The Gay Festival Behind the CDC’s New Mask Guidelines

Making the Provincetown “Bear Week” outbreak the basis of national policy is obviously foolish, but the White House press corps isn’t badgering Jen Psaki with questions about this bizarre situation. Meanwhile, the media seem intent on ignoring the fact that the “surge” of new COVID-19 cases they so breathlessly report hasn’t been accompanied by a significant rise in the death toll from the virus.

It is true that the number of new COVID-19 cases has increased nearly sevenfold in the past month — from fewer than 12,000 per day in late June to nearly 80,000 in late July — but the number of deaths from the disease has not seen a correspondingly large spike. The seven-day average of daily COVID-19 deaths on June 30 was 271; as of Friday, it was 354. July was worse than June, but still the July death toll is 89 percent lower than the 3,341 coronavirus victims who were dying on an average day during the late-January peak of the pandemic.