TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Arizona residents are the most defiant citizens in the United States when it comes to wearing face coverings to slow the spread of COVID-19, a new study found.
Survival at Home, a website dedicated to survival and disaster preparedness, used geotagging data on Twitter to track several mask-related hashtags over the last 30 days. The hashtags, tracked in each state, included #nomask, #burnyourmask, #nomasks, #antimask and #iwillnotcomply. More than 150,000 tweets were analyzed.
Behind Arizona, the highest number of anti-mask tweets came from Nevada and Florida, respectively.
Tweets in favor of wearing masks, however, far outweighed the anti-mask sentiment in each state, the study said.
In Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey gave cities the authority to require face coverings rather than including it in either of his two statewide executive orders, according to USA Today.
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak issued a mandatory face covering policy for all Nevadans last month after the state saw a four-week climb in coronavirus cases.
In Florida, the data lends itself to what many believe has been a problematic response to the coronavirus by the state’s leadership.
Stay-at-home orders in the Sunshine State lagged behind other states by about a month. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has not issued a statewide mask mandate but said he wouldn’t stop local mask mandates.
Florida surpassed more than 300,000 cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday. Hillsborough County has the 24th-highest number of confirmed cases in the entire country, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
Arizona, Florida, California and Texas have all been identified as U.S. coronavirus hotspots.
