Masks Or No Masks

"Becky, are you working Sunday?"  my coworker asked.

"No!" I replied.  "Last night I went to bed and dreamed about going to bed.  I'm tired!"   So, when you dream about what you desire most, it's best to take a day off and get some sleep.  

Last week, the governor lifted our COVID restrictions completely.  

Now, for a point of clarification, we did not have a state wide mask mandate.  We did for a bit last summer, but he lifted it after only a couple of weeks.  What he'd done here, after consulting with state health officer Dr. Dobbs, and state epidemiologist Dr. Byers, was to institute a threshold.  I don't remember the exact numbers, though I should.  He told them to us every single press conference.  It was a certain number of cases per 100,000 population.

If your county has less than 100K people, well, then you have to do math.

Anyway, they'd set the threshold, and if a county met it, that county would go under a mask mandate.  Once the county dropped below that threshold, the mandate was lifted.  As of last Wednesday, all 82 Mississippi counties were below the threshold, so all 82 counties came off of the mask mandate.  

He'd been under tremendous pressure these last few months to reinstate a state wide mask mandate, but he'd refused.  He said, "If you look at the other states that do have mandates, their numbers aren't any better than ours, and in some cases, they're worse."  Still, even going county by county, we almost had a state wide mandate at one point -- last month when 75 of our 82 counties met the threshold. 

He'd also been under pressure to put the state under a total lockdown, but he'd refused that, too.  He said, "Every business is essential to those who depend on those paychecks to feed their families." He'd put capacity restrictions in place, and those were also lifted last Wednesday.  

He'd said all along that the goal was not to get rid of the virus, because that's just not realistic. His goal was to protect the health care system, and honey, it got pretty rough there for a while.  For several months, there were no beds available.  None.  They were stacking them like cordwood in the hallways, and converting ERs to COVID wards.  There was even talk about converting National Guard Armories into field hospitals, but thankfully, it never got that bad.  They were for a while, having to send people to other states --Florida, Georgia, and Missouri to be specific-- to find available beds for them.  But now, with the drop in cases, our hospitalizations are also down, so no more restrictions.  

All that being said, the governor has lifted COVID restrictions, but Lennox has not.  Up until now, they'd required either masks, or face shields.  Today, they put out that if you chose to wear a face shield, you will also have to wear a mask under it.  The face shield people aren't going to be happy about that.  But the virus is still going around.  One of my coworkers just came down with it, and another one just came back this week after having had it.

Oh, that reminds me...it's almost mowing season, so I need to order me some N95 masks.  I'm so allergic to grass, if I don't wear a mask to mow, it'll be three days before I can breathe right again.  That's also how I know they don't reduce your oxygen intake or cause permanent brain damage.  If they did, I'd have been a drooling vegetable years ago.  

Some of y'all been getting your science off Facebook...

One last thing before I go, it appears Stalker got that job in the lab.  The girl who told me that also said, "It makes me sick to think he got that job, but at least he'll be away from us."  She also told me that only three people had even applied.  I wonder who the other two are, that STALKER is the best qualified.  

Oh, and Walmart finally has bird seed back in stock!  I'd bought some before the ice storm, and they went through that whole bag in a week.  I was feeding them pretty heavy, though, to help them stay warm.  I guess everyone in town was, too, because WM has been out since then.  

First thing I did when I got home was fill up all three of my feeders to the top.  I know my birds will appreciate that. 

And probably the squirrels, too.