How long do you plan on wearing a mask for? Will it be for the rest of your life? What will change your view?
This isn’t meant to be inflammatory. There’s someone at work who wears one everyday and I’m too afraid to ask them.
I wear one when I’m sick. Outside of places like the United States it’s actually very common to wear masks when you are sick. There used to not be a stigma about masks even in the US before COVID. This is because masks were never meant to be used as a way to prevent getting sick but as a way to not get others sick, therefore slowing the spread of disease. Somewhere over the past few years the lines got crossed and everyone started calling masks bullshit because they misinterpreted the actual use for them. Doctors don’t wear masks because they don’t want to get sick. They wear them so they don’t get their patients sick.
You ought to wear a respirator (N95) rather than a mask (those baggy blue procedure masks). Respirators help keep you from getting sick.
I’m not immunocompromised or any other kind of high-risk and I wear an N95 mask in most indoor public settings.
I plan on doing it until something changes. That could mean any of:
- SARS-CoV-2 mutates into a dominant strain with a low risk of long-term disability
- A new vaccine is developed that reduces the risk of long-term disability following COVID, or probability of infection to virtually nil
- Monitoring programs, such as CDC wastewater testing show a low risk of infection
It seems to me people collectively decided to stop caring about COVID even though most of the risks that were present two years ago still exist. I would therefore ask the inverse: why stop protecting yourself before the danger is over?
For what it’s worth, it’s not exactly the same COVID. I’m no scientist, but as I understand, the majority of COVID viruses are less dangerous than the 2020 batch. Millions of people died that year. If that were still the case, we’d be seeing a lot more death.
That’s correct; the omicron variant that became dominant a bit over two years ago was more contagious and less deadly than those that preceded it. Current variants are similar to omicron in those respects.
The rate of long-term disability is still high.
The way you phrased the question is a tad bitey.
That person may or may not be immunocompromised or they are caring for someone who is and are taking precautions.
Why does it matter if someone chooses to wear a mask or not? Maybe it’s a great excuse to avoid facial recognition software.
Change the view that if you have a contagious illness that wearing a mask helps prevent the spread of it? Never gonna change. I don’t wear one daily but choose to if I start showing signs of a respiratory illness because it works and I care about people around me.
Why does it matter if someone chooses to wear a mask or not? Maybe it’s a great excuse to avoid facial recognition software.
Sunglasses are better for that. The idiots trying to ban masks aren’t trying to fight crime, they just want to normalize spreading illness.
I wear a respirator whenever I’m in an indoor public space like a store, and I also don’t spend more time in those spaces than I have to. I go into the store and get what I need, but I generally don’t linger around browsing stuff. That means I probably buy less stuff, which is good for my wallet as well. But politicians hate that. They want us out there spending. That’s why they are trying to play down covid risks. So they hate mask and respirator usage since it reminds others that the virus is still out there.
