I hiked up Angel's Landing in Zion NP a few days ago. For the first mile of the hike, ~60% wore masks. By the end of the second mile, it was down to 20% masks. At the summit, there were exactly zero masks worn.
I also visited a mini-mart near St. George, UT and watched as person after person walked in with their mask on, looked around at the maskless faces, and immediately took the mask off.
Southern UT, despite the statewide mask mandate, appears to be as open as FL or SD.
I also spent time hiking and climbing in Nevada - and the variance to UT could not have been more stark.
In NV, you are never unaware of Covid. Retail/restaurants are open but operate under capacity limits. Many people wear masks outdoors. Public health posters are everywhere.
Surely Utah must have more deaths than Nevada, given how much more open and free UT is, right? Nope...
What about all-cause mortality? Well, despite having a larger population, UT had less than 1/2 as many excess deaths in 2020 (1890 in UT vs. 4072 in NV).
The difference between the two states was palpable. UT felt vibrant, alive, engaged. NV was depressed and oppressive.
Unemployment in NV is currently 9.2% vs. 3.6% in UT, but it is more than that. I spoke with strangers in UT, people shook hands and hugged. NV? Averted eyes.
How long can places like UT (and Florida, George, Alabama, South Dakota) exist as free, happy, and healthy while other places like Nevada continue their self-flagellation?
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
As most are aware, there has been no flu season this year, with many people mistakenly attributing this to Covid control measures (which work for flu but not covid, apparently).
The Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has released final birth and death estimates for 2020, which show that Covid-19 did not cause any excess mortality in Japan:
Focusing on just this century's data, it is evident that there were between 8K and 30K fewer deaths than expected in 2020, depending upon the trend period chosen (there were an approximately equal number of missing births):
Japan never had a national lockdown; public mask compliance is lower than in Europe or the blue states in the USA, gyms and restaurants remained open, people continued to commute on crowded trains, and most children continue to go to school.
In 4 weeks, cases worldwide have fallen by 40%; this is worldwide phenomenon - with one notable exception. One nation remains with stubbornly high cases counts - in fact, the very highest cases per capital in the world....
Israel currently has higher cases per capita than any other nation with more than 7 million people and their case count appears to have plateaued while every other nation sees cases rapidly declining or already very low:
Israel's high case count comes despite a hard lockdown and the world's best, by far, rate of vaccination:
I like how NPR "explains" that cases have fallen in India because of masks, while also stating that mask mandates were in place before cases rose and that serioprevelance indicates almost 60% of urban populations have already had Covid.