Don’t make wearing a mask a part of your identity. If you’re vaccinated, you no longer NEED to wear them (unless the establishment demands it). You will never know who’s vaccinated, ever; unless you want stop-and-search squads on the street checking covid passports or tracking by cellphone.
I wore the fucking mask, religiouosly, kept the distance, washed my hands. Now, I’m vaccinated, the end of masks; unless something new appears that requires them back.
Today, I’m mask-free.
Don’t let the idiot anti-vax anti-mask people dictate your life.
I never have let anti-vax and anti-mask people dictate my life, as they aren’t really worth engaging with. I still wear the mask under certain circumstances, as I don’t let anyone else dictate it either.
We went to both the local Walmart and the Super Walmart in the next town over last weekend. All of their “mask” signs had been taken down, but customers at both stores were around 90% masked. (We went through the self-checkout, so I didn’t really pay attention to the employees.)
I sometimes wore masks prior to the pandemic, although very rarely when I’d be seen by many people, as i was afraid it would freak people out. Now i have a much better selection of masks. Now i don’t expect it to freak anyone out. It’s no more “part of my identity” than wearing shoes is, or a scarf. But i plan to continue wearing masks in non-social, high-density venues as long as it remains socially acceptable to do so. Why not? It may reduce the risk that I’ll pick up a cold, as well as covid. It’s been great going a year with no colds. It costs me nothing.
That’s perfect, you do it to avoid catching diseases, that’s ok. It’s not “people will think I’m an antivax” or “how would they know I’m vaxxed”, that was my point.
…it doesn’t matter why the did it. Nobody is answerable to you. If people want to do it so "people would know they are vaxxed” that’s entirely up to them.
But just as I can’t tell whether you are vaxxed, you can’t tell why I’m wearing a mask. I hope we aren’t going to be going up to strangers and accosting them about their motives for random actions in public places.
Your face, your mask. I’m 1000% ok with that. I don’t have even the remotest of intentions of telling people what to wear on their faces.
But science says it’s unnecessary extra precaution if you are vaccinated. Kinda like wearing a helmet when driving your car to the store.
MY face, no mask.
Masking is still required where I work, in Alberta, as a teacher. The kids wear masks most of the time unless they’re eating, but they’re only a couple feet from each other. I’m allowed to remove mine as long as I can maintain a distance of six feet from the nearest student, so you can bet I’m mostly teaching from the front keeping a distance, maskless, unless I’m circulating through the classroom. Then I wear a mask, for sure. Looking forward to the end of these restrictions in a month or so.
Science doesn’t say 100% yea or nay. I bitterly resent that the CDC has dumbed down every message they’ve given to the point of being false.
The real message was that masks were in short supply for health care workers, and may not even help the wearer if not worn properly. What they said was “don’t wear masks”.
The real message was that we don’t know what fraction of vaccinated people would develop sterilizing immunity, nor to what degree others would be less contagious. What they said was “don’t trust the vaccine to protect others”.
Now the real message is that the risk of vaccinated people spreading covid is low enough that there’s no longer a compelling public health need to require masking in most situations. But the message is “take off your mask”.
We’ve accepted that the flu, in a bad year, might kill up to 50,000 people. In spite of that, prior to COVID, we were OK with not wearing masks, social distancing, or pressing for universal flu vaccination every year.
So maybe when COVID comes down to a daily fatality rate in the US of 137 people per day - about 20% of where it is right now - we can feel comfortable dropping all of the measures we use to fight it (except for vaccinations). Between here and there is a large gray area, within which lies the threshold of where we would be OK with dropping the prevention measures. It is closer to 137 deaths per day, or closer to 600 per day? Pretty subjective.
With flu season typically being just 13, weeks the 50k deaths in a bad season would average out to about 550 deaths a day over that time. That’s not too far from the daily COVID deaths we are seeing.
I would dispute “not pressing for universal flu vaccinations every year”. I think the CDC HAS been pushing for universal flu vaccination every year for at least a decade. I guess you could say that a lot of ordinary people have ignored that, but a lot of ordinary people are, right now, ignoring calls for universal covid vaccination, too.
The WSJ had an interesting article today about how many other diseases have been prevented from spreading due to covid restrictions this year. Maybe we don’t WANT to go back to the bad old days, maybe we ought to try for something a little less conductive to spreading diseases than what we used to do.
We’ve seen a virtual disappearance of the flu, with cases down more than 99% last winter. Here’s some other numbers from the article:
US chickenpox cases were down 2/3
Strep throat down 2/3 in Japan and England (not enough reporting in the US to know)
Rotavirus down more than 90% in a few countries
Noravirus down 94% in Germany
In New Zealand, overall mortality dropped 5%, and an NZ epidemiologist attributes that to fewer deaths from respiratory and other infections.
I don’t think we want to continue huddling in our homes, but maybe we should continue with WFH when sick, better cough hygiene, more hand washing, and hey, maybe even wearing masks in some times and places.
My boss and I were talking about this the other day. I have a bad habit of coming into work when I’m under the weather and not realizing just how ill I was until I start feeling better. So now when I get the sniffles I’ll just stay home and work from there for a few days.
Initially I was hesitant to go out without my mask because I’ve grown so accustomed to wearing it. I don’t usually wear my mask any more but I carry it around just in case. Some of the businesses I frequent require customers to wear their mask. I’ve even eaten out at restaurants a few times.
My business still requires a mask to enter the building. This morning I had an angry woman complaining that the CDC “ended the mask mandate” and that she was going to report me.
I’m so sick of this shit. I laughed at her, then explained that just as I can decide what hours to be open, which credit cards to accept, whether to offer billing, etc, I can also decide if I want her to enter my property masked.
I told her to report me, I’m interested in seeing her results. She left seething.
The gall of that “prove it” statement shows just how…arrogant? Ignorant? Maybe both? people can be. Would one rather risk infecting others for the sole reason that they believe masks to be “inconvenient”?
Last weekend I drove out to Indiana (Louisville KY, really) to drive my wife back from her mother’s house and making stops was a little confusing.
Driving west from DC the last consistent mask wearing I encountered was in Cumberland, Maryland. I’m fully vaccinated and I didn’t mask up at the pump at gas stations, but if I went into, say, a McDonald’s, the “Mask required” sign was still on the door, but then I walked in and I would be the only person in the building wearing a mask.
I kept it on anyways. I don’t trust anyone anymore!
Maybe we should distinguish when we’re talking about “wearing a mask regardless of personal health and general public health” and “wearing a mask when one is sick or during a cold or flu season.” It seems like folks here are talking about both simultaneously, thinking the other means the same thing they are, and it seems to be causing a disconnect.