i live in utah and the local hospital has 40 cases of covid-19 currently. This doesnt seem to be “overwhelming”. i also ran the govt’s numbers (taken from https://coronavirus.utah.gov/case-counts/) and came up with a 0.49% (yes 0 point four nine) death rate, as of 7:40 am MST , Nov 10th, 2020.
i suspect some federal official somewhere said something like “if you declare a mask order we will provide more federal funding for ____” .
just as a side note, running the official federal numbers (taken from https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days) results in a 2.3910398% death rate…