I’m still making in public. I don’t like it, but I’ve had COVID once and that was enough. The vulnerable people in my household pulled through, but I don’t want to play roulette with their lives or long-term health again.
I know I’m one of the last holdouts. Case rates are low. I’m fully vaccinated, and will continue to get boosters as recommend.
I’d like ot stop masking, but I’m not sure how to evaluate the risk. I’ve been looking at new cases per capita, form Worldometer. Is that a good metric? What do y’all think is a good measure of when I should stop masking?
I don’t know if we ever got good science on whether masking prevents you from spreading it, or you from catching it. If it really only accomplishes the former, then you masking is useless.
If your house is full of vulnerable people who cannot vaccinate, your answer is there. But maybe you should never stop masking because you could bring home flu or the common cold. Which infections have led to fatal pneumonia in vulnerable humans throughout the centuries and will continue to do so until the far future.
Regular cloth masks help prevent you from infecting others, but have only a very small protective effect on you. N95 or KN95 masks, used correctly (which includes using them for only one day each) have a very strong effect at preventing you from infecting others, and also give a significant (but not total) protective effect from you. N95 masks worn for more than a day are basically just cloth masks.
But to the OP, the easy answer is to trust the professionals. If you think your situation is sufficiently different from normal that the general CDC guidelines aren’t good enough, due to the vulnerable family members, then ask their doctors for advice.
In common with most people in the UK, I downed masks months ago. I do still see the occasional mask-wearer though.
Although neither Mrs Bob nor I wear masks, we do keep our distance from other people. Neither of us works, so that’s a problem we don’t have to face, but we do go to restaurants, shops and other places where people congregate.
I was in the pharmacy a few days ago and, unusually, there was a queue. It was noticeable that even without signs exhorting us to “Keep Two Metres Apart” everybody was doing just that.
Here’s YLE’s mask guidance from a year ago that includes critiques of the CDC guidance and aims for more of a public health impact rather than just individual health. The problem increasingly is having the right data to make the decision. I’m not masking because i think cases are low in my area, but it’s really hard to be sure.
You didn’t say what part of the world you are in. But for the U.S., Worldometers case counts are no longer accurate due to several reasons. I think all U.S. states now only report cases no better than weekly (and many are now monthly). Additionally, relatively few cases ever get noticed by the various health systems – and so there are scads of subclinical “off the grid” COVID cases that never get captured.
However, you can go to Biobot.io and see wastewater sampling for COVID aggregated from all over the U.S. Concentrate on the “Last 6 weeks” and “Last 6 months” buttons atop the graphics. COVID has dwindled down to a barely-there pathogen at this point.
The CDC still hosts hospitalization data. Not much is going on there. COVID in June 2023 is just not what it was two or three years ago.
Pandemics do eventually fade into obscurity as the diseases become endemic and (typically) less virulent and lethal, and people develop resistance. Look at the 1918 flu epidemic- it’s still here as H1N1, but it’s not causing pandemics anymore. And by mid-1920, the pandemic was over with.
That’s where I feel we’re at with COVID- it petered out after the Omicron surge pretty hard, and just isn’t showing up anymore.
I would not say “It isn’t showing up”. It’s showing up lots. But not in a way that necessitates aggressive public health measures to prevent mass death. Folks aren’t willing to wear masks & avoid crowds for the rest of their life to prevent a couple days of the sniffles.
For the truly unfortunate (and mostly the unvaccinated unfortunate), COVID can be a lot more than “a couple days of the sniffles”. For the rest of us, that’s about all it is. The OP’s dilemma is deciding how far towards the former they and their family members are. Then what, if anything, to do about that while the rest of the world has comprehensively moved on.
I stopped wearing a mask about 6 weeks ago. But probably should have restarted today as the smoke from Canadian fires has drifted to my neck of the woods in Madison Wisconsin. I saw more than the usual number of mask wearers today.
And it also says a maximum total of eight hours of use, continuous or intermittent.
So I suppose you could use it for an hour and a half each day, Monday through Friday, and then get a new one for next week. But you wouldn’t want to have a “Monday mask” and a “Tuesday mask” and so on that you re-use week after week.
Masks… Unless you wear a full-blown gas mask, surgical- or cloth masks do not work to block a virus. The virus molecules FLY through the material, like a chain link fence. Surgical masks are designed to block ‘spit’ during a surgical operation, ONLY. N95 masks, nearly the same, as surgical, and as per OSHA, wearing an N95 for more than 45 minutes is UNHEALTHY. ( carbon dioxide re-enters your system )…
Enter a restaurant wearing a mask… Do you smell the wonderful fragrance of a steak? Those molecules are much bigger than a virus.
Ever heard of “Long Covid” ? That is due to wearing a mask for extended time…similar ‘covid’ effects, result of wearing the mask.
Ventilators… A DEATH MACHINE for patients with respiration issues… Ventilators were used to PROTECT nursing staff, NOT patients. Ventilators killed ‘covid’ patients. Ventilators are like pouring gasoline on a fire to patients. Hospitals knew this but they got millions of dollars to use them.
((( As per Dr. Fauci’s own words : " Masks were about authority, NOT the safety of people".
I’m not a chemist. I don’t know how to determine the size of Strecker aldehyde molecules. Looks like a coronavirus is somewhere around 100 nm. So when you say “much bigger than a virus,” how much bigger?
Maybe if you search that statement, you will find, what I saw, on video, of him saying it. ( google, etc., may block your search?) But I saw it & heard it…
You are quoting him. I’m asking you to source the quote. Because I attempted to source the quote, and it seems to originate from an unsourced quote on the SDMB an hour ago.
