Focus group: Pennsylvania swing voters OK with Philly mask mandate

I lived in Philly pre-covid for five years, and while it was a blast, the city was getting worse. You always had to be very aware of your surroundings. The type of place where even living in the ritzy parts like I did, if your mother knew how bad it really was, she'd be freaking out.

Over the span I lived there, it got a hell of a lot worse. The subway areas gradually went from a crazy or two to a full-fledged homeless encampment. Excrement from either larger dogs than I ever saw in philly, or human beings, around Rittenhouse Square. Heroine needles and zombies (it's a thing) in center city, when previously that was reserved to the edgier neighborhoods like fishtown/kensington or south philly. This is all without mentioning the huge swathes of the city that were all around no-go zones from the start.

Shortly before I left, there was an incident of a woman held down and raped in center city while screaming for help as bystanders walked on by. There was another of a woman in her 30's jogging on a Sunday morning in the city's ritziest neighborhood around 10am when a guy grabbed her and tried to drag her into her car. She got away, thank God. That's aside from the usual 5-10 shootings a weekend. The ever increasing murder count. I knew one person from a neighborhood bar who was led down to a basement and executed on his knees in 2018.

Haven't been back, but word has it from everyone I know, the news, and strangers on the internet, things have gotten a lot worse.

Oh yeah, then there's how they're handling COVID. So yeah, Philly's probably not the top pick for random cities you'd want to move to.

/r/LockdownSkepticism Thread Parent Link - axios.com