Lyft will require face masks for riders and drivers

A sensible federal policy by a competent administration would have consisted of nearly immediate mandatory mask usage in all public places. Bring up the issue with congress and have them pass a federal law with an expiration date so that police officers can enforce if you have to.

That competent administration would have used the already-existing six day a week delivery service reaching every mailbox in America (USPS) to distribute reusable cloth masks to every citizen in the country, along with clear instructions for use and maybe even some educational material.

That would have perhaps been achieved by invocation of the defense powers act: get a list of all mass production facilities that can sew cloth and divvy up the US addresses to them, telling them to drop ship the masks and compensating them directly.

I don’t think this is hindsight being 20/20, I recall the the CDC response in the beginning was infuriating, basically telling us that masks maybe don’t even work that well. They don’t have to work that well for them to be better than nothing!