How Covid precautions differ widely by region

TAMPA, Fla. — Less than 48 hours after I arrived here from New York, a close family member tested positive for Covid-19. As I stood in the local Walgreens late on a Sunday night buying as many rapid tests as I could, a man in his 20s bounded in.

“Do you sell pingpong balls?” he asked the clerk who was ringing me up. It sounded like he had a fun night of beer pong in the works. But what stuck in my mind was that he wasn’t wearing a mask. 

Clearly I’d left indoor mask and vaccination mandates behind with New York’s frigid temperatures while visiting my family in Florida. Life seemed nearly back to normal here, though “normal” seemed audaciously carefree compared to the far more cautious environment back home in Brooklyn.

As the nation enters the third year of the pandemic, life cranks on for many — but the way it is experienced varies widely depending on where you live. Personal beliefs mingle with state-level restrictions, or lack thereof, to determine how common it is for people to wear masks in public spaces. 

Interviews with more than a half-dozen people around the country showed that many saw striking differences in masking depending on where they lived and traveled. The policies of small-business owners tended to mirror what they saw in their communities, even if they chose to be more cautious in their personal lives. 

The change has been gradual in this city of approximately 400,000 on Florida’s Gulf Coast. During the three months I spent here a year ago, most everyone complied with Hillsborough County’s indoor mask mandate. One maskless face at the local Publix was a surprise. A year later, less than half of the people I saw at the Publix, Whole Foods and Target stores were wearing masks. 

In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed an executive order barring mandates and restrictions throughout Florida. He allowed restaurants to operate at full capacity in Florida starting in September 2020, months before vaccines were widely available and indoor dining was permitted in other parts of the country.

Most servers at restaurants I recently visited around South Tampa weren’t wearing masks, a notable contrast with New York, where even customers have to mask up and present proof of vaccinations and photo IDs to eat indoors.

Liliana Fernandez, 45, a medical scientist who lives in San Francisco and was visiting Tampa, said she was surprised that wearing a mask here seemed to make some around her feel uncomfortable. 

“When we’re in the Uber or Lyft [and the driver is] without a mask, I immediately lowered my window and the driver looked at me and wasn’t very happy about it,” she said. “He didn’t say anything or anything, but you can tell he wasn’t very comfortable about it.”

In comparison, she said San Francisco’s mask mandate means that, in…