The Missouri River curves to the north just before turning back to the south, and joining the Mississippi, just up-river from St. Louis. On the western bank of that north-running stretch of the river stands St Charles, Missouri. St Charles is a suburb of St. Louis these days, but still far out enough that it can support a Bass Pro shop, and several other gun stores. It's the kind of place where you can find an entire store devoted to jerked meats, as well as a Duluth Trading store, a 5.11, and a Carhartt outlet. It's where I used to shop, to avoid the mask-nazism in St Louis County. Even at the height of pandemic paranoia, there was a Goodcents deli where only a few customers (and none of the staff) wore masks.
I say all that to note that the Half-Price Books in St Charles is plastered with at least a half-dozen signs about its mask mandate. And they enforce it. Or at least it was that way a month ago.
The madness has its pockets where it persists.
I've run into the same when I've crossed the border into Boise. Most places there are back to normal and totally "wear a mask if you want or don't, whatever floats your boat". Except for a few pockets of crazy.
I was in the hospital today, and while they still have "mask up" signs on the front door, they seem lackadaisical about it. I had planned on wearing a mask but forgot mine, and was getting a ride so I couldn't grab a spare from my center console (I have no problems wearing a mask in a germ filled hospital). They had a big box of them at check-in, and I asked if I could grab one. "Sure, if you want".
Upstairs in the unit where I was being prepped, while all the medical professionals had masks on, at least half of them had their masks below their noses (just in the prep area - when they wheeled me in to the procedure, that whole team of course had real masks as per usual). It almost seemed more like they were wearing masks in the prep area for the benefit of any "must mask" patients.
When this procedure was scheduled a few weeks ago, they told me that I had to have a negative covid test 24 hours beforehand from one of their testing places. I got a call late last week that I no longer had to do that as they had cancelled mandatory testing a week previously.
I still gotta wonder how long "getting back to normal" will last with the China news. All it'll take is a couple of slow news days and we'll be back to "mask up or die!" mode.
