Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and masks
The regimen of forced mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic yielded enough stupid stories to fill an entire library. Like hard lockdowns, these mandates rejected a huge body of science and existing pandemic playbooks.
In 2021, Major League Baseball puffed up about how the league would require spectators to wear masks—unless they were eating or drinking and were seated. Accordingly, the Colorado Rockies had a rule prohibiting fans from eating sunflower seeds because they take too long to chew. On the other hand, ballparks were full of fans smiling their asses off even while baseball ostensibly had a mask rule. Masks on fans at outdoor sporting events were so ridiculous that most fans ignored Major League Baseball’s proclamation—and got away with it in plain sight. But one op-ed writer blasted sportscasters who failed to bash unmasked baseball fans.
After Major League Baseball abolished this requirement, the Seattle Mariners inexplicably announced the mask mandate for fans would be reinstated if the team made the playoffs—which they didn’t.
Major League Baseball had allowed in-person fans at a playoff game in Arlington, Texas, in 2020. The Chicago Tribune reported that about 75 percent of fans complied with the mask mandate—meaning the other 25 percent went on as normal.
The National Football League had a similar mask mandate, though many games were played with no in-person fans. Although the NFL dropped its mask mandate for the 2021-22 season, the Seattle Seahawks announced they would continue the mandate. Photos showed almost no fans complying.
Colorado Public Radio said a National Hockey League game in Denver ostensibly required masks—and prohibited bandanas and gaiters—under threat of being ejected from the arena. This was when the city no longer had a mask mandate. Yet very few fans wore masks at all.
Among recreational offerings, perhaps none were as out of step with reality as major amusement parks. The biggest parks seemed to be run by some of the biggest babies around. Mask enforcement was harsher at more expensive parks, especially Walt Disney World. The idea that people should wear masks at an amusement park would be laughable if it wasn’t such a serious matter. Parks that required masks outdoors were simply lying when they said people truly needed them there, as some parks—such as Kentucky Kingdom—did not require masks outdoors, and there was never any COVID spread linked to these parks’ outdoor areas.
The stupidity of large amusement parks was a tough nut to crack. Universal Studios Hollywood required masks outdoors at least as late as December 2021. The same was true of Six Flags Magic Mountain—but only on “designated mandate days”, as if COVID cares what day it is. On the other hand, major amusement parks have become increasingly geared to those who buy everything they’re told to buy, because those who might question endless commercialism are not profitable enough. So maybe they at least have some business sense by appealing to the “forever masks” crowd.
Online reviews of Disney parks said enforcement was aggressive and rude, and some patrons passed out because they were forced to wear masks when it was almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit. One reviewer said a two-year-old girl was yelled at so aggressively at Disney World for her lack of a mask that she cried.
What happened if—by some miracle—guests at Disney World made it onto a ride without a mask? Guests could buy photos of themselves on rides that were taken by the park. If someone—somehow—didn’t have a mask on a ride, the park would doctor the photo by adding a mask to their face. This practice came directly from North Korea (which Disney World apparently admired). NK News reported in March 2020 that North Korea’s official media was adding masks to people in news photos to encourage wider mask usage. One reviewer said Disney World refused to give her family their photos from a ride because they removed their masks when the photo was being taken.
Disney World allegedly abolished its mask mandate in May 2021, but online reviews said it was still being enforced into 2022—often rudely.
Another example of taking inspiration from North Korea: In early 2021, the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins added masks to photos of fans attending a game. The game ostensibly had a mask mandate, but many fans were not following it.
The American media was so invested in “new normal” totalitarianism that they slipped lockdown culture such as masks even into events that were supposed to be festive. It was downright depressing to watch TV coverage of New Year’s “festivities” that ushered in 2021. The networks gathered either in New York City where the usual Times Square activities were closed to the public or in Los Angeles where they held indoor performances—which forced the few in attendance to wear masks. That’s why they held them indoors. It was just so there would be an excuse to show everyone in masks. It would have been just as easy to broadcast from Las Vegas, where there were plenty of bare faces happily hanging out. They chose not to, because they wanted to showcase their devotion to the “new normal.”
When lying idiot Bill de Blasio enacted an outdoor mask mandate for the Times Square bash to ring in 2022—after promising it would be normal—this mandate was widely ignored. Barefaced revelers would be briefly seen on TV, and the camera would quickly cut away to avoid encouraging public masklessness. Some media outlets engaged in historical negationism by claiming the previous year’s event was not canceled—though this claim can be easily debunked by footage showing no public celebration.
The mask controversy continued to show lockdownists’ chilling hostility to the arts. A Reddit commenter said they were part of a college orchestra and that their local government did not permit them to play unless performers wore masks. This included those who played wind instruments—who were required to wear a mask with a hole cut in it. How can one argue a mask does any good if it has a hole in it? Nobody was allowed to play piccolo, because a piccolo wouldn’t fit on a mask, and musical pieces that featured a piccolo had to be scrapped. A cloth cover was also required to be placed over the bell of each wind instrument—which muffled the music. Sadly, I believe this account, because in April 2021, I went to an outdoor concert in Cincinnati by a fine university orchestra, and musicians who played wind instruments did indeed wear masks. The audience was ostensibly required to wear them too, but most ignored this rule, just as they did at an outdoor bluegrass concert I attended that month.
Some jurisdictions had rules that prescribed to the last detail how dance performances were to be carried out. In one area, all the dancers had to wear masks unless they also sang, in which case no more than one could sing at the same time. Can you imagine turning on Solid Gold in 1983 and seeing all the Solid Gold Dancers wearing light blue surgical masks as they twirled to “Maniac”?
Perhaps the first American community with a mask mandate was Laredo, Texas—even though the Washington Post admitted that there was “no global consensus on whether mandatory face coverings can significantly slow the spread of the virus.” Ironically, the city wanted to allow craft stores to open so residents could buy materials to make masks, even though Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, had closed craft stores as “nonessential.” Laredo police also monitored homes if they saw too many cars parked outside, and the city banned children from entering grocery stores. Months later—after Texas had lifted its statewide stay-at-home command—Laredo enacted its own nighttime curfew and banned gatherings of six or more people.
In some jurisdictions—including several U.S. states—mask orders seemed to apply not just in stuffy indoor areas but also all public outdoor areas even when social distancing was maintained. It appears as if Maine, Massachusetts, and New Mexico were among these states. In a few other states, the orders seemed to apply to people inside their own homes. In these cases, it is not known how many governors intended to enforce it that strictly, because it’s just as likely that they were too dumb to know what their own orders said. That doesn’t mean they weren’t also malicious, because some of their other orders were very clear.
I went on a road trip to Ocean City, Maryland, in September 2020—while that town had a mayoral proclamation requiring folks to wear masks outdoors on the boardwalk even when social distancing was followed. Yet I estimated that about two-thirds of boardwalk visitors went unmasked—including a woman who smiled admiringly at me as she exited a shop. The unmaskage was confirmed by a photo of the boardwalk on the website of the Daily Times taken on Labor Day weekend.
The city didn’t learn its lesson yet and intended to require masks outdoors at the Springfest festival the following May—five months after vaccines were introduced. But this inspired so much laughter that they backed down.
Because of this police state mentality, I later vowed not to give Ocean City any more of my tourist dollars unless it appeared to mend its ways. The city’s mindset was shown not only in its tyrannical COVID response but also other heavy-handed activity—some of it racist.
In March 2021, the city and county of San Diego announced new mask mandates for the local boardwalk—because a few beachfront residents complained about barefaced visitors—and on other trails as well.
Santa Cruz County, California, issued a brand new mask order in November 2021—although the county’s positive rate was only 1.5 percent, and the county only had seven people hospitalized for the virus at the time. This order ostensibly applied to people inside their own homes, and media reports acted as if this was normal.
Other places also showed little tolerance for naked faces. Press reports indicate that a man was arrested in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for his outdoor barefacedness. The police department’s Facebook page spread inaccurate information about the incident. This resort town even required those using some private vehicles to diaper up. I guess I should turn myself in, because I rode through that town on my Ocean City trip. The town even tried enforcing the mandate on the beach. Rehoboth Beach got its comeuppance though: According to WHYY, the city suffered what a chamber of commerce official called a “jaw-dropping” decline in vacationers. Foot traffic was thought to be a mere 25 percent of a normal year. WCAU-TV visited and found that the mask rule was ignored by most, but Commissioner Edward Chrzanowski said many tourists canceled their trips there because of the mask rule.
Rehoboth Beach officials learned nothing from this fiasco and apparently allowed this rule to stay in place until May 2021. The police chief said compliance had fallen to 40 percent.
(In 2017, Rehoboth Beach had actually proposed allowing corporations to vote in municipal elections. The town had already expanded voting rights to trusts that represented wealthy property owners who did not live in the town.)
Police in San Juan, Puerto Rico, claimed to have arrested several people for outdoor masklessness in 2021.
One of the worst trouble spots in the mainland U.S. in 2020 was Miami under Mayor Francis X. Suarez, a Republican. In addition to his outdoor mask mandate—which many people ignored—Suarez also advocated bombing Cuba for no apparent reason. County Mayor Carlos A. Giménez, also a Republican, put out a statement about his own miserable countywide order bragging that police would be out on the Fourth of July “monitoring adherence to the New Normal Rules.” Giménez also gave a press conference to demonize the barefaced: “If you’re not wearing a mask, you may not be part of this community.”
Boise, Idaho, was bad too. The initial order was for 30 days, but everyone should have known damn well it would be extended—and it was, for months on end. To add insult to injury, it first took effect on the Fourth of July in 2020. Media outlets interpreted the order as applying even on sidewalks and at parks.
One of the most tyrannical American towns of the era was Breckenridge, Colorado, which doubled down in 2021 by hiring private security to try to enforce the mask mandate outdoors. When the town first passed its mask rule, there had only been four COVID deaths ever in the county.
An unknown number of other countries were also plagued by outdoor mask mandates, but that shows one of the reasons why America should not take cues from overseas dictatorships. (The media has always had trouble grasping this concept.) Sources indicated varying levels of adherence, and most mandates ostensibly had exceptions for exercise, though that was no guarantee there wasn’t militant enforcement the rest of the time. Available footage also indicated that in a vast majority of countries, you could forget about mask enforcement on beaches—if beaches were open. Yet there were a few exceptions even to that.
As for the U.S., a park in Las Cruces, New Mexico, reportedly required bicyclists to maskify. The city issued a similar rule at an outdoor farmers’ market. However, the city did not appear to enforce such a rule at a parade supporting Donald Trump. The town of Holliston, Massachusetts, also tried to require cyclists to wear masks. A park in Miami Beach closed because thousands of visitors failed to wear a mask. Beverly Hills, California, mandated that motorists wear masks in their cars if they had the windows down. A motorist in that city even got pulled over in his fancy convertible for not wearing a mask. An online commenter reported being ticketed for not wearing a mask at a Honolulu park—though there seemed to be no order requiring it. There were actually cases in the U.S. in which people were jailed for not wearing masks outdoors even when the order as written did not mandate it. An outdoor concert series in Ashland, Oregon, began requiring masks in August 2021—even though all patrons also had to show either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test. Maine enacted a rule saying people had to wear masks in their cars at drive-through lanes of restaurants.
Maine had other bizarre rules in a list of frequently asked questions it published. This list said actors had to wear masks while performing. It said people who appeared in outdoor photo shoots must wear masks. Clergy were supposed to wear masks while leading services. The document threatened 180 days in prison for violators of the above rules. I got an image in my mind of police raiding the set of The Good Doctor and handcuffing the entire cast for not wearing masks onscreen.
The absurdity out of Maine didn’t end there. In December 2020, Gov. Janet Mills issued a new executive order digging in on masks. A clause in this order read, “Nothing in this Order should be interpreted as prohibiting a reasonable accommodation for those with a disability, but due to the direct threat to public health and safety, no such accommodation may make it permissible for any person to enter or remain in any indoor public setting without a face covering.” This clause was one of the most open ADA violations of the entire pandemic.
CTV reported that a Winnipeg man said he was fined heavily for not wearing a mask outdoors—even though there was no outdoor mandate.
Brussels reportedly required bicyclists to wear masks, yet some folks ignored mask rules even on public transit.
A youth sports league in Nevada said kids playing outdoor sports such as soccer would be required to wear masks while playing.
USA Today reported that the infamous Santa Clara County, California, required NBC sportscasters Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth to wear masks on TV during an NFL game they were covering. “Officials have compelled us to wear a mask during the game, and so that is the story,” an annoyed Michaels explained to viewers. At the end of the game, Michaels said of the masks, “That’s it, folks. We’ll get rid of these things as soon as we possibly can.”
WPLG-TV reported in July 2020 that Miami area authorities had begun issuing citations to people for being without masks outdoors. Reporter Christian De La Rosa absurdly acted as if these citations were justified: “Guys, we saw a lot of people still not wearing those masks!” A man was surrounded by undercover police and ticketed because his mask slid down under his nose as he was talking. This “offense” took place outdoors. WFOR-TV followed along with police as they ticketed several people for not wearing masks in parks. As late as Labor Day, Miami Beach police appeared to still be trying to enforce social distancing and masking among boaters. There was still a countywide curfew of 10 PM—as if COVID cared what time of day it was.
When a man took a video of a police department in the Miami area hassling him for not wearing a mask outdoors, an officer threatened to sue him if he posted the clip on YouTube.
July police video showed several incidents in Miami Beach in which cops actually ticketed people for not wearing masks outdoors away from crowds. “How is a mask required to walk around?” a startled man asked.
KRQE-TV and the Albuquerque Journal reported in June 2020 that Santa Fe, New Mexico, was threatening to issue fines to people seen barefaced on the city’s outdoor plaza.
In July, KOAT-TV reported on barefaced visitors at outdoor skate parks in Albuquerque—as if that should have been a big story. The city then posted signs requiring masks at parks.
Officials in Juneau, Alaska, planned to obligate masks outdoors for anyone viewing the Fourth of July fireworks display in 2020. That was before the city canceled the display altogether.
In October of that year, police in East Lansing, Michigan, kept issuing citations to people for not wearing masks at outdoor gatherings.
An online commenter in the Boston area said somebody kept calling the police on a group of elderly people playing pickleball in a park without masks.
Police in Charleston, South Carolina, launched a mask enforcement blitz on Super Bowl Sunday in 2021 in which numerous people were ticketed for not wearing masks outdoors—even though there seemed to be no order mandating it.
The Oregon State Fair in 2021 ostensibly required masks outdoors—even as Oregon claimed to be one of the most heavily vaccinated states (which wasn’t true). However, news reports and Snap Map footage showed that few people gave a shit anymore. The Oregonian said compliance was only “marginal.” The outdoor mask rule was repeated at the Washington State Fair, but compliance may have been slightly higher there, as the totalitarian media cooed about it more. Then again, YouTube videos revealed some compliance gaps there too—so tough toilets, media. The rule there was implemented at the last minute, and the fair’s policy was to not issue refunds to people who had already purchased tickets. Pierce County officials said the county was seeing record cases of COVID. But—surprise, surprise—that was a lie. The county had begun skipping reporting on some days just so the data would be backlogged. The outdoor Made in America festival in Philadelphia that year also supposedly mandated masks—even though it also required vaccination proof or a negative test. The Philadelphia Inquirer said the mask rule was ignored by “the vast majority.” A Reddit poster called it a “looney tunes order.”
The San Francisco Marathon in 2021 required runners to wear masks through part of the run.
In March 2021, Boulder County, Colorado, absurdly announced that its mask mandate applied to people playing sports outdoors. The state had apparently said that mask mandates were not in effect outdoors, but the county said this exception “does not apply in Boulder County.”
Oregon inexplicably enacted a new mask mandate in August 2021 that applied even outdoors unless people were at least six feet apart. After the rule was enacted, the number of active COVID cases in Oregon increased by 73 percent.
An outdoor trick-or-treat event on Halloween weekend that year in Los Alamos, New Mexico, laughably required masks as well. I bet people there actually obeyed. I passed through town on a road trip just weeks earlier, and customers at a Smith’s Marketplace supermarket were so beholden to the otherwise forgotten six-foot social distancing rule that the checkout lines backed up halfway down the shopping aisles. Each customer marched in lockstep precisely six feet when they checked out. It was like one of those videos of a North Korean military parade. That was the inspiration for the term Los Alamos goose-step. Then again, Los Alamos is unincorporated, so I don’t know how it could enforce a mask rule.
Just before Christmas in 2021, a tree lighting in Dayton, Kentucky, tried to require masks—even though there was no longer a state mandate, and there never was a local mandate. A commenter on a local Facebook group who helped organize the event said the requirement was widely advertised, yet more than half of people showed up maskless.
As late as October 2022, the website for county parks in Santa Cruz County, California, required masks outdoors.
An article during a record-breaking September 2020 heatwave said Los Angeles County required masks on the beach. A lot of beachgoers got a good laugh out of that. Authorities in Maui County, Hawaii, touted a similar guffaw inducer that fall—though of course it had an exception for smoking. Now that’s health conscious!
WKRG-TV reported in July 2020 that a statewide order in Alabama required masks on beaches. Compliance appeared to be zero.
That same month, authorities in Singapore whined that a “good number” of beachgoers were not wearing masks and that enforcement officers were met with “aggression and noncompliance” when they tried to break up groups of people. The official “solution” of course was beefed-up enforcement.
The Carlsbad Current-Argus reported in March 2021 that New Mexico was still limiting camping at state parks. A state official said visitors were required to wear a mask even if they were alone on a boat—or risk a $100 fine. Gatherings at state parks were still limited to five or 10 people.
In Taos, New Mexico, a handful of residents kept jotting down the license plate numbers of out-of-state visitors seen without masks, even outdoors. At the time, New Mexico also required out-of-staters to quarantine for two weeks, but many visitors were unaware of this rule. A Facebook page attacked Taos authorities for being too lax in enforcement. Mask vigilantes threw rocks at visitors and scratched their cars with keys.
On the other hand, in Fall River, Massachusetts, Mayor Paul Coogan admitted to the Herald News that punitive measures were ineffective: “I don’t think we’re going to fine our way out of this.” An area resident said 95 percent of people were not wearing masks on the boardwalk.
The Taos News reported that New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham urged people to wear waterproof masks while swimming.
How far removed from science was outdoor maskage? Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Julia L. Marcus told the Boston Globe that “there’s really no reason to be wearing a mask when you’re outdoors and you’re not close to anyone” and that indoor masking was “perfectly adequate.” Marcus said that “arbitrary public health rules are a way to break the public’s trust, which is essential to public health efforts and keeping people engaged in public health effort.” She also noted that if outdoor mandates were enforced, those of lower economic levels would be further disadvantaged, as they had little or no private outdoor space. She said outdoor orders were “a bit like saying we’re going to ask people to wear condoms when they’re masturbating.”
Somebody wrote a letter to a New England newspaper demanding that shipyard workers be required by their employer to wear masks when walking to and from work.
The Adirondack Daily Enterprise said the town of North Elba, New York, received complaints about people not wearing masks on a raft on the lake. Town officials got a good laugh.
A Dallas theater declared in January 2022 that actors must wear masks while performing live. The Cincinnati Ballet had already begun requiring its dancers to wear masks.
A Hawaii resident posted online that police kept getting called on them because they entered their own condo without a mask. An apartment building in Brooklyn reportedly began fining tenants if they didn’t wear a mask in their own home—prompting a lawsuit against the building owner. In July 2021, CTV reported that in Halifax, Nova Scotia, police were called on a woman for not wearing a mask in an apartment building, and she was ticketed. Still another apartment complex required residents to wear a mask to take out the trash. A condo board in Miami fined a resident $100 for not wearing a mask in his own building.
According to an online exchange, a resident of a Vancouver apartment took out the garbage at 2 AM when nobody else was around. However, the building had cameras everywhere, and the resident later received an e-mail from the building’s management featuring a photo of this unmasked chore, warning them about the need to mask.
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi abused the National Guard to enforce the territory’s mask mandate and other generally draconian measures—months after a vaccine became available.
KPIX-TV reported in July 2020 that a woman in San Jose, California, kept getting harassed by other customers at grocery stores for not wearing a mask. She was exempt from mask rules because she was hearing impaired.
Also in July, a woman was caught on video spraying a couple with pepper spray at a San Diego park because they were having a picnic without masks.
Mask mania can be defined by countless stories like these, but it didn’t take place in a vacuum. The COVID industrial complex is part of a broader effort by oligarchs to micromanage society that began decades earlier.