drink sizes. Next, in their first bid ever to help mom-and-pop businesses, Walmart announced they will be requiring masks next week, as will supermarket chain Kroger's.

On the anti-mask front, Georgia Governor Kemp has struck down the mask regulations he already warned local jurisdictions not to make. PlagueBlog encourages him to lock down all Starbucks, Costcos, Walmarts and Krogers, because no man can serve two health departments—never mind serving every CEO who thinks he's the Surgeon General now.