For thousands of people, the Fourth of July weekend was their first time venturing into large crowds without a mask.
It was weird and didn’t feel normal for some.
“It’s kind of hard to unlearn that,” Rachel Laudico said sitting with her daughter in Del Mar. “I think that this will just change the way we interact probably for the rest of our lives.”
One day after Independence Day, thousands of people still crowded popular spots like Old Town San Diego and Balboa Park.
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“It feels great,” smiled Ken Shen as he spoke to NBC 7 without a mask in Old Town.
“Everyone’s just gathering together. No more social distancing,” he said.
A simple scan of the crowd anywhere in San Diego showed a vast majority of San Diegans and visitors were without face masks.
“Wondering if someone’s going to approach me and say, ‘Hey, you know what? Put it on.’ So, you’re definitely looking around to see who has the mask on or not,” smiled Moses Milligan as he looked over both shoulders. “It’s definitely going to take a while.”
It was also easy to spot people still covering up their nose and mouth. Milligan thought it would take a while for everyone to come around.
“COVID is still out there, different forms of the virus are there. So, I would still probably say at least a year or more," Milligan said.
“I think that once everyone gets vaccinated, I think that everything will be back to normal,” agreed Shen.
“The way our society interacts is just probably fundamentally changed,” concluded Laudico.
