I'm uncertain what I did wrong or why someone would have an issue with me the person posting?

I see now maybe it was a misunderstanding on where my post was located. There are all types of political opinions here in this area so I was confused.

Weapons are not the answer to all our differences of opinions. I honestly hope this ironclm does not own a weapon of any type. Threatening anyone is not a silly joke. Sick yes silly no.

Yep same here in my experience in the Austin area so far. Lowes, HEB (our big grocery chain), restaurants, etc... So far pretty much everyone still wears a mask. In fact it is uncommon to see someone not wear one. Now, get outside the city into TX rural areas and that is not the case. But mask wearing was hit or miss anyway even during the state mandated time in those areas. So maybe not much has changed all round.

I think we will rapidly start to see it change within the next two months as vaccines start to cascade into the bulk of the population.

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Baller.

17 days in, and Texas numbers continue to drop.

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I miss YaHey

Excellent. Vaccine is working.

Texas has only 12.4% fully vaccinated to date. This puts them near last place in the US, just ahead of UT, DC, and GA.

https://ourworldindata.org/...vaccinated?tab=table

Their new cases don't appear to have spiked as predicted by many here. But, whatever the reason, vaccine success doesn't appear to be it.

FWIW, FL also doesn't appear to have spiked as feared. Though it's slightly trending upwards in the last week and the spring break hangover hasn't started yet. Their fully-vax'd percentage is 14.7% (putting them slightly below US median).

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"100% of the people who confuse correlation and causation end up dying."

I’ve been watching the numbers since they dropped their mandates. I assumed we would see a sharp increase but it hasn’t been there. I’m glad to be wrong. It is a mystery, states with higher vaccination rates and mandates still in place are struggling. I wonder about testing rates but haven’t taken the time to look at those numbers.

I also wonder if weather is a bigger factor than we realize. Hitting spring, TX, FL and CA are doing well while northern states are still struggling.

I think part of it, based on what locals here have said, is many people didn’t change their habits simply because of this mandate. Many large retail businesses didn’t either. I did see a large hotel conference center lost conferences to the tune of $350k though. Open it up and they will come? Not for everyone.

I believe some of the explanation for this is their past apathy towards the virus. Because of that, a lot, a very lot of them got Covid already. Using different models, one can safely say that the true number of infected is 3 to maybe 7 times the actual count, depending on the city or county, and population densities and attitudes. Factor that number in with even the paltry 13% of vaccinated, and you have something approaching herd immunity. At the very least that will lower the R0 number well below 1.0, which is where it needs to be for numbers to keep declining.

Now everyone gets to hold their breaths about some variant that is immune to the vaccine, and to folks with immunity through infection. I think this has been the devil in Europe and South America, they have been getting pounded by this...

As someone who lives in the greater Houston area, by and large the behavior has been great. A bit "sketchy" the further away from Houston city limits, but closer in people are about 100% masking up.

Live in Houston also.

Lifetime Fitness did away with their mask requirement and it has been business as usual. They still have the temp checks at entry. If it gets crowded you see people put a mask on but other than that it is working out as before. Weird how allowing people to decide for themselves and they chose to mask when necessary. Washington area is wide open mad house of humanity not wearing a mask even before the mandate was lifted. Its exactly the same right now.

Now about the litter from these masked bandits. Went for my evening walk @Memorial on the bayou trail side (south side of memorial drive) I seen more than 30 masks from the picnic loop parking area all along all the different color trails over to cullen running center down to the bayou. Disgrace.
Mentioned it before but along a long run route I have seen so many cloth masks and disposable masks its should be a shame to the people who did this. Why do you need a mask to walk OUTSIDE on a trail that you will see at the most maybe 10 groups of 2 or more. as an example today I walked a total of 7 miles and only ran into 6 groups of walkers and a dozen or so mountain bikes. 2 were wearing masks while walking alone in the middle of the woods. WTF?

Why where a mask outside in Houston this time of year.... pollen and mold!

(It doesn’t help, unfortunately)

Noticed this in Houston as well. Most businesses still sticking to it. Well, most grocers, hardware stores, and health care businesses. Other than that and restaurant pick up, can't think of a brick and mortar that I've been in during the past year. I did check the Cinemark online just to see if they were even open. They are, and keep a seat empty at the ends of every booked set of seats.