One of the strangest experiences of my life this past year has been moving from New York (where outdoor masking is the popular and polite thing to do and has been from the start) to London (where outdoor masking was never part of the government's advice) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/well/live/covid-masks-outdoors.html

It was hard to explain to people back home how normal (and, unlike parts of the US, non-political) it was to see people walking through a park without a mask.

And equally hard to explain to people in London how panicked that scene made me feel my first few months here.

By fall in New York it had started to feel a tiny bit silly to pull up the mask when you spotted another person at the end of the block, but you did it because it was polite and the culturally done thing.

I talked with @bydanielvictor a lot those first few weeks about cultural norms and risk assessment. Dan had moved to London from Hong Kong where masking is even more prevalent than New York.

In New York, someone not wearing a mask outside was making a statement that they did not give a fuck about you or your health.

In London, someone not wearing a mask outside was just being a normal person following the government advice, which had emphasized indoor masking only.

A big part of this is that because hardly anyone has travelled in the last year, very few people have first-hand experience of just how different it is! https://twitter.com/lisafleisher/status/1385172356423950336

So you have these great swaths of the world where well-meaning* people are like "you monster you don't wear a mask outside?" and "wait you mean you do?"

(* again all this is not factoring in jerks who don't wear masks because being a jerk is their defining personality trait.)

In February I posted a silly photo of a cat in a park in a snowstorm in London, and the mentions quickly filled with people in the US glibly saying "snort snort well I can see why cases are spiking there, you MONSTERS" because there were like 6 people not wearing masks in a park.

anyway, it has been a TRIP watching the internet discourse have at the outdoor mask thing this week. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/are-outdoor-mask-mandates-still-necessary/618626/

Addendum: I just looked up the photo again. It was from January, and there were three people in maybe a crowd of 20 identifiably not wearing masks. Ruined my mentions for DAYS. https://twitter.com/mccanner/status/1385174483263180800

A lot of people are replying to this with some variation of "well of course people wear masks in New York, the sidewalks are packed!" and like... have you... been to New York? Parts that aren't midtown? (I don't expect everyone to have visited but folks, it's a spread-out city.)