And ponder this: if you have a group of, say, 10 people, you are most likely breaking either the law or the stated guidelines not wearing a mask.
Ponder what a mask does; it makes you anonymous. Several times now I’ve seen people I knew but didn’t recognize because they had masks on. The masks may vary, and may be personalized, but the eradication of your face–to the point that this would actually be a good time to commit robberies–remains.
And ponder that if you wanted to end the meeting with a group hug, or series of individual hugs, or both, you would again be violating either the law or the published guidelines.
We have entered a time, in AMERICA, where you literally risk committing a crime having a group meeting with your faces uncovered, and ending it with handshakes or hugs.
There is a terrible symbolism to this whole thing that makes it feel intentional and conscious.
And I will add, as I think I have before, “social distancing” has to be viewed as an aggravation of, exponentially–since everyone was talking about exponents until they stopped because their predictions failed completely–of existing social isolation, which has been much written about, and which is a key feature in our “epidemics” of suicide and drug overdose, either one of which will kill in an average year will kill nearly as many people have died thus far from COVID.
And we still don’t have the numbers on overdoses and suicides.