Global Mask Pushback?

The photo above is from a January 4 anti-mask protest at the Westfield Century City mall, where protesters caused disturbances in variouis stores at the upscale venue in the Beverly Hils-West Los Angeles area. Videos of the event went viral, although it doesn't appear that large numbers were involved. Nevertheless, just yesterday the Hollywood Reporter belatedly covered it:

Amid the last gasps and bellows of the Trump presidency, it seems no place is immune to recent spikes in outgoing MAGA madness — not even deeply blue Los Angeles County. Over the past few weeks, numerous sites across the city have been converted into ideological battlegrounds pitting maskless, Trump-supporting agitators against, well, everyone else, even as more than 7,000 people are hospitalized for COVID-19 around the L.A. area and ambulances are being told not to bring in patients unlikely to survive.

. . . But the ugliest event has to be the action that occurred at Westfield Century City on Jan. 4. As seen in videos posted to social media, a dozen or so provocateurs converged at the mall for seemingly one purpose: to openly defy and verbally ridicule the mask-wearing mandates that nearly every private business in L.A. has been following for the past several months. Participants — several of whom were wearing MAGA paraphernalia — can be seen browsing the aisles of stores as they shout down anyone who requests that they put on a mask.

I'm not sure how big this movement is. Certaiinly ordinary citizens, like it or not, wear masks as required, and generally they aren't allowed into stores or churches without them anyhow. In LA, masks are effectively universal. However, that the Hollywood Reporter should be bashing anti-maskers a week after a fairly small protest suggests the media elites are nervous. Maybe they should be. People aren't happy about moving goalposts and indefinite lockdowns, especially when civil authorities appear to be slow-walking vaccine distribution.

In the UK, HSBC Bank has threatened to close accounts of customers who refuse to wear masks in its branches.

HSBC bank has told its customers that wearing masks inside its branches is mandatory and those who refuse could see their accounts closed.

The warning comes as a further 1,234 deaths from Covid-19 were recorded in a single day.

It's notable that both the Hollywood Reporter and the UK press cover the issue of masks with hysterical references to death counts, although the question remains if masks are in fact near universal -- which in fact they are -- and lockdown rules are draconian -- we must assume that any customer in a UK HSBC branch is now there due only to direst exigency -- the death rates continue to spike.

Why hasnb't media anywhere begun to ask this question?

And why are the UK powers that be nervous enough to threaten anyone who thinks of entering premises maskless? The January 6 US Capitol riot seems to have focused the Hollywood Reporter's mind on what could happen if the political authorities don't find a better solution to the COVID crisis.