Spikes

So the big news this week is that a majority of states have reported an increase in infections - many of them steep increases. And you can't just chalk it up to increased testing, because there's also more hospitalizations, hospitals reaching capacity and going into surge mode, hospitals turning away emergency patients, etc. There are now more cases in the US than there were during the "peak" back in April, and many states are recording their highest daily totals (and then surpassing them the next day).

Could this all be related to the Black Lives Matter protests that started a few weeks ago? Probably not. If so, we would have already seen that increase in cases before now, and studies are showing that the surge is in states that reopened early, not in cities that held big protests. There's also a visible link between states with increased spending at restaurants and those with increases in new infections, and "restaurant spending was the strongest predictor across all categories of card spending."

Look, my husband and I are known "foodies," we would go out to eat all the time, but we're not planning on eating out (even outdoors) anytime soon. In fact, we've only even gotten take-out twice so far.

I have noticed that in the last couple days, the anti-mask crowd seems a little quieter on Facebook. Governors in some of the hardest-hit states have put a pause on their reopening plans, and some places, especially cities, are now requiring mask use in indoor situations where physical distancing is not possible.

I think most people, even if in their hearts they don't believe in masks, are still wearing them in public if it's recommended. But then there's a few who vocally refuse, like this woman who screamed about her breathing problem at a Trader Joe's in California (she seems to be breathing well enough...), or this maskless man in central Pennsylvania who carried an assault rifle into the farmers' market and was addressed on Facebook by the mayor of the city.

Once again ... If everyone just gets with the program and does what they need to do to help tamp this thing down, we can safely get back to at least some form of normalcy. Otherwise, this is going to go on a lot longer and cause a lot more damage unnecessarily. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of mixed messages and modeling of bad behavior all the way from the top down in this country.