Continuing to keep masking for your own reasons

The Quarantine Zone
1

Food for thought. I can understand the desire for the anonymity/protection from intrusion that the face mask offers.

(This may be paywalled. I accessed it for free through Pocket. I’ll quote as much relevant stuff as I can get away with.)

She’s been fully vaccinated for three weeks, but Francesca, a 46-year-old professor, does not plan to abandon the face mask that she’s come to view as a kind of “invisibility cloak” just yet.

“Maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker or maybe it’s because I always feel like I have to present my best self to the world, but it has been such a relief to feel anonymous,” she said. “It’s like having a force field around me that says ‘don’t see me’.”
…

…some people told the Guardian that they simply prefer wearing their face masks in public. It has nothing to do with being pro-science or anti-science, liberal or conservative, they said. Instead, it’s about the fact that there are more things that can hurt them than viruses, including the aggressive or unwelcome attention of other people – or even any attention at all.

“It’s a common consensus among my co-workers that we prefer not having customers see our faces,” said Becca Marshalla, 25, who works at a bookstore outside Chicago. “Oftentimes when a customer is being rude or saying off-color political things, I’m not allowed to grimace or ‘make a face’ because that will set them off. With a mask, I don’t have to smile at them or worry about keeping a neutral face.”

“I have had customers get very upset when I don’t smile at them,” she added. “I deal with anti-maskers constantly at work. They have threatened to hurt me, tried to get me fired, thrown things at me and yelled ‘fuck you’ in my face. If wearing a mask in the park separates me from them, I’m cool with that.”
…

THIS next part really struck me (my bold). If a woman (because it’s likely going to be women) chooses to wear a face mask in public or at work in a public venue, will that trigger people’s xenophobic hot buttons the way a woman in a Muslim headscarf and face veil does?

…
Who has the right to exist in public without question is one of the constant, defining struggles of any society. For years, countries have debated and even banned Muslim women from wearing the niqab, a full-face veil, and women who wear the hijab, a head scarf, face high rates of discrimination. Some Muslim women told researcher Anna Piela that the pandemic allowed them to feel more comfortable adopting the niqab, which they had wanted to do before.
…

2

I’d be very surprised if this kind of sentiment (newfound sense of public anonymity?) lasts. The fewer people wear masks when not required, the fewer remaining mask wearers will continue to do so out of some false sense of security.

3

Personally, I like wearing a mask in public. I’m fully vaccinated but haven’t altered my mask wearing at all.

4

As am I. Fully vaccinated and all. And I cannot wait to burn all my masks. Basta!

5

I’m not going to miss the masks. I’ve been very good about wearing mine but I don’t like wearing them. I’ll be 2+2 in 2 days and will go a lot more lax at that point outside.

6

I would be quite happy if we kept up with mask wearing when people are unwell, as they do in some Asian countries. I haven’t caught a cold in over a year, would be quite happy for that to continue. It seems incredible that up until this pandemic, it was perfectly fine to go to work, breathe over birthday cakes, sneeze over our keyboards and cough our way through meetings.

7

Yeah, me too. My natural expression is like Abe Vigoda with constipation. With a mask, I don’t have to put on a pleasant expression for others.

8

It would also be a fine idea if the etiquette of shaking hands with strangers never returned. This practice really should have terminated as soon as we understood the germ theory of disease.

9

No kidding!

I can see myself wearing a mask if I have any cold symptoms at all.

10

Remember when this bit was funny?:

Kidding. Still funny.

11

I haven’t shaken a hand since the pandemic began. The few times someone has proffered a hand I’ve looked at them like they were nuts.

I will fist bump if I absolutely have to.

12

This I agree with. I’m pretty much done with the handshake. But I was dropping that about 5 years ago and COVID just confirmed that I was going to make a strong effort to no longer shake hands.

13

I bite my lips and shred my inner cheeks out of anxiety. At least when I have a mask on, other people don’t have to see it. Also, I don’t want to be mistaken for a Republican.

14

Aren’t handshakes kind of a minor risk compared to breathing in the same air someone breathes out (the reason masks were required)? I thought we’d concluded that the whole hand washing thing was a red herring when it comes to COVID?

15

With this particular pathogen, perhaps. But many others can be spread by physical contact like shaking hands. The issue is that we frequently touch our faces with our hands following contact.

16

It’s nice to wear a mask in sub-zero temperatures, it is much easier to breathe than the old way of wearing a scarf over the mouth and nose.
I, too, have not had a cold the last year. I may go on wearing a mask in winter, both for preventing getting ill and to stop icicles forming in my beard.

17

It is still considered a fairly major contributor to transferring flues as far as I know.

18

I thought your vaccine protects you from catching it, but doesn’t keep you from spreading it if you’ve been unknowingly exposed. You don’t manifest symptoms and you don’t get sick, but, without a mask couldn’t YOU be the spreader regardless?

So I thought you’d still want to wear your mask to protect the unvaccinated.

Am I wrong?

19

That’s why I never shake hands with a chimney sweep.

20

This has consistently been very poorly reported in the press.

It is (obviously, when you think about it) much more difficult to study relative rates of transmission from people who have been vaccinated, than to study whether vaccinated people are getting sick themselves. So we don’t know to what extent vaccination reduces transmission, especially with new strains circulating. But it is certainly likely that a vaccine that is so successful at preventing disease will also reduce transmission significantly.

Careful scientists prudently saying we don’t know if X is true is consistently poorly reported to imply that it means we know X is false.

So your conclusion is right - it’s prudent for vaccinated people to keep wearing a mask for the time being. But that’s not because we have any reason to believe than vaccination is ineffective at reducing transmission. We just don’t have firm data yet.

This study just started:

https://www.coronaviruspreventionnetwork.org/covid-prevention-news-releases/prevent-covid-university-study/