Mask rules are back

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Mask rules have come back to Perth and apparently the Delta variant of the covid-19 virus has appeared. We've entered a 3-day semi-lockdown, where masks are required indoors and some kinds of businesses are closed. People are hoping restrictions will lift after that, but I think we've been extremely lucky to contain all of our mini-outbreaks. Western Australians are feeling pretty smug about it. But I've seen a lot of maskholes around and I don't think the "success" has been due to complete compliance. It's just a matter of time until covid is loose in Western Australia.

Yesterday, the mask restrictions went into place at noon. We had already bought tickets to see The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It at 2:40 in the Palace Raine Square Cinema downtown. The theatre required masks and already had social distancing built into their seating assignments, so we opted to go.

I saw several people in the bus and downtown not wearing a mask. It's plausible they had left home before the restrictions went into place and didn't yet have access to a mask. I saw others wearing masks that didn't cover their noses, as usual. I saw one woman who, about to sneeze, took off her mask so she could sneeze into her hand, then put her mask back on! Another woman was sitting with her mask covering her mouth but not her nose, her hand resting atop her mask so she could continuously breathe onto it, while scrolling in her phone. I'm glad surface transmission doesn't seem to be a big deal, because gross.

I'm very much looking forward to getting my first Pfizer vaccine on July 6, though annoyed that they only allowed my age group to schedule shots for one week before rescinding our eligibility. It really feels like we've squandered all the time our geographical separation and active government regulation of the pandemic had bought us.

This pandemic has really reminded me of all the worst parts of being a child. It always rankled that rules were applied to me that others didn't follow. I hated group assignments in school, because I did all the labor and all the worrying while my classmates goofed around and negatively impacted my grade. I was just a ball of seething rage a lot of the time. I thought I got to grow out of that? Turns out it was situational. Thanks for nothing, pandemic.

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