Do we still feel like dining indoors is particularly risky as compared to dense-crows situations?
Maybe if a place is densely seated or something … and there’s someone in earshot with an uncontrolled cough or something. But in a fine dining restaurant especially, it seems most patrons have plenty of space apart from other tables.
I agree. Why incur the costs of wearing a mask of inferior protection? I see people wearing cloth masks still, and I just think, “Why would you do that?” How do you care enough to carry and wear a mask, but not concerned enough to wear something that has a many-multiple times better shot at protecting you?
Before anyone beats me to it, if I’m ever in a large audience with non-breathing strangers, I’ve probably got bigger problems. Also I forgot to add, I’m sure I would respect masking in any situation where someone went to the trouble of recommending/encouraging it.
We had an incredible meal recently at The Allegheny Grille, a beautiful restaurant on the upper Allegheny River in Foxburg, PA. I lost track of the number of courses. The really great part of the experience was being seated on a balcony, outdoors, over the water. Waitstaff were masked, we were not.
Because covid is mostly spread by aerosols, and not by larger particulates, being far away doesn’t matter than much. What matters is total ventilation. How often is the air exchanged or filtered? What’s the overall density of people in the airspace?
Ironically, the person coughing is the one person where it does matter how far away you are, as coughing does produce a lot of larger particles, that will drop out of the air on their own.
Most restaurants are fairly dense, so they can make a profit. And until we get updated ventilation standards, I don’t trust their ventilation.
The whole “6 feet” thing was wrong from the start, and it’s unfortunate that it got so much play.
This Wired article is long, but it tells the history of how we got stuck with a “6 foot” rule and the political forces that propped it up.
The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill | WIRED
This article gives some updated guidelines. You can see that dining indoors without excellent ventilation remains risky.
6-Foot-Distancing Rule Is Outdated, Oxford and MIT Created New System (businessinsider.com)
Here’s another take on the same.
MIT researchers say time spent indoors increases risk of Covid at 6 feet or 60 feet in new study (cnbc.com)
I haven’t masked except at the doctor’s office since the mask mandate in my county was removed early in 2022.
I never received any sort of dividend from not being sick, even though I work from home now. I am divorced and the kids travel back and forth, so I still got colds etc.
My most likely infection route would be from the kids who are unmasked at school. One of them got it earlier in the year. No one else in the family, though my ex and her partner had it in 2021.
I attend church services. A few are masked there still. No N95s, just cloth/surgical masks. We also have it online and some perhaps are still doing that.
I have resumed restaurants/pub trivia with my friends and kids. Again, the kids are in school, so indoor dining doesn’t present much additional added risk.
Personally, I do find masking an impediment to social situations such as church. Also, my family has members with degenerative conditions, which I take into account that we don’t have forever to isolate and kick the social can constantly down the road.
I don’t mind wearing a mask in public and will probably do so for a while. I wear it in places where it doesn’t impede why I’m there. I wear it when I’m on public transport, in stores, in random crowded areas, etc. But I don’t wear it if I’m in a restaurant or with friends. This is to mitigate my risk of exposure without causing too much inconvenience.
One thing I’ve done is switch to masks with exhaust values. At this point, I don’t really care if I’m releasing virus into a public area where 99% of the people aren’t wearing masks. I’m not going to inconvenience myself for them if they don’t care enough to wear their own mask. If they want protection, they should wear a mask rather than expect others to wear a mask for their benefit. I’ll wear a non-vented mask if I’m with someone I think may be at risk (like parents), but I’m not going out of my way to protect the shoppers in Target. I’ve also switched to KN95 rather than N95 because of the convenience of the ear loops. KN95’s are much easier to take on and off when I’m doing errands and stuff. I think N95’s are actually better at personal protection because they have a tighter fit, but at this point I’ll take a little less protection with KN95’s for the comfort and convenience.
Yeah, I stopped isolating when I got vaccinated. I’ve been out and about and socially engaged since then. I just mostly wear masks when I’m out of the house.
I mostly wear KF94 masks, which also have ear loops. But I also have a box of N95 masks that I wear in higher-risk situations, like dancing and visiting hospitals. Also, if I plan to leave the mask on for more than a couple of hours, the head strap is more comfortable than ear loops.
(KN95 is the Chinese standard. KF94 is the South Korean standard – designed for general, non-medical use during epidemics. South Korea polices its standard pretty rigorously, so I trust it more than KN95, which is a self-designated standard.)
Oops. Where I said N95 earlier, substitute KN95. I don’t know if I’ve ever worn an N95.
Look, I wear a mask wherever required, and wherever I feel the situation warrants. But there are definitely issues with wearing one, which makes me want to stop whenever possible. Some main ones are:
If the mask fits well, you should rarely have trouble with fog.
The KF94 “boat style” masks are pretty good at staying off your mouth while not obscuring much of your downwards vision. But of course, I need pretty strong glasses, so I can’t really see below my glasses anyway, and generally need to look down to see the ground. That is, I need to angle my head such that I can look at the ground through my glasses, or else I don’t see my feet terribly well anyway.
Guess I can’t find any masks that fit well.
I bought a lot of masks before settling on a couple brands I like. A good flexible metal bit at the top to fit to your nose and face is critical. The N95s often fit better due to the wrap-around straps. 3M “Aurora” is a brand that fits lots of people well, and has foam rubber around the top to help make a snug seal.
I hope both of you realize that “the foreseeable future” really means “forever.” Barring a theoretically-possible but very unlikely breakthrough, the situation with Covid right now is the best that it will ever be in your lifetimes, even if you live for another 50 years.
Thank you for putting forth those articles~I got a lot out of reading them.I posted them in my google keep so I can refer back to them.
OK, sure. What’s likely for me is that if we get down to influenza levels of death with annual flu shot style vaccines, I’ll drop masks for indoor concerts/plays etc. Just like I didn’t worry much about the flu before. I’ll mask on public transportation forever. Feel dumb for not doing it earlier, but culturally we just weren’t there.
Yeah, it might be forever. We might learn more about long covid, that makes me more or less cautious. We might get better treatments or worse variants. I don’t think we’ve quite reached steady state. But I’m okay with “this might be forever”.
I think some people are just afraid of stricter or large scale restrictions coming back. Like if it’s bad enough to need a mask, then it’s bad enough to force office/venue/border closures or what have you, and they can’t fathom living with that “risk” permanently.
Pandemic measures come at a life and social cost. This has been my opinion since the very start of this. This is why I always warn against overreach or doing things I deem unnecessary or ineffective.
Asking people to forgo one holiday in person is one thing. Asking them to forgo repeated holidays again and again, the cost adds up.
After Covid began my mother moved into a memory care facility for reasons that have nothing to do with Covid. She now lives in the same building with a number of other people and staff. It is utterly impractical and in fact cruel to expect her to mask 24x7 in her place of living. I think that monitoring potential illness, and vaccination of herself and others, is more than sufficient protection. We do not mask when we are with her. Nor does she.
Right now I consider mask wearing a negative given the cumulative social cost and relative lack of benefit given vaccination and other prevention methods.
As far as long Covid goes, my life clock is running while we are all waiting to learn more. I’m not going to get that time back. Lots of clickbait and studies with poor data, good studies are somehow very rare despite 2 and a half years of Covid.
We are.
Having caught COVID while travelling on a train, in our own compartment, and while masked (most of the time; we did NOT mask when in the compartment), the risk will continue. A mask does no harm beyond offending idiots (not saying the unmasked are idiots, but anyone who is offended by ME wearing one IS an idiot).
I don’t do N95s, as a rule. I ought to - but found I felt like I was struggling to breathe. That’s a sign it was working, I guess. I compromised by wearing a surgical mask and a cloth mask over that - which seemed to provide better air-gap coverage than either alone. I’d definitely wear one the next time I travel via anything other than private automobile.
Maybe, in a few years, the dominant variants truly will have evolved to be no worse than flu or a bad cold. If so, I’ll rethink my position.
Interestingly, I went to Costco yesterday - first real shopping I’d done since we all got hit. Fewer shoppers were masked than on previous visits, AND fewer employees. If I were an employee at such a place, having face-to-face contact with hundreds of unmasked people every day, I would definitely want to wear SOME kind of mask.