I just had dinner in a Greek restaurant in Massachusetts with two tables of new friends and without masks, and I feel like I just met an illicit lover in a shady hotel. Naughty! Nice!

2/ Bots and trolls are out in force so let me restate: 1/MA reopened indoor dining at 40 per cent on Monday. So we were law abiding. 2/ I’ve researched aerosol transmission and in a ventilated space (as this was) there is no evidence that you can infect anyone sitting 8 ft...

3/ let alone at 20 feet away from us, as the next table was. None. 3/ Restaurant owners and staff deserve to feed their kids. 4/ COVID is extremely age-dependent and dependent on underlying conditions re my own sense of risk. So since...

4/ we weren’t endangering anyone else per science, we supported desperate local businesses, we obeyed law and we made personal choices re our own risk, I post this, as we don’t live in a police state and science today does not support withdrawal from human society for most of us.

5/Lastly, those who wish to and should for their health’s sake voluntarily withdraw from settings such as the one I described, should be absolutely supported in doing so. But it makes zero sense to harm, impoverish local economies and their workers who work paycheck to paycheck,

6/ to ‘protect’ healthy people under 65 who know now how to distance between tables, ventilate and sanitize, but who make the personal choice to be together. Now that’s it’s clear that asymptomatic transmission is not well evidenced, this policing of assembly of those who make a

7/ personal choice to do so, and this crushing of work opportunities for those who wish to make a personal choice to earn a living to feed their families, and this moralizing against and shaming of basic human connection, has to stop.

8/ Lastly as the science grows fainter and fainter in support of closing down human connection, and as data keep rolling in that not ‘locked down’ states do the same as those who crushed their economies and traumatized their children, the voices (or bots) shaming citizens who...

9/ want to live in free societies again and to choose to earn a living to feed their kids, who want to choose to send their kids to school so they have an actual human life, and who want to worship as a community and greet friends as a human community, grow more and more shrill

10/ and as science increasingly shows that this disease while very serious for those who are elderly or with certain health conditions, is not a fearsome thing for most of us, and that the levels of fear all of us have been encouraged to sustain are not scientifically supportable

11/the hysteria, condemnation and fearmongering from elected officials grows only more extreme, and the (conflicted by $$) media's focus grows ever less accurate. Time to support those who are vulnerable and choose voluntarily to shelter, and past time to reclaim free societies.