Where There's Smoke, There's COVID Masks

From Time magazine: "The Pandemic Made Masks Essential Household Items—Just in Time for Wildfire Smoke."

"Jamieson predicted that the muscle memory of masking would come back quickly in the face of a comparably serious health threat. She seems to have been right: Rite Aid reported a nearly 1,500% spike in mask sales in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut this week, according to Bloomberg.

"Still, there’s a key difference between a wildfire threat and a viral one. 'With a wildfire you can see the hazard. You can see it, you can smell it, you can taste it,' says Raina MacIntyre, a professor at Australia’s University of New South Wales who has researched mask use during Australian wildfires. 'That’s not the case with a virus.

"Mask use dropped off significantly as people grew tired of taking COVID-19 precautions, and even this past winter’s surge in respiratory viruses wasn’t enough to get some people to cover up. The question is whether people will keep reaching for their mask when confronted with invisible health threats, like viruses, in the future."

Based on what I've seen here lately, the answer is no. Even while we've been under a smoke alert all week, I haven't seen any uptick in mask-wearing.  The only thing I've seen more of is people coughing into the air, or wiping their nose with their hand. There's no common sense, just disgusting behavior.