The mayor’s home neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn is filled with such Karens. The neighborhood message boards for Park Slope are full of people reporting on others. One Park Sloper posted about calling the police because her neighbors appeared to be having friends over in their backyard. Many other Karens weighed in with support. The lone dissenter, who wrote that people in their own backyards should be left alone, was dismissed as a troll.

The certainty with which Karen lectures those around her is her worst attribute. There’s so much we don’t know about COVID. But not Karen. She knows all. The Karens are always exasperated. ‘What don’t you understand?’ ‘How can you not know this?’, they wonder about information they themselves learned moments ago.

Take masks. In February and March when the CDC was advising against wearing masks and the Surgeon General asked Americans to not buy health masks, Karen was out in force mocking people who were wearing masks and calling them selfish for not saving those masks for medical staff.

But now, Karen is queen of enforcing mask-wearing. Everyone must wear one at all times, even if they are not near other people.