How long will New Mexico’s restaurateurs put up with public-health closures and limits, while they are disappearing from Nevada? How long can Boston Red Sox fans (and owners) watch packed stadiums in Texas, and not long to open up Fenway Park? Questions like these go beyond the United States. Can London, England, really require vaccine passports for dinner reservations, if Miami, Fla., does not?
For the better part of a year, those who “believed the science” tended to believe that states such as Florida and Texas were extending the national COVID nightmare. But now, as millions of vaccines are distributed in the United States every day, you can detect a whiff of anticipation in the air. Texas and Florida are largely open for business, and one can find hints of envy from places that are more closed down, even in the strangest places. Writing for New York Magazine’s Grub Street blog, Adam Platt was checking out the Miami nightlife scene. At first, he was afraid of moving through the unmasked masses in their “petri dish” of a state. But, as the night went on, he reports: “I felt my carefully nurtured pandemic anxiety slowly melting away into something more relaxed, and possibly even hopeful.”
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