I’ve been a long-time fan of using local conditions, such as COVID prevalence (how many people are currently infected), to determine when various restrictions and requirements should be removed or weakened, so I realize there won’t be a one-size fits all national level policy: these changes in things like masking requirements need to vary at the state and local levels. But what has gone missing in all of this is that masking requirements, since mid-2021, has remained popular at an incredibly constant level. Here’s some Axios/Ipsos polling data:

This is similar to what has been recorded by other polls since mid-2021. The majority of Americans support masking in public places.

Unfortunately, even in ‘blue areas’, where masking is likely more popular than the national averages, we’re still hearing plans to remove masking requirements, even though the prevalence–and associated hospital burdens–are still too high.

As throughout the entire pandemic, we simply haven’t maintained the political discipline to lower COVID to levels where we could return to something like ‘normal’: thirty new daily cases per 100,000 isn’t close to that.

Until we show some discipline and crush the curve, we’re going to keep doing this over and over (and over and…):

Frustrating.

It also doesn’t help that most of our political leaders are blissfully pretending long COVID doesn’t exist (so if you’re vaccinated, you’re fine amirite?)–and a supine political press corps never asks them tough questions about it. Very frustrating.