Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

In SF, people are still not permitted to gather in groups of >12. Even outdoors. Even with full mask & distancing compliance. Even for weddings. Even for funerals. Whatever you think of the protests, they have *got* to be wearing down the sense of solidarity required for this.

Many of us knew or suspected from the beginning that a lot of what has been dictated by COVID health orders couldn't effectively be enforced on individuals in the US. We have been relying on enforcement on businesses/orgs + a shared social responsibility. The latter is shattered

Basically, the sum of the available toolkit in the US amounts only to half-measures, and those measures are the same ones that are leaving [probably lifelong] scars on the earning potential of new entrants to the labor market + upwardly-mobile blue collar biz owners + their staff

Meanwhile, people who follow the rules can protect *themselves* from the virus, but at the cost of nearly every protective factor we've identified against the ever-rising "deaths of despair": suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse. And without broader compliance, COVID still spikes.