“...or being a pedestrian.”
Quite a few times in the past year, I’d be walking down the sidewalk by myself unmasked. Another pedestrian coming toward me (all masked up) would get terrified and step 10 to 15 feet off the sidewalk into the roadway! All to avoid an outdoor 100 millisecond pass-by of another person. Their chance of getting killed in the bike lane or roadway was millions of times higher than getting killed by contacting COVID from me.
People are notorious for being unable to accurately assess extremely small risks.
Almost to the day, certainly to the week, this uptick in cases and deaths occurred LAST YEAR. Exactly 12 months ago.
There were all sorts of blame increments tossed around last summer, from illegals into Arizona or Texas (it was Florida too and it wasn’t easy to blame illegals for that). Regardless, there was a distinct and clear uptick through July and some of August, then numbers turned down again.
Then come late October the explosion in numbers occurred.
It really undercuts the vaccination story that this began same week last year. If it explodes again in November of this year . . . . .
I would expect that kink of overreaction to someone unmasked. You have to realize it is from the perspective of people whose understanding of medical science barely makes them able to put on a band aide.