California County Will Allow Outdoor Social Gatherings of 12 People—and Outdoor Protests of 100 People

The country’s local lockdown orders are slowly easing up, but in an often arbitrary manner.

Take Contra Costa County, California. On June 2, the Bay Area county’s Health Services department issued an updated shelter-in-place order that limited outdoor social gatherings to 12 people from the same “social bubble” but rescinded a mass gathering ban to allow for political protests of up to 100 people. This version of the order maintained a prohibition on outdoor religious gatherings.

“I know there’s a lot of frustration out there, but it’s important to keep in mind that interventions like social distancing have saved lives,”