Message board topic:

It sounds like the laws are the same where you are.  Here though, the mask laws are mandated county by county, rather than state wide, but I don't know of any counties that don't do the same.  A few counties do carry it one step further, limiting occupancy to 25%, which is why I can't work in Kansas City Kansas or Warrensburg Missouri.  I lost a lot of bookings in those 2 cities.  In Sedalia, a handful of restaurants are wide open.  Most are drive-through only.  In McDonalds, you can go in to order but you can't stay to eat.

Nobody, but nobody, wears a mask in the biker bars, except the bartenders.  Nobody even wore one going in and out, except the band because we had to.  In the suburbs, a very few wore masks coming in, then wore them down around their necks for the rest of the night, if they kept them on at all.  In one suburb they planned a "best mask" contest, but only 3 people wore masks so, that was a bust.  I'm not a "touchy-feely" kind of guy but every night I play, I'm subjected to half a dozen hugs and countless handshakes, with people talking right up to my face to be heard over the noise.  It's like, if I wanted to get sick, this is exactly how I'd do it!

I noticed the other day that going through a store with a mask on, I caught the strong smell of kettle corn, and if the complex molecule that makes the smell of kettle corn is getting through, the much smaller virus must look at the weave in a mask like a gnat looking at the open doors on a zeppelin hangar.  I'm sure they cut down the number getting through, particularly if someone sneezes, but I don't think they're stopping anywhere near all of it.  This is cold and flu season anyway and I'm sure everybody who gets a cold will think they've got it.  John

"face diapers", I like that.

I have to admit I am just not wanting to wear a mask all the time now. I do and ONLY because the state mandates I do when in stores and public used buildings, but living in a cage is not living to me. WIll there come a point I defy the mandates? Lord knows. I suppose after a year or the rules become just too oppressive (like you have to wear them in your house and they start to send "mask checkers" out to homes). I still avoid restaurants (not like I went much prior) just because I have the choice and was not avoiding because of a mandate saying to avoid restaurants. I suppose the point in my head is my choice then my consequence. I never got flu shots on my own, except the last few years and that was because moms nursing home said I needed to do that to visit. Have I ever had the flu? I think 2 or 3 times in my almost 60 years. Eh. Last week I DID decide I wanted a coffee while I was in town on Saturday and opted to get a McDonalds coffee. The drive thru was way way too long so I decided to park, dawn the mask (as mandated) and go in to order it. It was just stupid. You HAVE to wear a mask to go inside and to stand in line to order, BUT take it off after you order (before you eat). So there were tons of people in the crowded place and everyone in the line was standing a foot from the tables that seated tons of maskless people chewing and drinking, laughing and coughing. It is this hypocrisy that makes me question these mandates now.

Oh well, let me dismount this tall horse.

Courious, how many people in these biker bars wear masks IN the bars?

It is stupid.  I imagine that when a virus gets into a nursing home it must go through like a forest fire, and I'm sure the nursing home would be blamed for carelessness, but we're still humans and we're not built for this kind of isolation.  I can see that if you're sick, you might stay away from people for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month if it drags on, but this is liable to drag on for a couple of years, and you just can't keep people isolated in a plastic box for that long.

Of course I work in a lot of biker bars, where people are openly contemptuous of the virus, like if they're big enough and tough enough, no puny virus is going to hurt them, (which is obviously laughable) but I don't think they honestly believe it's any worse than a normal flu.  In Kansas City last week, the bar has been cited twice for not making people wear masks, but the glitch in the law is, once you're inside, you don't have to wear it.  So in setting up, making maybe 10 trips in and out, we had to wear the mask.  (They refer to them as face diapers.)  Once you're inside, the mask comes off.  It does begin to feel like we're just jumping through hoops at this point.  John

Still have not been able to fly out to see mom. Wow, I went from 4 to 7 times a year to zero and I hate it. Even if I wanted to go to NJ (ignoring the 2 week isolation they would want me to do) her nursing home is now only letting ONE visitor ONCE a week for 15 minutes OUTSIDE and behind a plexiglass divider. So they would wheel her out in her wheelchair and I would be 15 feet from her and yell "Hi mom!" and she would not hear me well and not understand why I cannot come to her or kiss her.

This is just stupid. *Sigh*