I live in Seattle WA. Today I had to take a day trip to Vancouver BC by car, and we stopped in a Costco in downtown vancouver. 60% of people there were wearing double-layered masks or N95 masks, and I wore my own reusable face mask and didn't get any strange looks.

We drove back down to Kirkland, WA, the epicentre of the outbreak, and went to Costco there. 0% of people were wearing masks apart from myself, even though they were all running around like crazy trying to find paper towels, water or rice. Everyone was touching the cart handles, and no attendants were there to offer clorox wipes to disinfect them.

An older woman approached me and exclaimed "Are you sick?!" Bewildered, I told her I wasn't. She began lecturing me about how using a mask to prevent sickness will not work. "See, it will attract the virus right to your mouth and you'll get sick", she said. I was kind of shocked, but felt a little bit upset at her tone.

"There's actually a net positive to wearing a mask versus not wearing any mask", I answered back. She got wide-eyed and started trying to refute me. "The CDC has claimed that masks are useless because they want people to stop hoarding masks. They need the masks to go to the medical workers who don't have any. We import almost all of our masks from China, and so the government wants to minimize the amount of regular citizens stockpiling them." By this point, she was surprisingly non-defensive, and then exclaimed "I stand corrected! We were told otherwise! I never thought of it that way." We ended up walking away on a good note.

I was surprised at the difference between the two cities and remembered that what the CDC says probably has a greater impact on americans to the point that people would rather not wear a single mask in public.

PS: At the border, entering Canada, they ask you if you're feeling sick or have any flu symptoms, or if you've been to any hot zones lately (China, Korea, Italy, Iran, Europe). Coming back into the USA there are no coronavirus related questions.