We’re through another month.
Masks: I am again, lately, the only person at work who wears a mask. Mask wearing at stores has become common, even though not everywhere required.
The Mode: In a hundred little ways, our mode or approach to pandemic reality has morphed into: do whatever, maybe wear a mask. People have given up on quarantine and even social distancing except in locations where rules are posted and enforced.
Partisan divide: With the death of George Floyd here in Minneapolis two weeks ago, and the subsequent protests all over the world, the most intense partisan fault lines are totally realigned now now around police brutality and systemic racism issues.
We’ve now seen that no one is procedurally against mass protests in the midst of a pandemic. Language like “sacrificing the elderly” aimed at those who want to reopen the economy ASAP is now conspicuously absent from any discourse about large gatherings.