Last weekend, activists urged people from across the country to travel to Washington, D.C., for a million-person protest. It was as if the coronavirus pandemic, which we’ve spent the fast few months fighting, had simply disappeared. And in a way it had, because the rules and regulations passed down to us by government officials and all-knowing health experts were all but nonexistent at Saturday’s march. Many protesters wore masks, but many others didn’t. And in terms of social distancing — well, it’s a bit hard to maintain 6 feet of distance in a crowd of 200,000 people.

But the coronavirus has not disappeared, and the rules governing our response to it are still being applied to businesses, schools, churches, and other organizations. In Maryland, for example, outdoor religious services have been banned completely by Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, as my colleague Tim Carney reported. And my church in northern Virginia has decided to hold off on in-person services, outdoors or indoors, because the regulations are too vague and too difficult to navigate. Where were these regulations during Saturday’s protest?