Mask Wearing Is Becoming the New Normal

Here is the result of a poll taken a few days ago by YouGov for CBS News:

Roughly speaking, it looks like about 70 percent of Americans wear masks routinely when they leave the house. That’s not bad, and a number that high normalizes the behavior enough that it’s likely to increase over time.

This was on my mind because I was thinking about whether we’re headed for a big increase in COVID-19 cases thanks to the relaxation of social distancing restrictions. I think this is pretty likely, but if it doesn’t happen it will most likely be due to widespread mask wearing. Even as we ease off of other restrictions, mask wearing is the one thing that everyone still agrees about.

I hope this is something that’s currently under intense study, both here and in other countries. We need a better handle on which specific measures are most effective at stopping the spread of the virus, and it would certainly be useful to know just how effective mask wearing is even if you do nothing else.

Now just imagine how close to 100 percent we could get if our president and all our governors got on board…

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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