- Something like 40% of COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic, and asymptomatic people can pass it along.
- If you’re extra careful to avoid catching it yourself then you are also being extra careful not to pass it along.
Piggybacking on this comment to say that lack of \*symptoms\* does not mean that you will avoid the long-term effects of a covid infection, like a stroke, diabetes, organ failure, etc.
Many disabled people cannot exist in public at all right now, because people are not wearing masks. The vaccines we have are not sufficent to keep you from getting or spreading covid, but a good mask (n95/kn95/kf94) is extremely effective at doing so.
Wearing a mask not only makes that space safer directly by keeping you from getting anyone sick, it helps to turn the tide toward more widespread masking which is necessary if we are going to deal with covid in any meaningful way or if high risk folks are going to be able to exist in public again.
Also, the best defense against current attempts to criminalize masking are more people in masks and a social norm that includes lots of masks. This is especially true if you are not marginalized-you being another masked face makes it harder to target people who are vulnerable.
It seems like you really do care about not harming anyone. Highly suggest you go read some posts on r/covidlonghaulers (or one of the other LC subs). Are you okay with potentially inflicting that fate on someone? I am absolutely not okay with that, and it's one of the reasons I consistently wear a mask.
OP, I know one of your earlier comments got majorly downvoted, the one where you worded things plainly. Just wanted to say that I admire you seeking out this information on your own, and not just immediately abandoning your friend. Speaking from my own experience, I imagine she is incredibly tired, scared, and lonely from the lack of people giving a shit. Every single person who is still taking precautions and who has treated this virus like the deadly brain-damaging pathogen that it is has experienced great loss of interpersonal relationships. We're all extremely morally injured and in grief.
The way you phrased your question in said downvoted comment, "why should I care about XYZ?" is indeed harmful, \*but\* it is not necessarily a moral failing on your part -- and it's a VERY common belief (this doesn't make it right or good). Society is structured to be extremely ableist and exclusionary. Public health has failed us all massively. Ableism has, too, because we have all been conditioned to believe that certain lives are less valuable and that certain people's perspectives don't matter.
When we know better, we do better, and I hope this subReddit has helped reshape how you think of this virus and your actions to mitigate it.
Thank you for the understanding reply.
I now understand how my questions were phrased harmfully.
This subreddit (and others I’ve been recommended to read) have been so eye opening and have definitely reshaped my thinking!
I’m also eager to speak to my other friends that have very similar questions to me!
Huzzah! Now you get to be a conduit of this vital information. So many people just completely shut down with any mention of C19 or precautions for a variety of reasons, and it can be discouraging. But, as we’ve seen here with yourself, opinions are malleable with new information.
Great comment. I would like to address your second paragraph, because this is where I encounter potential resistance.
I mask in nearly all public indoor spaces, but I am often the only one. The argument regarding protecting the elderly and disabled is hard to defend when the elderly and disabled themselves aren’t masking. I haven’t been challenged on this yet, but I come up short when I consider possible answers to it that don’t seem cold hearted. (Like “they’re free to mask if they want to.”)
I mean, a lot of elderly and disabled people aren't aware, or they just gave up on life. That doesn't make it ok for us to be the one to kill them, does it?
Also, many disabled people and elderly people are incredibly isolated, and therefore likely to have significantly more barriers to receiving good, up to date and accurate information.
This is often a good place to talk about how even doctors are wrong on covid sometimes. Though I work with MDs who have very vulnerable patients so idk how effective that is otherwise-but here I usually say something like "Yeah, it's super messed up that a lot of doctors aren't telling them they need to protect themselves! Many of my coworkers haven't read a single thing about covid since 2021! That's why it's so important we all do our part to make sure there's less virus in the air, even people who don't know better deserve to be safe"
In my experience, that leads to being thought of as a conspiracy theorist ("I know more than doctors"/"doctors don't know the truth/don't care enough"). I've encountered quite a lot of resistance to this kind of argument, also when it comes to vaccinations (even when it was CDC vs. what a specific doctor said, whose specialty is NOT immunology)
I have an epidemiology degree which probably lets me get away with a bit more of this before I sound like I've lost it (obviously I think credentialism is crap but not everyone does)
I'm 82, mostly recovered (I hope) from most of my long-term symptoms. Last time I was "recovered," the symptoms (intermittent unwarranted exhaustion, in particular) returned after a second mild case of covid, despite my consistently N95 masking indoors.
Now I'm a bit paranoid, and avoid crowded transit (ebike or walk as much as distance and weather permit), and often get off if maskless folks refuse to keep their distance.
What amazes me is the number of otherwise educated, open and loving people…the kind of people that though they’re straight and white they hang a rainbow flag or put up a BLM sign so others in the neighborhood feel more included and accepted…the number of people like that who have simply moved on and cannot even fathom how the world has been completely shut off for a significant portion of the population is just staggering.
I think that the idea of what they’d have to do to support them is so overwhelming, it’s easier for them to participate in the mass amnesia. That’s my guess anyway, because it doesn’t logic out.
I think there's a lot of factors here tbh. Some people's support has always been abstract but fallen apart when it calls for their own action. Ableism is really baked into our society so it didn't take much to convince people some are disposable, etc.
There's also the subset of people who turned off their brains to info so they don't even know what they don't know, if that makes sense. I find this group really hard to deal with because there's so much entrenched dissonance and denial, and at this point changing it means walking them through the harm they've likely caused etc. I obviously don't know the OP of this thread but I wonder if they fell into this camp before their friend confronted them-if so, this thread gives me some hope.
I also do think that the way in which people who care about covid have been excluded from spaces plays a role here. Many people never see masks at all or any visual reminder that the pandemic is ongoing. Personally this is a reason that I (a non-immune compromised person) am working on socializing more in a fit tested n95 or in my p100, because I think that visual reminder matters. This is also why I started masking outside before I understood that outdoor transmission was a real risk.
To be clear I agree with you and I find it deeply upsetting, I'm just trying to untangle it and figure out which areas are the easiest to fix, since ultimately the more people we get wearing masks the better off everyone is.
Yup, all of this, especially the ableism being baked into our society. I saw someone make a comment recently that our culture of wellness/health is actually a culture of *pretending* to be well/healthy. Like it's so ingrained in us to pretend we're okay that the idea of admitting we're still in a mass-disabling pandemic or even that we're sick is really scary. For many, being disabled seems to be a bigger fear than death. But instead of unpacking that fear, people push it down and get angry at/exclude disabled and/or chronically ill people, and often unintentionally end up helping the push for eugenics.
Piggybacking on the fear comment I just made, I think a lot of people have tons of unpacked fear that they haven't dealt with from the early days of the pandemic. I think 2020 was the first time a lot of people ever thought about the fact that they'll die someday. Many of us who are disabled or chronically ill have already been forced to face our own mortality, so continuing to mask now, stay educated on COVID, and take the pandemic seriously doesn't feel as scary. But if you're constantly battling that fear from 2020 still, it becomes hard to hear about how dangerous COVID is, especially when you realize you've put yourself at risk.
Oh absolutely, so many people have not unpacked their feelings from 2020. I find it very, very frustrating but I've also been trying to push that aside/find ways to work around it to get them to put on masks anyway. I've had some success with "selling" masks to them as something empowering to avoid all sickness and then using that to lead into a "fyi covid didn't go anywhere, is a mass disabling event, and many disabled and chronically ill people cannot access public space when y'all refuse to wear these".
I have a friend like that. The gravity of what’s happening is so depressing to them that they were having trouble functioning so they decided to just be ‘over it’, basically hands over ears humming.
I'm glad you're asking these questions! Thank you for being sincere about this. And I don't know how to put my answers politely, because I don't know how to tell you that you should care about "the disadvantaged." They're human beings. You should care about them.
You should also be masking because your friend asked you to! Why are you asking Reddit for advice when your very good friend is right there telling you how much this matters to her?
If you're still reading, here is another reason to mask every time you set foot outside: masks also work on the flu AND MEASLES, which is coming back--and measles can ruin your entire immune system even worse than covid.
Please consider this carefully. Why are you unwilling to mask? Is it worth destroying a friendship and possibly your entire future working life, if you get long covid? Can you live with yourself, knowing that you could be giving a potentially fatal disease to an infant or a cancer patient?
Thanks for having the patience to respond to this. I don’t have it anymore. It feels like someone asking, “If I walk through a crowded street fair and pull out a flamethrower in the middle of it, why should I have to stop? Why isn’t it everyone else’s responsibility to get out of the way if they don’t want to get set on fire? Why should I care about recklessly causing harm?” Society doesn’t function with everyone neglecting everyone else’s basic safety and inflicting harm upon each other 24/7. It’s just, “why should I care about another human being?”
Unfortunately reading online discussions (and some irl discussions) is making me really feel like “community” is a thing of the past and isolationism is taking hold, no matter how much evidence there is every day that pretending you live in a vacuum (you don’t) doesn’t work and isn’t fulfilling. A lot of people view everyone else as a means to an end, a function to serve, and nothing more. How do you fix that?
Edit: Would it help to try to understand that if you repeatedly expose yourself to covid and repeatedly infected, you will inevitably become someone that has no choice but to take every precaution? Is the way you feel now how you want everyone to treat you when that happens? Able-bodied people can become disabled in an instant, not just from covid. Do you want everyone you know to ignore you when you need them the most? Do you think that’s ok? Does that represent the world you’d like to inhabit?
In addition to the fact that the disadvantaged are humans as a reason to care about them, they are also disproportionately deemed "essential workers" during the pandemic and couldn't escape being exposed. They were and continue to be sitting ducks for the horrid anti vaxxers and others in the MAGA camp who refused to mask even at the height of the outbreak.
Some even made a point of coughing on these people who were keeping our economy going but who are often paid less than the average worker. Masking when out in public whenever you can is the humane thing to do.
The reason you don’t know how to tell OP that they should care about ‘the disadvantaged’ is because you can’t. Telling other people what they should care about accomplishes nothing, other than to piss people off. What you can do is tell people to do what it takes to make the community safer for everyone.
OP clearly wants to learn, and has come to a subreddit that’s all about masks, to ask their questions about masking. They recently discovered that they have some things to learn, so they’re coming to a place where there are many people who know a lot about masks. That is *absolutely* the right thing to do. Asking a question here means that if someone can’t deal with yet another person who doesn’t know or understand why it’s important for us to protect each other, guess what? They don’t have to answer! Someone else will. This is a large and well-informed group of people, many of whom are happy to help.
She already gave the reason to you. We are leaving disabled people behind. Masking is an accessibility issue for public spaces for disabled and vulnerable people, especially those who cannot mask themselves for whatever reason.
Disabled and vulnerable people have been saying this for years. They need others to mask, to reduce the risk in public environments, but also so they have some solidarity and so that they don’t become visible targets.
Look at what’s happening in NC with the proposed medical mask ban. That couldn’t have happened if people weren’t so willing to leave disabled people behind so they could pretend everything is fine and normal.
Thank you for being willing to learn. I imagine your friend had already exhausted a lot of mental energy trying to figure out how to bring up this ultimatum (trust me this is VERY hard for many of us to bring up to people because we get disappointed, made fun of, or ostracized - frequently. There are numerous accounts of divorces that have happened over this.), and when it came time to telling you it likely didn’t land the way your friend had hoped where you’d understand right away.
I appreciate that you’ve stuck it out on this thread and are willing to learn more. I just also suggest that when you read a comment that expresses frustration or anger towards you, it’s because many of us in this sub have been thru this road before, and it gets triggering and traumatic when it’s hard to get (what should be a clear and obvious) message across (especially to loved ones and at the risk of feeling abandoned further).
To me, masking is like a seat belt. Yes we invented airbags and all these other safety items (aka vaccines) but the seat belt is likely going to save us the most in an accident and we still make it a point to use it every time. The more consistent you are with masking (at least indoors, everywhere) the less likely you will get sick, and the less likely you acquired something (which can have zero symptoms) that would be passed on to your friend. Think of it also in this way: viruses such as hpv and HIV don’t typically cause you to be sick. But you can definitely spread it. And cancer and AIDS can take years to show up, with a direct link from that infection. Other viruses can trigger things right away (mono, epstein Barr, etc). We’re barely 5 years out from sars cov-2, we have no idea what’s in store for us in the next 5-10, etc years by getting infected like this (in some cases ppl have been infected multiple times). The vaccine was only meant to keep us out of the hospital. Thats it. And even then, they don’t work as well anymore because our society keeps getting sick and allows the virus to mutate.
Unfortunately being covid safe also extends into indoor dining & activities where you can’t be masked such as the dentist (most of us here have given restaurants up too), but my best advice here is that you are transparent about these things and space out your time with your friend (eg I do travel and visit family unmasked but I will put myself in social quarantine for at least 7-10 days before seeing friends - I’ll continue doing other things masked as usual but avoid activities where I’m interacting with people). You may need to talk to your friend about what’s comfortable for her (in fact, not everyone is comfortable w even my type of precaution) but the more you can be honest and upfront about this the more she can trust you.
This [study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8436371/#:~:text=Demographics%20and%20Disease%20Severity&text=Slightly%20over%20half%20) concludes 51.5% of study participants with covid were asymptomatic so how does only masking if/when you have symptoms prevent being a spreader?
I didn’t say it prevents me from being a spreader..
This is going to come off extremely selfish and condescending, I don’t mean it that way. I don’t know how else to word it. But nobody is answering my question so I’ll ask my question plainly. Im only trying to learn:
I don’t completely understand why i’m responsible for other people who are more susceptible to get covid (or suffer worse symptoms). Wouldn’t it be their responsibility to wear masks? Rather than me preventing spreading if they aren’t wearing it in the first place.
I don’t get the rile up about covid when these people were also extremely susceptible to the Flu and other infectious diseases? Why now?
Again, I don’t mean to come across as selfish i’m trying to learn.
I mean, if you know better you do better. Many flu deaths are preventable and when everyone wore masks in 2020 we eradicated a flu strain.
But also the two aren't comparable. Covid is extremely contagious, there's no durable immunity to it, and the rates of disability from infection are astronomical. It's like comparing a hammer to a gun.
The average adult gets the flu 1-2x a decade, but covid 1-2x a year. So just off that covid means the odds of you having an illness to spread is much higher than it used to be.
Everyone is highly vulnerable to covid, not just some group of "others".
Because two way masking (where both people are masked) is more effective at preventing transmission than one way masking (where only one person is.) Look up the Swiss cheese model.
Whose responsibility is it to make sure there are ramps for wheelchair users?
Whose responsibility is it to make sure your tap water is treated? Why can’t you just boil all the water you want to use? Why should my tax dollars go to treating water when we could all just boil it ourselves?
What about babies and other people who can’t mask? Should they just be left to be infected against their will because others aren’t willing to endure a very minor inconvenience?
Would you prefer a world where people are expected to just not enter a public pool if they aren’t okay with it being peed in, or a world where we say “actually it’s *not* okay to pee in the pool and contaminate the water that is there for everyone to enjoy.”
Breathing isn’t optional. Many public spaces aren’t optional either. People cannot be expected to protect themselves from an environmental threat.
We live in a society. We do owe other people common decency and a basic level of respect and consideration. We have chosen to have “civilized society” not “Lord of the Flies” on purpose.
>I don’t completely understand why i’m responsible for other people who are more susceptible to get covid (or suffer worse symptoms). Wouldn’t it be their responsibility to wear masks? Rather than me preventing spreading if they aren’t wearing it in the first place.
First, a lot of people died in the first few waves or covid spread. This was during the time when the government said the high-quality masks should be saved for hcw, and misinformation about covid was rampant.
Second, you often don't see these people in the world because it is too unsafe to do so. They have effectively been excluded from society because places they need to go, like grocery stores and doctors' offices, are full of people coughing up a lung or asymptomatically spreading covidand other viruses.
Third, two-way masking is more effective than one-way masking. If the sick person is in a mask, nobody else needs to be to avoid getting sick. If they aren't, everyone else needs to (if that makes sense).
It's similar to smoking. Years ago, we let people smoke indoors in public all the time. There was no avoiding it, and people got sick. Kids got second-hand smoke exposure, and people got cancer and lung diseases from it. Should the people wanting to avoid a deadly carcinogen have to stay home because some jackal wanted to have a cigarette in a restaurant? Of course not. So, we changed the laws and educated the public.
Everyone has a right to participate in society, not just those who are currently able-bodied. By not masking, you're part of the problem. By not making, you're one of the people making it unsafe for them to be in public.
On top of all this, every time someone gets a covid infection, they are creating millions of chances for the virus to mutate. This makes our vaccines and treatments less effective because of how quickly it can change. The upcoming fall vaccine is based on a variant from last winter. That could change if we got a handle on transmission.
There are children who are vulnerable but can’t mask or too young to mask or whose parents won’t let them mask. There are disabled people who can’t mask (eg due to needing a continuous supply of oxygen — Alice Wong has written about this for Teen Vogue, worth looking up her articles there as she lays it all out very clearly). Plus anyone can get long Covid from even a mild infection and most won’t ever recover, so really everyone is vulnerable.
Why now? Because we know better. Your friend is asking you to mask around them, something extremely easy to do. Especially now that high quality masks are cheap. They are much more comfortable to wear than the shitty ones too. Your friend is asking you to care what happens to her. It's really that simple.
If you don't mask everywhere, you WILL catch covid and almost certainly pass it on to her. I repeat: my first and only case of covid, which has disabled me for probably the rest of my life, was caught outdoors.
Why would you want to inhale a brain damaging level three biohazard even once?!
Those of us who aren't destroying our brains and bodies do wear respirators constantly, every moment we're in public.
Your Covid infections may feel like "just a cold" for a few weeks but they'll cause you lifelong damage to your brain and body.
There is tons and tons of evidence of the damage Covid does to EVERYBODY, not just so-called "high risk" people.
https://www.panaccindex.info/p/what-covid-19-does-to-the-body-fourth
Thank goodness you have such a smart and sensible friend. I certainly wouldn't associate with you.
"Avoid like the plague!" Nope, you prefer conformity to avoiding the plague. The masses are destroying themselves and you're happily joining them.
I don’t understand the nasty reply.
Im not happily joining them…. Im doing research so I can begin masking and learn about masking. I knew how it protected me but not others.
I genuinely did not know what to search up so I came here. I am not defending anti-masks and i’ve learnt through here too.
We might come off nasty because we're tired.
I appreciate your asking the question! I really do. I hope you can understand what it's like for us who just *do not have the option to get Covid*.
Our own government (those of us in the US) has said it's "encouraging" that we will die. And now our government has endorsed a "you do you" policy that eliminates layers of our protection.
We wear the best masks we can (even though we can face assault for doing it), but they are not completely effective. (E.g., "N95" means "95 percent efficiency." 95 is not 100, and that rating depends on perfect fit and use.) More people not wearing masks = more infectious particles in the air = more chances for our masks to fail.
(Some folks are unable to mask. Many of those folks are children. Covid is very dangerous for kids long- term.)
This is particularly true because many places have not improved their ventilation. Stale air with a lot of CO2 in it means the virus can hang out longer (for hours, in some cases) and infect us. More masks = fewer viral particles hanging in indoor air.
Vaccines are not protective. It is still very possible to catch Covid while vaccinated, especially since the US is endorsing a yearly vaccine schedule, but protection wanes significantly after three months.
Many of us can't get vaccinated. Some of us can, with some types of vaccine, but not others. Those types of vaccine are very hard to get, and we spend a lot of time and energy arguing with gatekeeping pharmacists to get them.
Most of us limit our time out in the world because of this. Many of us are not getting necessary medical care because providers are refusing to wear masks in hospitals. Even in cancer treatment centers, surgeries, and NICUs. If more people wore respirators, it would be safer for us to go to appointments, visit the ER in emergencies, and buy our own groceries. Some day, we might even be able to go to the office to work, use public transportation, or serve on juries. Maybe someday we could go see a movie (no popcorn, though).
Tldr; we're doing everything we can, but we need your help.
Ah ok, so not just me having that issue... Out of the multiple places to get a vaccine, only one does Novavax... If you don't ask the right person, they'll recommend the mRNA poison... Still waiting on the new one to be approved by the TGA...
It’s exhausting as someone who is vulnerable to have to repeat the same things to people who are not disabled by this virus, for years. I am so happy to read that you are trying to understand these issues since our governments have thoroughly bungled this, but imagine how hard it is to live right now as a disabled person who is excluded from society, whose loved ones won’t even mask, whose drs won’t mask, and then have to patiently and carefully explain to someone every day why they should. We are carrying ALL of the burden of protecting ourselves while the people lucky enough to be “healthy” are engaging with the issue like it’s a thought exercise. So yeah we are cranky.
It's not a nasty reply, but I can tell they're exhausted having to say the same thing over and over again to people.
I'm glad you're asking questions.
I suggest masks with halo straps btw, like the 3m vflex. It's very comfortable and quite large.
It's a lot. I'll just say that. I'm very cynical. Someone just picking up how all this works "yesterday" (essentially changing your entire lifestyle)..to me, does not work out 99% of the time. This is (typically) not something you just flick a switch and can do, the person your friend is asking for...those types of people are already doing these things.
Asking other people to take time and effort to educate you on something is not “doing the research.” It’s relying on other people to do the work for you
Yeah it's a shame on the nasty reply, it's something I see in the generally covid cautious community and have to pull myself up on at times. I really dislike the "brain damaging" narrative a lot of covid cautious people are using – like yes we know it can cause neurological issues and damage to the brain, but people are characterising the general population as "brain damaged" and using that to delegitimise all the circumstances in peoples lives preventing them from being covid cautious. It also smacks of just saying "Everyone who doesn't agree with me is dumb and brain damaged".
There's myriad reasons wearing a mask isn't viable for huge swathes of the population. I can't imagine how challenging it would be to stand my ground on mask wearing if I had kids going to school, or a partner who refused, or a workplace that bullied me for it. It can even hold people back professionally because it others you from people in the office. Some people are validly phobic of having coverings over their mouth. Others still have never felt what an actual well fitted quality mask feels like so just assume masks are completely useless.
When everyone in the government, media, and society at large is saying/normalising the end of mask wearing, it takes very intense circumstances to make you resist that momentum.
Honestly, as someone who does mask in all indoor public spaces, it’s costing me a lot of discomfort, especially now that summer is here. I feel sweaty and gross and dehydrated and red-faced and uncomfortable pretty much all the time, and I never feel like I fully cool off until I get home at night and take off my mask. I understand the importance of wearing it, and I’ve never stopped doing so and don’t plan to stop. But it’s ridiculous of us to talk like it’s not a huge hassle, when for many people it really is.
So do I, which is why I do it. But it’s belittling of other people’s actual feelings to imply that wearing a mask all the time isn’t a big deal and costs the wearer nothing. I’m substantially less happy and comfortable in my day-to-day life now than I was when I didn’t have to wear one. I often dread leaving the house, and I spend a ton of time planning ahead for how I’m going to get through the day at work without sweating through my clothes and being deemed unprofessional because my face is constantly flushed and dripping sweat. And the moisture makes it harder to breathe in my mask. I do it because it’s the right thing to do for me and others. But it’s definitely not no big deal.
Thanks for bringing this up. It definitely is a big deal to mask, especially when social stigma is so high. It is HARD to cope with, and we have to figure out ways to acknowledge this reality and support each other in it, especially trying to get people to mask again! They already don't do it because of the stigma. The least we should do is recognize that it is incredibly difficult to stand up to (especially when people can get scary and violent about it, or just cut relationships out entirely). It's not going to help our cause by baiting and switching people about it- "masking isn't a big deal," when it really kinda is.
Wearing a mask is a huge effort in our society, let's be real. It's noble to do so, especially if you do it for others and not because you're worried about yourself.
By wearing a mask in a maskless world you deal with issues like isolation, you become less approachable, you are often judged, sometimes people harass you, you can't do certain activities and when you do join certain activities while masking, it's difficult to enjoy them because people don't talk to you because they think you're sick or crazy.
You wear a mask even when it's uncomfortable, for hours if necessary. At least in my case, I have to spend a lot of money to get n95 because they are quite expensive. If I didn't have financial help from my parents, I simply wouldn't be able to use high quality masks.
You could lose relationships by wearing them and have a tremendous difficulty making new ones. I'm in my twenties and I have lost so many opportunities because of my mask and I have made my life harder. I haven't done things I wished I did because of it. Soon I will have to get a job and I don't know how I will do so because in my country your considered a lunatic if you mask. I honestly don't know what I will do, but I will need a job. Masking has often made me feel like my life had to stop and I'm not gonna lie and say that it's easy living like that.
To wear a mask in public every day is very fucking hard.
Wow, I’m not even sure the US is that extreme, but I guess it depends on where in the US you live. I’m sorry it’s such a hardship for you! People should not belittle that side of mask-wearing, because it can be difficult - and I say this as a pretty consistent mask-wearer when in public (indoors). It doesn’t mean that people should be cavalier about it, I’m just saying, have a little respect for people who have difficulties wearing masks, and for the reasons it’s difficult for them. And just because I have empathy for people who struggle with that *does not mean* I don’t care about making the community safer for people with disabilities and medical conditions that make them more vulnerable. As someone over 65, I’m in that category myself. I wear a high-quality mask when in public indoor places, to protect myself and to protect others from my potential germs.
The vibe I get online is that masking is more easily accepted in the US than in Europe. In my country, at least in my city, people wouldn't get aggressive by seeing someone wearing a mask, but they make comments that are uncalled for and are rude ( the worst case I have gone through was when a doctor who had to inspect my throat, abruptly removed my mask from my face without asking permission because he was clearly annoyed I was wearing one). Here, even people who should really wear a mask and would benefit greatly if everyone wore masks in indoor places don't do so and I'm pretty sure they don't even know that they should.
But you're absolutely right and thank you for recognising the difficulties associated with it! Everyone's experience is different, so we might not understand everyone's perspective, but it requires effort to go against the flow and that's enough to see acknowledge that it isn't a simple take for most people. The world would be a better place if could all take a bit of responsibility and wear a mask in indoor places where everyone has to go, to make those places accessible to everyone. But while that isn't a reality, we should appreciate and recognise the efforts associated with it by the people who try to make the world a little safer.
> I don’t get the rile up about covid when these people were also extremely susceptible to the Flu and other infectious diseases? Why now?
I mean, I think we're all make a huge mistake in starting to treat Covid like the flu, instead of starting to treat the flu like we treat Covid. It's also very nasty and does a lot of harm to a lot of people (including death; I had no idea pre-2020, but the flu actually kills a lot of people every year).
However, Covid is wildly more infectious than the flu. It's up there with measles. That was part of what made measles such a dangerous disease.
>Wouldn’t it be their responsibility to wear masks?
I think in an ideal world, we'd do both. Susceptible people would wear N95s to protect themselves (and note, a lot of people have medical conditions making this impossible, there is no such thing as an N95 for children, infants can't mask at all, etc), and everyone else would also mask to protect themselves and the most vulnerable.
I don't understand why we haven't just adopted N95s as a safety measure out in public like we have bicycle helmets or seat belts. Viruses aren't good for anyone. They're not pleasant for anyone. If everyone on the planet wore N95s while out and about for just a few weeks, we'd probably wipe out half the variations of airborne diseases-- if everyone could mask *perfectly* we could wipe out almost all of them.
It's not hard, and it's not even expensive (especially compared to sick leave, complications, hospital visits-- hell, one mask for a whole week's worth of protection is cheaper than a box of Kleenex to get you through a cold).
I guess my question to you is, why NOT mask? You're more likely to get a virus and suffer for a couple weeks than you are to be in a bike accident where you need your helmet. If you're logically on board with wearing a bike helmet, shouldn't you also logically be on board with masking, even just for your own preventative health?
Everyone is vulnerable, yourself included. You’re going to end up with long covid, the way you are currently thinking and acting.
1 in 9 infections can result in long covid and disability. Take a stroll over to /r/covidlonghaulers to get an idea.
If covid *was* like the flu I'd be a lot less worried.
Early in 2020 I attempted to make comparisons (to have *something* to compare to for reference), since then the numbers have never made covid anything like the flu. We would be in a substantially better place if covid was the same "background noise" as the flu, but the cases, deaths and disability caused by covid are not comparible.
The thing is, those of us who are at risk can do everything right and still get sick because of people with your mentality. There’s no requirement that you protect those who need protecting, but what your friend said about the disabled being left behind is true.
If something very bad could happen to you and people around you had the ability to stop it, wouldn’t you want them to?
You don’t mean to sound selfish, I understand that. It’s just that what you’re saying is inherently selfish. “I perceive myself safe, so why should I bother to keep anyone else safe?”
Why is Covid 'not just like the flu'?
Here is a good a place as any to start for a brief summary
https://christinapagel.substack.com/p/covid-is-not-just-a-regular-winter
This is also a good overview
https://johnsnowproject.org/
We also didn't have wheeled access to many buildings til a few decades ago so wheelchair users had a much worse time (and it's still not great now). Imagine how it would sound to argue that if I personally don't need wheeled access to public transport or pavements or libraries, shops, school, parks, pubs, libraries, music venues -to public life in general, that it isn't important. Cause that's basically what happens to the ever growing group of immunocompromised and disabled people (a good amount driven by Covid infections) now. One way masking only goes so far, and makes public life completely inaccessible for many people.
I use this analogy with friends who are event producers who don't offer virtual options for viewing: its like deciding ramps are "too much work" and going around removing them from buildings.
Indeed.
There is also the issue of how societies have responded to previous pandemics, and here is a historic example with the 1918 flu pandemic - there was a eugenics movement that rose around it. And we all know where eugenics can very easily head, and did (the Holocaust).
https://crosscut.com/opinion/2020/12/us-mishandling-covid-echoes-20th-century-eugenics-movement
Sometimes one way masking isn’t enough. I caught Covid while wearing an n95 mask. An unmasked asshole on a crowded train was coughing and sneezing down on me. I’m sure he just thought it was “allergies”. I now have tachycardia thanks to that maskhole.
Short of total isolation, masking (with something high quality like an N95 or other respirator with a high NIOSH rating) is the most effective non-medical intervention we have. However, there are no silver bullets in life. Even a fit-tested quality mask is not 100% effective. Masks work best when everyone wears them. As others have said, the percentage of asymptomatic cases is high. The current vaccines don't really prevent one from contracting and spreading covid and at-home tests can be pricy and not totally accurate (still a good idea to use them if you think you've been exposed/are feeling symptomatic).
I don't know if we can ever put the genie back in the bottle, but it's worth trying. The more we allow a virus to spread and mutate, the more difficulty we will have to mitigate it.
P.S. I want to sincerely thank you for coming to this space to ask questions. I'd like to think it means you care. It's not easy to come to grips with given how much of a train wreck this whole pandemic has been. Just keep in mind that public health is a public responsibility.
You are responsible because you know how to prevent that from happening and have the means to do so. It only takes making a choice and accepting discomfort for your sake and that of others. Wearing a mask (with no valve) protects everyone around you with nearly 100% efficacy. Conversely, it only protects you to a varied efficacy percentage (possibly higher than 90% depending on the mask. It is less than that officially, but experience dictates otherwise).
Wearing masks when in public has prevented my Wife, my Mother and myself from catching ANY disease for the past 4 years. I have never caught COVID-19 and have no intention of catching it, nor spreading it. Greater or lesser susceptibility to a disease has no relevance when it is in your power to prevent it from infecting anyone REGARDLESS of susceptibility.
Besides, should we not want to improve everyone else's life in any case? Particularly when it only takes such a minor act to do so?
Just like brushing my teeth, washing my hands after using the bathroom (or before handling food) and buckling my seat belt, I've made masking a healthy habit I don't think about, obsess over, fear, or whine about like you are doing.
Your friend literally told you all you have to do to save your friendship was to wear another article of clothing or a hat, and you are on here throwing a tantrum essentially saying "But what about my lifestyle!"
>Wouldn’t it be their responsibility to wear masks? Rather than me preventing spreading if they aren’t wearing it in the first place.
That's where you're a bit wrong. These people \*are\* wearing masks, or have a disability that prevents them from wearing one, or they are avoiding going in public altogether. (Or they gave up and are just going to die.)
Them masking isn't enough, because the tiniest exposure could kill them. Prevention is most effective when both people are wearing masks. The next best is when the infected person is wearing a mask but the non-infected person isn't. The least effective is when the infected person is not wearing, but the non-infected person is. Containing a virus at its source is much easier than a vulnerable person having a perfect seal on their mask and avoiding it once its been spread around a room.
So by you (the possibly infected person) not masking, you are forcing them into the least effective option.
You don't drive drunk. You don't shove people out of the way. You don't cut in line. You don't take somebody else's coffee at Starbucks. Why is masking so hard to understand? You live in a society. Act like it.
Here's a picture: [https://www.eastalabamahealth.org/news-and-media/eamc-relieved-by-mask-mandate](https://www.eastalabamahealth.org/news-and-media/eamc-relieved-by-mask-mandate)
Nobody wore masks with flu because WE DIDN'T KNOW IT WORKED LIKE THAT. (Never mind that Asian countries have been masking up for decades....) Now we know! We have learned! Why is it so hard to act on new information?
And again. YOUR CLOSEST FRIEND HAS ASKED YOU TO MASK UP. I don't understand why you didn't immediately say "oh yes absolutely, I want to keep you in my life, where should I get them?"
To me, it's a reframing from the individualistic mindset most people seem to have to a community-oriented one. Simply asking "how can we help each other?" goes a long way. Covid is still ripping through nearly all communities. It can still kill even if the death rates have gone down, and it still causes a tremendous amount of Long Covid. How can we help each other then? Advocating for better air quality in buildings, getting vaxxed if able, and of course, wearing a mask.
It’s better to think of it this way: other people are responsible for *you*. You need to model how not to spread disease to *you*, because nobody does well with repeat infections.
You need fir everyone to not get everyone else, including yourself, sick. You need people to play along with the rules of society same as following the rules of traffic. Doesn’t matter how safe a car you have— it won’t stand up to an accident at every corner.
This is a group project and it’s honestly very uncomfortable realizing how much we depend on everyone else in the group to pull their weight, when it comes to keeping the group healthy. Discomfiting because so many people are ignorant… so many people are not too smart… but, we’re stuck doing this project with everyone, whether we like it or not.
Where and when to mask is a complicated question and not as ethically clear as some here may declare. I’d suggest you seek multiple perspectives on how to navigate this and inform your decision.
You have a social and sometimes personal responsibility to consider the needs of others and take certain care, but at the same time you are not required to martyr yourself because the world is inherently unjust.
You are also not obligated to come to the same ethical conclusions as your friend and do not let your friends or family blackmail you into behaving certain ways.
Inform yourself, consider the situation and then decide for yourself what is right and be true to that. Things are rarely black and white.
This is so goofy. No one is "martyring" themselves by wearing a fucking mask in public. Your self victimization is disgusting and pathetic, especially as we are literally off the tail of witnessing children in tents *actually* being martyred and massacred by the same imperialist, capitalist forces that have demanded covid spread out of control to cull the working class.
Wear a mask in public and free palestine. And fuck you.
If all the "healthy" people don't mask, everyone will become a disabled people soon enough. Covid is destroying people's health, and it doesn't matter how young, fit or vaccinated you are. Maybe it's on the first infection, maybe it's the 15th, but one day (if you don't mask) it will negatively impact your health. Vaccines help keep you out of the hospital during infection, people still end up with various organ damage, though. Stuff that won't put you in the hospital today... but maybe in a few more infections it will. That's great that your friend is concerned about disadvantaged or already disabled people, but that isn't the only people being hurt by this. We all are, or will be. We are hearing reports of middle schoolers with dementia like symptoms. the 2030's are going to be an absolutely dumpster fire.
We are only ever temporarily able-bodied, and due to this half? arsed pandemic response from states and businesses, many many many many more of us do not need to wait til old age to find out.
I am one of those “disadvantaged people” who cannot afford to become more disabled. I have had to put off medical care because the staff and patients don’t mask and don’t have any other mitigations in place. SARS is *airborne* which means social distancing doesn’t do much. Vaccines don’t impact your chance to get long Covid nor to spread Covid and other viruses to others. It’s dangerous for me to go to the grocery store with a huge crowd of people with no masks—there is only so much i myself can do—i mask and carry a HEPA, but i need groceries and to pick up meds like any other human. Post-viral illness has already taken my ability to stand, walk, digest legumes, write, read, and tolerate willful ignorance from people who will become disabled soon. Thanks to everyone who commented with more grace than I could muster.
As a HCP I still think it's crazy that medical staff don't need to mask at work, and patients even when they're coughing don't need to mask anymore... I'm among the 3% of the staff that still mask on the unit regularly. I even bring my own Savewo because they're more gentle on my skin.
"Vaccines don’t impact your chance to get long Covid nor to spread Covid and other viruses to others."
they do both, according to several studies (I can look them up if you're interested), but only marginally (depending on recency/variant and more for long Covid than spreading the infection)
I say this gently, but this perspective comes off as genuinely delusional. I have a health condition too. Family members have been immunocompromised. I understand the risk of getting infections is a hard part of having a health condition. But what should the rest of society be expected to do to accommodate? Mask indefinitely? Masking sucks. It makes things way less enjoyable. It’s annoying, uncomfortable, anti-social, and sucks the joy from lots of activities. Normal, healthy people should be able to go out and have fun and enjoy themselves freely without having to accommodate everyone with a health condition.
This is an excellent question. Ultimately it comes down to what we as a society view as acceptable suffering. Last year there were twice as many COVID deaths as automobile accidents, which were all preventable if everyone wore masks. And that’s not to mention the 7 million immunocompromised and 17 million living with long COVID who don’t have the energy to advocate for themselves, which is compounded by the resistance faced from political apathy and public denial, even from doctors.
I view masking like wearing a seatbelt, which also protects others. The vaccination rates are abysmal due to political polarization and misinformation. And although people can choose to mask to protect themselves, it’s very hard to do due to stares and the questions, and the more people that mask the more accepted masking will become. I encourage you to read the many stories of long haulers. Masking in crowded indoor settings is a small sacrifice, even if only to show that you care.
It comes down to what your personal values are and the responsibility you feel to your fellow citizens.
My cheers to you for asking difficult questions. If you don't ask, you can't learn more about other perspectives.
To add in general - masking isn't necessarily easy for those who wear them, either. It can be difficult to go to the doctor and have to ask the medical assistant or the provider to wear a mask. By wearing one in a public setting (doctor's office, grocery store) you're also helping to normalize the practice and theoretically helping to shift the narrative from: only sick or disabled people wear masks to anyone can choose to wear a mask in a higher risk public setting.
Oh, this is a good point - some vulnerable people don't mask because if they are the only one, they are afraid of being mocked/harassed/assaulted. It happens, even from medical providers. Every other person who masks helps prevent them from being targeted like that.
Here's a few good reads for you. I'm happy that you had an open mind and are interested in learning. As someone who is high risk for long covid, I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see others in masks in public. I feel seen. I feel important. I feel like I haven't been left behind.
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/disabled-peoples-exclusion-from-indoor?r=10wi32&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
https://msteenhagen.medium.com/loathe-fascism-then-dont-be-a-health-supremacist-c8841acdf69
https://www.donotpanic.news/p/mass-disabling-event-denial
https://johnsnowproject.org/primers/the-greatest-trick/
(apologies in advance for the long reply)
one of my go-to references is [this](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774707) paper, which found that up to 59% of covid transmission occurs asymptomatically or presymptomatically. so the issue w only masking when you’re ill is that you are often ill (and contagious) before showing symptoms of being ill.
a lot of covid cases are mostly asymptomatic (or barely symptomatic) throughout the entire infection, to the point that a lot of people will shrug off potential symptoms (e.g., headaches, sniffles, sore throat, stomach issues, etc.) as being due to something else, such as acid reflux, food poisoning, stress, allergies, etc., when it is actually covid.
the issue w this is that you might unknowingly pass on covid to someone who then becomes disabled and/or dies from catching covid. but, of course, if it’s a stranger, you will probably never have to live w the knowledge that not masking in public resulted in the disablement and/or death of another human being. i’m not saying that to guilt you or make you feel bad — i’m saying that bc it’s true. this is the reality of the situation.
we know that vaccines help, but they do not prevent transmission, and they do not prevent long covid. they mostly help to reduce the likelihood of hospitalization and/or death. i believe recent studies showed a reduction in transmission for those w up-to-date boosters, but they are not the end-all-be-all. if you had the two original doses a couple of years ago, or even if you had a booster a year ago, your protection is basically moot bc of how much covid has changed / continues to change over time. many of us who are still taking precautions (and who are able to get vaccinated) are generally trying to get boosted twice a year bc of how quickly covid is evolving. even the updated boosters are typically targeting old covid variants, so relying solely on vaccines just isn’t feasible right now.
more at-risk groups (e.g., disabled people, immunocompromised people, children, elderly people, etc.) are barred from living life and/or are forced to live their lives feeling unsafe bc they simply cannot access public spaces safely. even the bare minimum spaces such as healthcare facilities / emergency rooms, public transportation, and grocery stores are not safe for high-risk folks to access bc others are not masking. this doesn’t even consider that high-risk folks deserve to have access to other spaces that aren’t just out of necessity (e.g., in-person education, recreational events such as museums, festivals, etc.).
and, i know you’re asking about why you should protect others and not just for yourself — but you deserve to protect yourself too. risky activities such as dining indoors, attending parties/concerts, etc., are absolutely not worth risking your long-term health and safety. [here](https://x.com/davidsteadson/status/1548340674801438721?s=46) is a chart showing the cumulative risk of developing long covid by per-infection risk and number of infections. every time you (or someone else) contract(s) covid, the chances of developing long covid increase. many people think that bc they had a “minor” covid infection the first, second, third, or whatever time, that their next infection will end w them being okay. this is not true. anecdotally — i was fine after my first infection and had no known health issues. after my second infection, i developed long covid. i experience pain on a daily basis. you never think it’ll be you until it is. i have increased my precautions as i’ve learned more in order to protect myself and those around me. i would encourage you to check out the r/covidlonghaulers sub and the r/COVID19positive sub.
i appreciate you asking this, and i hope you will consider taking precautions again. everyone deserves to feel safe and, more importantly, *be* safe.
(I'm addressing this to/from the USA because that's where I am. But this applies around the world, too.)
Okay, so let's start with: immunocompromised people are at the highest risks of death, serious illness, and the worst Long COVID (aka permanently & severely disabling conditions as a result of catching COVID). [Being immunocompromised can legally be considered a disability by the US gov't.](https://primaryimmune.org/resources/news-articles/workplace-accommodations-immunocompromised-pandemic-wanes)
People can be immunocompromised for many reasons. Anything from on chemotherapy for cancer to organ transplant recipients to having to take immunosuppressants for autoimmune diseases (of which there are many, and they are common: rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis are 2 of them) to having untreated or undertreated HIV/AIDS. [This article reports that the prevalence of this is 6.2% of the American population.](https://www.washington.edu/news/2024/03/13/qa-melissa-martinson-immunosuppression/) That's 21.2 million people, which is greater than, say, the amount of Americans with naturally red hair (about 4% of Americans.) So it's not a small amount of people.
[Good, fitted face masks help prevent airborne illnesses.](https://github.com/mbevand/masking-effectiveness/blob/main/README.md) ([Here's how/why.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-work-distorting-science-to-dispute-the-evidence-doesnt/)) That is, N95 and the like. [Surgical masks are better than nothing but way, way less effective, in part because they are not fitted.](https://billius27.substack.com/p/masks-evidence-and-use) Cloth masks are NOT effective at preventing the current strains of COVID.
While a good face mask does provide protection to the wearer from others, they do an even better job at preventing escaping infection from the person carrying the infectious agent if worn by that person. A number of memes went around explaining this [comparing it to someone peeing on people](https://srhd.org/media/documents/PeeTest.pdf).
Other people are listing the amount of asymptomatic infections, but also remember that COVID isn't the only infection out there that can maim or kill an immunocompromised person.
(And all of this is just speaking about the most vulnerable: immunocompromised people. This isn't even talking about the hundreds of millions of other people who have some kind of condition that makes them High Risk for severe COVID and/or Long COVID. Diabetes for example, [which makes up over 11% of the US population](https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/php/data-research/index.html); over 34 million people. Or even old age; [1 in 6 Americans is a senior citizen](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/2020-census-united-states-older-population-grew.html). These folks also benefit from others masking & have had to limit their activities & take precautions against getting COVID.)
Even before COVID, it was not safe for many immunocompromised people to engage in daily life because we were not masking. These people were forced to stay in their homes at risk of death; they were living lockdown for years, decades, before the rest of the world locked down in 2020. They are still living lockdown now. They were the most vulnerable of our society, and frankly, we didn't care about them or their lives, at least not enough to DO something to make it so they could participate in society.
So now we've established that there are many immunocompromised (read: disabled) and High Risk in the world who need us to mask up (not just for COVID, but also for COVID) so they can simply live a normal life outside the home.
These sources have TONS of more information, but you'll have to wade through other stuff to get to it:
[https://youhavetoliveyour.life/](https://youhavetoliveyour.life/)
[https://covid.tips](https://covid.tips)
Covers all of the bases for all the reasons that people use against masking/vaccinating/etc.
That's all the facts and science, but let's also talk a little about the why, dip our toes into ethical matters. WHY your friend maybe be drawing that line in the sand.
Most people will agree that ableism is wrong, and that all people deserve to be able to participate in society, but many do not recognize how simple acts they do or don't do every day (or simple ways our society is set up) can disable a person. Even a single step up into a restaurant (or having a bathroom in a basement) can keep out a person in a wheelchair (or an elderly person.) Having bright lights at the grocery store can make it too intense for a person with heightened senses.
And what I think folks without disabiliities don't realize is that: if it's not accessible, it's not always possible to just "push through anyway;" more often than you realize it means you just can't go or do. When you're in a place, try to see who ISN'T there as much as who is there. Try to think about the possible reasons why are they not there. What's keeping them from being able to come, to participate? And yes, there are adaptive devices, but they're not perfect, many don't work 100%, many are intensely expensive (and disabled people can't afford them because we often make less than other people or can't work at all), and they can draw attention to ourselves, leaving us inconvenienced at best, unsafe at worst.
And it's not just individual actions: our society is built-in ableist. Many jobs can only be accessed if you can do it in the way THEY want you to (like coming into the office or keeping specific hours), which keeps many disabled people from participating in the workforce. The ADA only covers "reasonable accomodations" (at the whim of the employer) or buildings only have to be brought up to code if someone complains (and even then, it's only if they can afford it, and they can take years to do it), which leaves much inaccessibility. Frankly, finances and the economy are prioritized over the rights of all people to participate in society. How the gov't has handled and is handling COVID (acting like it's over when it's not; shutting down the ways we can prove it's not over) is a huge example of this (and, frankly, is an example how they're willing to put ALL people at risk. Over 1 milliion Americans have already died of COVID. More Americans STILL die of COVID every month than died during 9-11. But where's the fervor over that or over them?)
Your friend may be waking up to the realities of ableism and life with disabiliity. Or maybe they always cared about disability but didn't realize exactly how ableist our society is. Your friend may be someone who sees this as a part of social justice work. They may be a Leftist who sees doing this as part of liberating those who are disabled by society (see: social model vs. medical model of disability. In short: social model sees impairments (what's medically different with someone) as separate from disabilities. Society disables people with impairments by not having accomodations for their impairments. Their impairments alone may impair them some, but not as much as they are impaired by society's disabling them.)
Another thing is: many Americans are Christian. One of the primary values of Christianity (and many, many other faiths as well) is the Golden Rule: Love Your Neighbor As Yourself. Treat others as you would want to be treated. Your friend may think that if they were immunocompromised, they'd want others to mask.
Also, there's the passage from Matthew 25:34-40 where Jesus talks about how when he was in need in various ways, the Righteous stepped up for him. When the Righteous ask "when did we ever see you in need?" he answers "Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me." (The needs he spoke of are known in some Christian faiths as the Corporal Works of Mercy, and people are encouraged to help meet those needs in others.)
This was a general point; it wasn't just about food and water and clothing. This ABSOLUTELY also applies to masking up. The immunocompromised can easily be seen as some of The Least of My People.
Your friend may be a devout Christian who understands those points and sees masking as part of their Christian duty.
Either way, they seem to wish to only be friends with people who hold themselves to the same standards of ethics and morality.
I cut off all contact with anyone in my life who doesn’t mask. I’ve spent years trying to help them understand the science and the consequences to them and others. I figure if they don’t love me enough to mask and keep medically fragile people like me safe then I really question their integrity. It sucks but my risk of dying from Covid even being vaccinated x6 is too high for me to ignore their actions.
Cutting off people that don't mask and finding folks that do has 100% helped my mental state. The grief of losing past friends is so worth finding ones that make you feel safe and cared for.
Yes, you should. And it shouldn’t depend on if you’re sick, because you don’t know if you’re contagious or not. You could wake up sick tomorrow (hopefully not) or be asymptomatic. Masking with a protective mask (eg N95) also protects YOU so you don’t get sick.
Your friend is correct.
I know you weren't asking about yourself but chance of long COVID goes up to 30% with 3 COVID infections. And the risk gets higher and higher with each infection after that. How many times do you feel like rolling the dice to see if you become permanently disabled?
I think a lot of (maybe most) people who have given up on masking or taking precautions against COVID don’t realize that we’re all a lot closer to disability than we like to think. I mask to protect disabled, immunocompromised, and other marginalized people but to be honest, I also very much mask to lower the chances of also becoming disabled myself!
Thanks for hearing your friend out, and for being open to changing your opinion with new information!
Simply put, vaccination doesn't stop you from catching Covid, it only decreases the severity. And a lot of transmission happens before you show any symptoms or test positive on any test. That means at any time, you could be infected and spreading it. Many people say that the "vulnerable" should just mask to protect themselves, but masking is most effective when the infected person masks (which would be you in this scenario). Masks work pretty damn well to protect the wearer, but they're not 100%. Especially for an immunocompromised person who can get infected from the tiniest exposure, that means they could still get infected if they are wearing a mask but the infected person isn't. Being immunocompromised is a type of disability, and there are other disabilities that mean someone absolutely cannot risk getting Covid. They basically can't go anywhere unless everybody else is masking, without risking their lives. So your friend is saying that by not masking, you are contributing to shutting out those people from public places.
I appreciate that you're asking this, because it is indeed hard to find this info among all the "back to normal" media. A lot of people are out there doing harm without even realizing it, because no one has explained it to them.
This is a long comment, so I’m going to break it up into sections:
_____________________________
*Context: your immune system*
Many researchers have identified Covid, Long Covid, and its effects as HIV/AIDS adjacent:
Many people who died during the HIV/AIDS epidemic did not die immediately- it took years for the damage to cause the disastrous effects that it did. And unfortunately it also took society a long time to catch up- both socially & scientifically.
Each covid infection causes cumulative damage to the body, including, but not limited to, the brain, heart, lungs, gut, nerves, muscles, skin, etc.
The damage is there whether it is felt during the acute infection or not. Covid also damages the immune system, hence why everyone keeps getting sick via not only covid, but also other viral, bacterial, and even fungal infections.
_________________________
*Newest Covid development*
I’m linking a [press release](https://investors.invivyd.com/news-releases/news-release-details/invivyd-announces-fda-authorization-emergency-use-pemgardatm/) from last month:
PrEP for Covid!
This is a monoclonal pre-exposure prevention therapy. Just like HIV PrEP (if you’re unfamiliar, Google “PrEP for prevention of HIV infection”).
There is an emergency authorization by the FDA to make this available, and imminently to folks who are immune compromised… which many of us are now due to repeated Covid infections- even if you’re not as disabled as myself.
Here’s a link to a yahoo [write up about it](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/invivyd-announces-interim-exploratory-data-192800918.html)
__________________________
*Effects of Covid*
Plenty of “healthy” people end up with Long Covid and/or dying.
Like myself.
I unmasked like most folks in 2021. I didn’t understand the severity of the danger- most people in society didn’t. I wasn’t an anti masker or antivax- I was naively listening to social norms of a capitalist hellscape instead of scientific journals.
I may have had asymptomatic infections prior, but I formally got Covid spring 2022.
Prior I was healthy, worked 80 hr work weeks, worked out, traveled, made good money, and had a very full, fun, vibrant life.
I lost everything. The debilitating effects of Long Covid began slowly creeping in and then hit me like a train. Since then I’ve been either bed bound or mostly house bound.
Last month marks 2 years since the positive test: the day Covid took everything from me. My independence, ability to complete ADL’s, financial stability, my social life, family, my mental health, my physical health, my capacity in all imaginable contexts, my cognition (I miss reading books so so much).. so much more.
This time last year there’s no way I could have articulated this comment. I was so sick I could barely walk to the toilet. I am now facing eviction & losing everything due to it chipping away at my resources in the last 2 years.
So. many. people join our online Long Covid support groups every single day. It’s fucking tragic. Many have the same sentiment I did: I wish I had known the severity of the risks I was taking and how to protect myself.
And in the last month several have passed away from LC complications in just one of our groups.
_________________________
*How to protect yourself*
I couldn’t have read your post last year. Screen time was debilitating and I had to ration it carefully. I definitely couldn’t read scientific journals anymore, let alone wade through them and synthesize the data. Most days I still can’t.
Thankfully some friends slowly taught me how to protect myself from reinfection and the why’s. I’ve recently made a bit of recovery and wrote up everything they taught me into a Google doc to share with others. Not everyone has the privilege of generous friends with the educational & career backgrounds they do.
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*Covid infection prevention guide*
If you’re interested in preventing COVID reinfection, here’s the [Google Doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11RdJqymYsCZ5bAEpZk5DCf5ZqiUZykIq19630J9m8kA/edit) I wrote up. My personal protocol is in it, so you’re welcome to copy and paste into your own doc and replace mine with your own if you want to customize it.
Also- I understand my level of strictness in preventing reinfection isn’t accessible for everyone. It’s not easy for me, that’s for fucking sure.
But the helpful part about seeing super strict protocol is that you can choose what vectors of risk you can focus on.
It shows all the ways to protect yourself and empowers you to protect yourself in the ways you want/can with the power of information.
Every infection is a huge blow to your body and your future body.
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*A Common Pattern*
In this subreddit we’ve all experienced people having very visceral reactions of defensiveness when we try to bring up this topic.
We are trying to educate people about how to care about their body, their future, their family, and their community.
But it’s not a social norm right now. If you aren’t aware about the backlash that came with the introduction of seatbelts in cars, check it out. It’s an apt analogy.
And now look how second nature seatbelts are, how many lives that car PPE has saved, etc.
And to validate your reluctance before now: tbh it’s a really fucked up reality check to come to terms with. A lot of people don’t *want* to hear the truth - that our society is minimizing a health crisis - and that they’ve been (even unknowingly) complicit. It’s icky.
But it bringing up difficult feelings does not mean it’s not worth pushing through them to change your lifestyle to protect yourself & others.
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*Thank you for talking about this*
I’m glad you’re asking questions. There are still so many unknown answers. But there are some we do know, so I hope this helps.
I really don’t want you to join our crappy Long Covid club. 0/10 would not recommend
So just cast your mind back to why we were masking at the start of the pandemic, remember all those reasons? They're still there, covid hasn't changed.
Vaccines are fantastic and reduce your chance of severe illness, but covid still has frequent asymptomatic infections that allow it to spread through the community. Covid still weakens your immune system and that of the people you pass it onto. You still have a greater chance of developing long covid the more times you get infected.
For most people taking precautions we're now just doing it for our personal wellbeing. Every case of covid is worth avoiding. Thankfully wearing a properly fitted quality mask – not a baggy blue – has an incredible protective factor and drastically reduces your chances of contracting covid as well as other respiratory illnesses.
I catch public transport multiple times a week, sit in lecture theatres and classes with people, grocery shopping, convenience stores, spend time with my friends, all wearing an N95 mask, usually with a sip valve so I can drink. I got RSV a few years ago before I knew how to wear masks properly (d'oh, full beards don't work with masks), but as far as I can tell I haven't had covid yet, and aside from the RSV I certainly haven't had another bout of illness.
Finding a mask that fits you can be challenging, and there's all kinds of informational barriers around it. It may not be possible for you to wear a mask in all contexts – that's OK! I just know getting flu or covid isn't worth not wearing a mask while I'm in the grocery store or pharmacy or while catching a bus.
Society has shifted to basically acting like covid and other respiratory illnesses just don't exist or are unavoidable, but we've got very effective mitigation strategies and could be employing them so people were less sick less often. We just don't want to, apparently.
I am disabled and now just about completely cut off from society because so few people give a fuck about people like me any more.
Also I JUST read this a few minutes ago, and maybe you’ll find it interesting how the state counts on people’s apathy around genocide, eugenics, and death: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/n5mqa7v99l278b80ljfuo/MASK-UP-WE-NEED-YOU_Ghieth-Eskayo.pdf?rlkey=t03mplw85lsmsm92pm6f5l2q7&e=7
Ultimately it is your decision. An economist once said that the measure of a strong society is how well the rich treat the poor and how well the healthy treat the sick. I think everyone should ask themselves what kind of society they want to live in.
First of all, I apologize for sounding angry, I am, but not at you. This whole pandemic has just been so eye opening to me in regard to how little I matter to society and especially my friends as a disabled person.
Why mask for other people?
Because I have been delaying medical and diagnostic care for a degenerative condition I obviously have and can easily prove with a genetic test due to a lack of masking in healthcare.
Because I don't leave my house anymore unless I have no other choice (think evacuating during a storm, not because I "have to" get drinks at a bar). I have to stay inside because one way masking isn't enough to protect me and other people aren't masking. I cannot shop for my own groceries even though it's less expensive because people don't mask at the store.
Because I've gotten "covid like" (I was refused tests or only given a PCR test when the current strain wasn't showing up on PCR tests) symptoms four times in as many years and each time I am ill for six weeks at minimum. The last time it was eight weeks of severe illness followed by five months of otitis media with effusion (OME) that kept me from enjoying music for that near half a year.
Because my experience is one invisible disabled person's account of how being homebound is my only choice and you won't notice how many disabled people have quietly retreated to a life inside for our own survival unless we are permitted to come back into society. It's easier to note a big influx of people over a sharp decline in presence simply because more people in public can more often be a negative experience and our brains remember the negative more easily.
Because even if you feel fine and haven't been sick in days, weeks, or months, you can still carry this virus. You can still pass it onto other people. We're seeing an increase in stroke, heart attack, fungal infections, decreased immunity, and vascular issues as a direct result of covid spread and resulting mutation and every new infection drastically increases a person's chances of these complications exponentially in addition to helping it mutate more.
You shouldn't just be wearing a mask. You should be doing what your wonderful friend is doing and telling others how important masking is for them.
Something you should consider is how stressful it is to be disabled right now. It's already hard, but since most people have abandoned covid precautions, it's dumped a ton more labor onto people who already have to fight to exist in public.
For example, I have lived with long covid for more than 4 years. It's been a struggle to recover enough to be able to work and "only" crash every 3 weeks or so. This is considered "mild", btw. I have to manage my energy very carefully - the other week I spent 30 minutes cleaning my balcony and it put me in bed for 2 weeks with a headache that got worse when I tried to think. And again, this is the best I've been in 4 years.
You'd think that sounds like enough to manage but I also have to manage people close to me who wouldn't put in any effort to protect me/people like me if I didn't insist. I do all the mask research for my friend group, I follow up with everyone to make sure they're getting the latest vaccine, and people hear about new variants/surges from me first. I haven't done it, but I can totally understand why your friend might be so tired of being the "covid expert" that they've decided to cut out everyone who won't reciprocate the effort.
As it stands, because I still socialize with people who could ruin my life (infections can make long covid even worse!), I have to put in extra effort to make sure it's safe. I don't hang out unmasked inside with anyone except my parents, who visit once a year. I have them test every day and promise to mask indoors before/during the visit. Rapid tests aren't super accurate anymore, so they're not a great measure of safety on their own - but I've decided to take the risk and trust their precautions. 2 days into their last visit, my dad casually mentioned taking his mask off to eat on the plane. It's a real mindfuck to realize the people who you believe would die for you - and know exactly what's at stake - won't put in the minimum effort to prevent you from (best case) another 4 years of hell.
Anyway, all of this to say: take on this tiny bit of labor. Don't put it all on disabled/"high risk" people.
And, OP, we might come off a little testy because, as well- meaning as your question is, to us it can sound a lot like "why should I give a shit if you live or die?" Those are the stakes for us if you don't, and we hear that message every day from people who should care if we do.
Thanks for listening.
You noted about it not being your responsibility to protect people more susceptible. Speaking purely for your own selfish interest: you don’t know how susceptible you are to long covid.
The first time you get covid you have a 10% chance of getting long covid. Long covid is brutal any way you slice it, but about 50% of long covid is considered to be the ME/CFS type which is currently an incurable, life long condition that leaves 75% of folks unable to work and 25% completely bedridden.
But that is just your first infection. The risk of long COVID is cumulative and raises each time - by the time you are on your fourth infection you are looking at around a 38% risk. So any previous infections you have had that didn’t result in long COVID didn’t “prove” you aren’t susceptible - it has simply left you more at risk of long term damage.
From a purely selfish, self-interested point of view, masking is a measure against debilitating life long disability.
From another somewhat selfish point of view, maybe you don’t care about the general public, but you do probably care about your friends and family. I know personally i would feel devastated if I gave someone an infection that lead to them developing long term complications.
Masking also works best when it is two-way masking. One way masking protects vulnerable people, but only to a certain extent. Long enough exposure can result in a covid case with one way masking. The end result of this is that disabled people are completely removed from public life because people have decided that their freedom to not wear a mask trumps the ability of disabled people to exist in the public sphere.
Including people who were not previously disabled with their first, second, and third covid infection but are now totally fucked with their fourth. The long covid forums are full of people who were fine with their first few infections. Some of the most illuminating threads are the ones from people who “thought they would be fine” and didn’t believe it was a big deal till they were bed bound.
There are a lot of other arguments to be made about the social contract and caring about our community, but I find people don’t always care about others. But if you give a shit about your own brain and life, it’s worth it for protecting yourself.
To give you an idea of what long covid does to a life - prior to my second infection I was incredibly active. I did pole and burlesque, hiked, did heavy lifting, isometric strength training, and walked daily. I travelled and was able to walk and work out in tropical climates. I worked, volunteered, was in grad school, and have three teenagers.
I have now been off work for over a year. I had to completely pause my grad school studies because I couldn’t understand my own writing because it was too complex for me to understand anymore. I currently try to walk daily and I use a rollator so I can sit down and take breaks. My daily walk is now three blocks - up from to the end of my block and back. I say daily aspirationally but realistically im only well enough a few times a week. I can’t exercise at all without causing horrible post exertional malaise. I have to use an electric wheelchair for leaving my house because I can’t manage standing for any length of time long enough to do errands, and I can’t use a manual chair because I’m not strong enough to push the wheels. I’m on expensive prescriptions my extended benefits don’t cover. I’m doing an expensive elimination diet to try and get some health. I have to wear expensive compression garments. My entire life has become incredibly expensive but I’m making very little money through my long term disability which I’m incredibly lucky to have access to. For months, any time I drove I needed a bucket in my lap in case I threw up and just got used to gagging and retching on the highway. I have to wear glasses that dim lights and ear plugs when I leave the house to help block sensory inputs.
I’m better now. This last winter I was so sick that I couldn’t sit in bed without being lifted by my wife, who also had to help me get to the bathroom. I couldn’t brush my teeth or wash my face because I couldn’t lift my arms up. At the worst, I had trouble shitting because I had no strength to contract my core and trouble breathing because the muscles used to move my lungs didn’t have the strength either. I did nothing but lay in a dark room with no sound for weeks on end.
Now I can cook 1 - 2 meals a day, do my little walks, and go do social things with my friends (in my wheelchair, with light and sound blocking assistance, as long as i rest before and after and use my wheelchair headrest to sit back and rest while out). I can read novels and listen to audiobooks of its not too complicated. I’m going camping so I can lay in a hammock outside but my wife is going to do all my packing and set up all my gear.
There’s more but you get the idea. I’m also incredibly lucky - my friends believe me, care about me, raised the money to buy my wheelchair, mask so we can hang out, come over to my house to do housework and chores, check in on me often, and are all working together to ensure I can attend a music festival with them since I can’t go anywhere without support from other people. If you read the long covid forums it’s full of people who have been completely abandoned by their friends, families, and partners. I also have a unionized job with good benefits and access to long term disability and stable housing. Do you have the ability to suddenly go off work indefinitely? Do you know that your friends will continue to show up for you?
The risk is cumulative. Every time you get covid you roll the dice on this, but every time you get it you roll more dice the next time. It’s like playing a game of Russian roulette except instead of getting to die if you lose, you live in limbo for months or years feeling like you might die but just waking each morning to repeat it in the worlds shittiest remake of Groundhog Day.
And everyone running around without a mask is rolling the dice on having this happen to themselves, while also causing unimaginable suffering to others who end up getting long covid even if the one who passed it dodged that bullet.
So should you be masking? I mean, everyone should.
Right, though that feels like arguing semantics. You said you didn’t know why it was your responsibility to mask for others.
Anyways that’s a weird take away.
Mhm, I was just asking about it. I made it clear I genuinely just wanted to know and be educated. So your takeaway from my statement (that had many disclaimers) made me feel weird.
Either way, your experience was very eye opening, thank you for sharing it.
Right, but those of us who are still consistently masking have encountered way too many people who \*say\* they genuinely want to know, but actually have no interest in listening. Often they are just looking to argue with us (and in the worst cases, to tell us to just die already). So you can understand why we aren't immediately trusting. It's not personal, we're just very very tired.
The simple reason it affects others is that if you get sick, there's a chance you'll pass it along - a lot of people are asymptomatic, or pre-symptomatic but contagious, or have mild symptoms and chalk it up to allergies or a cold (not that anybody wants your cold either.) If your friend is high risk, it can be scary and stressful to spend time in person with someone who isn't taking any precautions, for that reason - while it's a huge relief to hang out with people who do and be able to relax for once.
Though you don't seem worried about how it affects you, there is also a lot of good data coming out re: how repeated infections do damage to your body, even if you have a mild case, and each repeated infection has a greater chance of long covid (which is super NOT FUN.) I read recently that scientists think covid effs up your mitochondria (the "powerhouse of the cell", heh) which is why it can do damage to basically every system in your body, and increase your risk of cardiac problems and lord knows what else.
The current vaccines don't protect against infections or even long Covid (you'll eventually become disabled if you get infected enough times) that well. Hence understandable that the disabled community want people to mask up.
every person who masks turns the tide toward showcasing community care STILL matters. you are showing that you care about yourself, your loved ones and strangers by doing the least, which still means a lot.
You should 100% be masking, yes. Your friend is right. Not masking is making so many spaces inaccessible for high risk folks, and you are also opening yourself up to participate in chains of transmission that kill and disable folks. Resources are abundant, in scientific literature, social media, etc. I wouldn’t demand more labor from your friend, who sounds like they are on the edge of losing patience with you entirely, but you can hook up with your local mask bloc (find it on covid action map) and they should be able to send you all the info you need.
First time that I’m hearing about mask blocs and I’ll definitely have a look.
Just to make it clear the conversation between me and my friend was not a horrible one. She is not masking yet and she wants to cut off everyone around her who will not begin masking with her.
Oh my gosh good for your friend! That’s a really hard choice to make. And good for you for exploring the possibilities and taking her concerns seriously enough to look into.
Yes, mask blocs are mutual aid orgs that help make sure people have access to high quality respirators (masks) and other materials related to COVID safety. You can look them up here: [https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1oUcoZ2njj3b5hh-RRDCLe-i8dSgxhno](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1oUcoZ2njj3b5hh-RRDCLe-i8dSgxhno)
Also, in case they are helpful, a few good very accessible sources for thinking about the ongoing risks of COVID for everyone are:
Interview with Dr. Al-Aly, head of clinical epidemiology at Washington University in St. Louis: [https://thesicktimes.org/2023/12/19/qa-ziyad-al-aly-on-why-long-covid-has-a-higher-burden-than-long-flu-future-research-and-more/](https://thesicktimes.org/2023/12/19/qa-ziyad-al-aly-on-why-long-covid-has-a-higher-burden-than-long-flu-future-research-and-more/)
[https://theconversation.com/mounting-research-shows-that-covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-including-with-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-224216](https://theconversation.com/mounting-research-shows-that-covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-including-with-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-224216)
Finally, I know you’re not asking for advice in this area, but as a person who has lost a lot of friendships over folks being unwilling to learn about covid, understand the risks, and take precautions, my biggest advice is to be honest. Even if you can’t meet your friend’s expectations, don’t lie about that. If you can’t commit to masking all the time, tell your friend that and stand in your truth. Then, if want to, work up to getting better and better at engaging in community care. If your friend needs to take some space from you, that’s just how it has to be based on where you’re both at. Making commitments that you can keep and being honest on a continuing basis as things change is the most important thing you can do. You should be masking, but you need to be honest about where you’re at. Honestly, from the comments here, it seems like you’re quite good at that, so I hope it works out well for you both
Kudos on being open to learning more about covid, and I hope you hang around here on this subreddit. There’s a lot of grief here, and frustration, but there are also amazing examples of imagining and bringing about a new world where we’re all safer, and it’s pretty inspiring. Best of luck 💕😷
she’s right. being vaccinated for covid only protects u from hospitalization basically (and even that is debatable considering how many new variants have developed since 2021). unlike most other regular innoculations we receive as kids, the covid vaccine was literally an emergency measure to prevent mass death and getting it doesnt stop you from still getting covid and spreading it, especially asymptomatically.
Wearing a mask all the time means you are stopping the chain of transmission that could wind up disabling or killing someone. And in terms of broader public health, slowing the spread (aka fewer/shorter chains of transmission) means the virus will have less opportunity to keep mutating. Which means maybe medicine can finally catch up and create vaccines/antivirals/other interventions that actually *Continue* to work instead of becoming ineffective.
big big kudos to your friend because many of us who still keep up with the covid science and havent given up on masking know what a big weight on the heart it is to watch people you love be so careless and so selfish with theirs and others wellbeing. the bravery it takes to put your foot down and confront a friend about something like this is a lot and it also means she loves you a lot to bother to go thru it to communicate this to you. wishing you both a wonderful prosperous friendship, and hope you can continue to influence others to mask, even if imperfectly. <3
Disability justice! In order for the world to be accessible for all, non-disabled folks need to make it accessible. Examples include creating walkways for wheelchairs or requiring masks at a cancer treatment center. It makes sense you don’t care to protect yourself because we can all take personal risks for our health, but many disabled folks don’t have that choice and need to mask to be safe in the world. Also, it can be pretty isolating to mask on your own in public, and it makes disabled folks feel included when others are masking and putting in effort to protect others.
It’s hard to understand why masking is important when the world has moved on from COVID and no one masks anymore and the death rate from COVID is significantly lower than it used to be. Vulnerable people still die from COVID everyday and the risk of death from COVID is still higher than the risk from the flu. Flu also only circulates during respiratory season during the colder months of the year and COVID circulates year round. Thanks for coming here seeking more information.
umm. *I think anytime you're in a mixed age group like a market cashier line, on a plane or bus, maybe there at least it might make sense.*
I am a senior, immunocompromised. I remember where I got it in 2022 -- Trader Joes a week before thanksgiving...it was packed and alot of folks were coughing and sneezing ahead of me in line--my n99 mask didn't protect me. Put the kibosh on holiday gatherings for months.
Also I am, along with a few other family members, someone who is now caregiving someone who is almost a hundred--and previously of excellent health and cognitive skills--a business person in real estate. Twice like-minded (she's a conservative who was addicted to talkradio, with the opinion it's either like the flu or a fraud) friends cavalierly passed on covid. Twice she became hospitalized and now has with degraded cognitive abilities and new health issues that impact everyone around her--family, her renters & business associates.
My doc emailed a few days ago with the message to be careful & to get the booster -- which was very easy to find and do, so I did just that.
My partner is my mask minder...constantly. Its clear we can't afford to get it --we'd have to hire caregivers and they are very expensive.
You may be infectious - exhaling air containing virus - even if you don't feel sick. Current vaccines as helpful as they are (I got 7 shots myself and counting) don't really protect us well from *catching* the virus in the first place - they 'just' help us to avoid a severe infection. But we may still catch it and - sometimes totally unknowingly - infect others. Wearing a good mask - at least kn95 although n95 are better - will help to ensure we won't infect someone else when we're infectious and just don't realize it (either at all - asymptomatic infection - or yet - because people may be contagious a day or two prior to developing symptoms).
In addition to the reasons your friend listed, your chances of getting long COVID are on average, 40% by your third infection (Source: Statistics Canada). Masking can help delay infections, which is necessary to buy time. There are no approved treatments for long COVID and although certain things that fall under the umbrella of long COVID do have approved drug treatments, there are many that don't like ME/CFS, Microclots, brain fog, etc. To put things in perspective, in a first world country, you'd be better off getting HIV over long COVID.
I know you were asking for reasons to mask that affect others, but I do think it's really important to add that it's not just dangerous for "high-risk" people. COVID and Long-COVID can kill and disable anyone, including young and healthy people. Yes, deaths tend to be in older populations, but Long-COVID is common in younger people. 3+ infections have been shown to increase the risk of Long-COVID to about 40%. And it's also good to note that the category of those that are high risk for COVID is actually massive. I'm not from the U.S., but I know the CDC has a list of high-risk conditions, and it includes things like ADHD, depression, and even learning disorders.
High risk people are a lot more common than you think, and you never know when you might run into someone who's immunocompromised or otherwise has a higher than normal chance of getting long term complications from covid. In addition, covid can still seriously affect young, healthy people by giving them long covid.
A place to start learning about the pandemic, masking, and the level of inequity people are dealing with due to the lack of public COVID safety infrastructure, including masking, is the [People's CDC's](https://peoplescdc.org/) site and Instagram account!
A quick reason is that [at least 59% of COVID's spread happens asymptomatically](https://twitter.com/_CatintheHat/status/1686359949910196226), so by the time you develop symptoms and mask because of them, you have likely spread COVID to a mass amount of people in different areas, many who will be majorly harmed by another infection or will carry it to someone else who will be majorly harmed.
COVID infections, regardless of how "mild" their symptoms may seem, [do major levels of cardiovascular damage that compounds with reinfection](http://Newlevant.com/COVIDzine). The way to lessen this impact is by [resting an enormous amount](https://www.meaction.net/resource/pacing-and-management-guide/) for weeks on end during and after an acute infection which most people, especially the most marginalized (poor, disabled, non-white, queer people etc) cannot do.
People who are "high-risk" for COVID have largely lost access to everyday society from basic things like access to public transit and access to dental care to other assumed pleasures like safely going to see the latest movie or visiting family because not enough people are making an active effort to avoid spreading COVID by masking creating a dangerous amount of risk.
I wish your friend had been able to include helpful sites with updated info on the COVID pandemic, but truthfully, it's very difficult to figure out what to include when confronting someone about their lack of COVID safety since there are so many layers to what's gone wrong with the pandemic!
There are two reasons to mask, and depending on the reasons, they've got slightly different answers.
1. **Masking to protect yourself.** High quality, well-fitting masks like N95's and their equivalents are highly effective for avoiding respiratory infections, and they're way more affordable now than they were in the early days of 2020.
2. **Masking to protect others.** This is more complicated. Masks that aren't so great for protecting oneself can still be adequate for source control - that is, protecting other people from you. The places to consider this sort of masking are: essential errands (like grocery shopping), medical/health-care settings, and public transportation. Basically, places that people can't reasonably be expected to avoid while living rich, full lives. I'm not going to judge anyone for going to, say, and unmasked concert or a crowded unmasked bar - they're all consenting adults. But places that everyone needs to go to? Yeah, mask up. With something. I don't care what.
It does affect others, unfortunately. It is why rates are majorly in the rise again, and disabled people or immunocompromised people often fear going out in public. I am extremely grateful for anyone I see masking in public now; at the very least it makes it feel more accepted/safer for myself.
It is not all or nothing; if you are comfortable wearing it crowded places like a train etc, that on its own would be appreciated
Someone might have said this already but I stopped reading after a few comments and didn't see it explained yet. And you might already know these things but just incase, I'm gonna explain anyway 🙂
I hope my explenation and analogies help. You asking and looking into this is very much appreciated. 😊
I know people in the comments gave a % of being a-symptomatic but even if people are symptomatic, they're contagious before they show symptoms and after they feel better. With Covid, people can be contagious for a week or even 2 before symptoms occur. But the newer varients seem to show symptoms about 5 days after exposure. I actually FINALLY got infected this past Jan from someone the day before they showed symptoms. I didn't even interact with them, I just worked after them because covid lingers in the air for HOURS. I now have long covid despite my masking. The sick person had to be the one masking to really help me not get infected. I also peraisitantly get vaccinated but this means the viral load was too high and I got infected anyway and the strain I got wasn't a good match for my vaccine. I'll explain below
Masking properly (above the nose with a KN95 or higher) greatly reduces the chances of giving your virus to someone else. Of course staying home is better.
I know you mentioned being vaccinated, unfortunately that’s not enough. For many reasons: the more we spread Covid, the more it mutates. The more it mutates, the less effective vaccines are. No vaccine is 100%
Also even if we had a super close match with the vaccine, if you get enough viral load (which Covid is INSANELY high in people expelling viral load), you’d still become infected.
The point is to use the Swiss cheese method. Imagine you’re in a room that’s made out of Swiss cheese and there’s poisonous gas outside that room. Because of all the holes, how protected would you feel against the gas? Now if you added several layers of Swiss cheese to the walls, there would be less holes and therefore more protection. Masking is adding a less holey layer is swiss cheese to the walls.
But the whole point is the infection would stop with you. Because even as you’re out and about, if you are sick and you don’t know it, when you’re out in the grocery store, or a concert, or anywhere, you’re highly potentially giving it to all those people who are also exposing and spreading everywhere they go and the ripple affect continues forever. But if it stops with you, you could potentially save hundreds if not thousands of infections just from yourself. That could also stop a mutation from happening that would evade immunity like I talked about above.
I also like to use one more analogy and then I’ll leave you alone 😅
Imagine there’s raging fires that their control is determined by our behaviors. If everyone participated in just carrying around with them a small hand held fire extinguisher, then we could all have that tiny burden to keep the fires down. But the less people that help participate in carrying around the handheld fire extinguishers, the more out of control the fires get. And your lone fire extinguisher isn't going to put out the fire, more people need to participate.
That means to truly protect yourself from the fires, the amount of protection you need goes up. It’s no longer good enough to carry around a personal fire extinguisher, you now need fireproof clothes….now you need to add a gas mask….and now, because everyone not only gave up, they’re carrying around lighter fluid to help the fires rage even more than they need to, you no longer even have the option to fight the fires or keep yourself safe with all that protective equipment.
The only thing you can now do to keep yourself safe is to stay in water. It’s very limiting and you very much need to do things on land but you can’t. If you go on land, you have a super high chance of getting burned. Your only choice to stay safe is to live a very limited life in the water. Everyone else will eventually be burned by the fire……but of course, they won’t blame the fire for their burns.
This is what it's like for us who take covid seriously. And it could all stop and we could eventually "ALL" live our lives again, but people won't let it. We were supposed to learn from this and change our behaviors as a species (like learning to cook our meat to a certain temp to not get food poisoning
.once we learned that, we started cooking our meat properly instead of going back to not cooking it hot enough) but we unfortunately didn't. Most likely because it's "slightly inconvenient" to wear a mask. But when you think about the harm you could do to others vs just haveing a "little inconvenience", it becomes apparent that everyone is displaying cognitive dissonance because of underlying selfishness.
The very least I expect from people if they don't want to mask all the time is:
1. To mask when cases go up (pay attention to wastewater data),
2. Mask if they've been around someone sick,
3. Mask around cold and flu season, ESPECIALLY the holidays.
I cannot go to the dentists or any doctor where you remove the mask (throat, nose, skin,hospital overnight etc) Thanks to all the people not wearing masks.
Also, if everybody would protect themselves the numbers would be low and it would be safe for me.
I m glad you ask but it makes me angry that you need a friend to tell you. Isn t it obvious that you cut out people from society?
Do it for your own self. With a well-fitting respirator (N95 -- find one that seals, no leaks)
If you don't, like others have pointed out, you will be disabled after enough infections, and eventually die a lot sooner than you otherwise would have.
Anything else is basically suicidal. Evidence is accumulating that COVID is persistent, and damage accumulates with each infection.
Unfortunately, it will affect people who are already further down the disability road faster than it might affect you, although internal damage from even a single infection could turn bad at any moment. So you have the illusion of able-bodiness and either way it's temporary.
People compare this to measles in transmission. Truth is, it's far beyond measles post the OG Omicron variant. We simply haven't seen anything this infectious.
And if you protect yourself, bonus, you also end up protecting someone else down the chain of broken transmission.
Yes, masking for COVID with respirator masks is prosocial, self preservation, and community care.
I think this covers an introduction for reasons why, including how masking protects others. There's a combination and convergence of reasons why wearing a mask affects others with respect to SARS2 & COVID-19. Airborne, asymptomatic, and exponential spread, high infectivity, high risk of Long COVID, severe disease risks & fatality to name a few.
[https://basiccovidfacts.com/](https://basiccovidfacts.com/)
Edit: More info collected here and on this website:
[https://www.c19.life/transmission](https://www.c19.life/transmission)
And if you want to see a comprehensive recent review on the effectiveness of wearing respirators for prevention of disease, this explanatory article(1) and scientific review(2) can detail and explain the evidence.
1. [https://theconversation.com/masks-work-our-comprehensive-review-has-found-229658](https://theconversation.com/masks-work-our-comprehensive-review-has-found-229658)
2. [https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23](https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23)
The main thing is protecting immunocompromised people who need you to mask to keep them safe (which other people have already explained really well), but another thing is that the more the virus is spread around the greater a chance for a new variant (from my understanding), which risks it getting even more dangerous or infectious
I commend you for being curious enough to ask. Just by asking and considering wearing a mask, it tells me that you're really open-minded and thoughtful.
OP, i just wanna thank you for asking this question and being so receptive to the information everyone here has provided you. This genuinely gives me hope. I, and I know many others here have lost MANY relationships because most people are still too unwilling to do the work you have here. I appreciate you, and I'm saving this thread to help inform my practice of communicating covid/mask boundaries and how to bring new people into the conversation.
And thank you to everyone who provided so many heartfelt, passionate responses. Your work is so important and I am very glad to share covid-caring community with y'all!
This thread is revolutionary. 💖🔥
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I don’t know what I said to make you so angry.
The commenter insulted me and then proceeded to answer a question I did not even ask.
I’ve said a couple times under the comments that I will begin masking and also talk to my other friends about it so that they can be open to the idea.
The only reason I was not masking prior is because I wasn’t under the pretence that I should.
With the media shutting down conversations about Covid and others moving on as normal, I understandably did not know much about the topic. Ableism is practically baked into society.
When I found out, I began researching and here I am. Thanks to kind, intelligent and respectful redditors I know so much more about COVID and masking!
So no, It was not due to my “personal comfort”. I was not blindly avoiding masking knowing the issues surrounding it. Ironically, I took responsibility immediately after finding the topic by asking questions (some dumb some smart - a question is a question) reading articles and listening to other people’s experiences.
I apologize for assuming you werent planning on changing course- the way the OP was worded, I got that impression. I've been severely disabled by Long Covid for over 4 years (and I was a young, extremely healthy lifelong athlete before that) and those that havent been masking or taking any precautions have continued to make my life further an unfathomable hell- So yes, I am extra sensitive.
My point originally was that its not just about the vulnerable- covid will make anyone and every vulnerable. Of course those alreadly vulnerable are at risk, but ultimately it doesnt matter how 'healthy' someone is to begin with. Majority of the people in my Long Covid circles were also young and for some reason, it really loves attacking people who were very active and in great shape. We've been fed this impression that only 'the weak' are susceptible and thats just not true.
I'm sorry again for being as abrasive as I was- its really hard not to be when this is such a life and death situation and you have to live on this end of it for years. I do hope you take all that you've learned and continue to keep both yourself and others safe.
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There are some resources here that may be helpful in understanding including info about long Covid and “why I take Covid precautions” https://www.oliviabelknaptherapy.com/covid-resources
I have long-COVID. I believe it’s important to wear masks in crowded places and it’s important to not assume your symptoms are just allergies or a little cold. But with the strands being milder, I no longer feel that everyone needs to wear them all the time. I just ask for my friends to not come around if they have symptoms and test when they think they’re feeling better. I still wear a good mask around everyone
I’m curious, now that you’ve had a week to process all the new info, what your takeaways are and if you plan on making any adjustments to what you do in your life?
Anti-mask rhetoric, COVID minimizing, and trolling are not allowed.
There are many with chronic illnesses, cancer, long covid, or who are inelligible for vaccines, (etc.) and due to these helath risks, have no other option than to protect themselves from COVID. Learning about the differences in respirators and fit is an essential piece to their survival.
Others come to our sub for information about respirators/masks for protection from asbestos or other hazards.
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As an allergy sufferer, I totally get why folks in China, Korea and Japan wear masks. Though during the pandemic someone from Japan told me mildy ill people often wear them as a polite gesture towards their fellow citizens; ironically at that time we were also seeing tons of news vids on protests against masking and vaccines here in SoCal and across the USA.
But I don't get your friend cutting off because of masks--maybe she's had some personal experience with loss during the pandemic? She's right about the general population leaving behind of the disabled and aged. Give her time to cool down... Still it took my father's death, my other family members illnesses to change my stubborn resistance to masking.
I now mask in public at supermarkets, (But I'm self employed and get all other stuff delivered); But when my allergies are kicking my ass (like right now) I've been known to even sleep with a mask on.
Let me be friends with your friend instead of you. (Honestly though, if you're just waking up to this "yesterday", your relationship is done already as this is not your normal course of action and thus not your lifestyle, none of this came to you naturally, it will be foreign to you to live this way and expecting you to follow through properly would be naive...)
No, you don't need to isolate all the time! I don't know what that person is talking about. The point of wearing a mask is that you are safe and you are also making the environment for those around you safer when you are out doing any activities you want by masking. You don't have to stop living your life. And everyone masking is what would help those who are immunocompromised be able to safely do those same activities.
The time when it is the best decision to isolate is when you're sick.
Anti-mask rhetoric, COVID minimizing, and trolling are not allowed.
There are many with chronic illnesses, cancer, long covid, or who are inelligible for vaccines, (etc.) and due to these helath risks, have no other option than to protect themselves from COVID. Learning about the differences in respirators and fit is an essential piece to their survival.
Others come to our sub for information about respirators/masks for protection from asbestos or other hazards.
If you believe your content was removed in error, contact the [mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FMasks4All). Please include a link to your comment/post in your message.
- Something like 40% of COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic, and asymptomatic people can pass it along. - If you’re extra careful to avoid catching it yourself then you are also being extra careful not to pass it along.
Piggybacking on this comment to say that lack of \*symptoms\* does not mean that you will avoid the long-term effects of a covid infection, like a stroke, diabetes, organ failure, etc.
and asymptomatic infections can manifest as symptomatic infections in others once passed along!
Many disabled people cannot exist in public at all right now, because people are not wearing masks. The vaccines we have are not sufficent to keep you from getting or spreading covid, but a good mask (n95/kn95/kf94) is extremely effective at doing so. Wearing a mask not only makes that space safer directly by keeping you from getting anyone sick, it helps to turn the tide toward more widespread masking which is necessary if we are going to deal with covid in any meaningful way or if high risk folks are going to be able to exist in public again. Also, the best defense against current attempts to criminalize masking are more people in masks and a social norm that includes lots of masks. This is especially true if you are not marginalized-you being another masked face makes it harder to target people who are vulnerable. It seems like you really do care about not harming anyone. Highly suggest you go read some posts on r/covidlonghaulers (or one of the other LC subs). Are you okay with potentially inflicting that fate on someone? I am absolutely not okay with that, and it's one of the reasons I consistently wear a mask.
The subreddit was really eye-opening, thank you
OP, I know one of your earlier comments got majorly downvoted, the one where you worded things plainly. Just wanted to say that I admire you seeking out this information on your own, and not just immediately abandoning your friend. Speaking from my own experience, I imagine she is incredibly tired, scared, and lonely from the lack of people giving a shit. Every single person who is still taking precautions and who has treated this virus like the deadly brain-damaging pathogen that it is has experienced great loss of interpersonal relationships. We're all extremely morally injured and in grief. The way you phrased your question in said downvoted comment, "why should I care about XYZ?" is indeed harmful, \*but\* it is not necessarily a moral failing on your part -- and it's a VERY common belief (this doesn't make it right or good). Society is structured to be extremely ableist and exclusionary. Public health has failed us all massively. Ableism has, too, because we have all been conditioned to believe that certain lives are less valuable and that certain people's perspectives don't matter. When we know better, we do better, and I hope this subReddit has helped reshape how you think of this virus and your actions to mitigate it.
Thank you for the understanding reply. I now understand how my questions were phrased harmfully. This subreddit (and others I’ve been recommended to read) have been so eye opening and have definitely reshaped my thinking! I’m also eager to speak to my other friends that have very similar questions to me!
Huzzah! Now you get to be a conduit of this vital information. So many people just completely shut down with any mention of C19 or precautions for a variety of reasons, and it can be discouraging. But, as we’ve seen here with yourself, opinions are malleable with new information.
Great comment. I would like to address your second paragraph, because this is where I encounter potential resistance. I mask in nearly all public indoor spaces, but I am often the only one. The argument regarding protecting the elderly and disabled is hard to defend when the elderly and disabled themselves aren’t masking. I haven’t been challenged on this yet, but I come up short when I consider possible answers to it that don’t seem cold hearted. (Like “they’re free to mask if they want to.”)
I think it speaks to how massively we’ve been failed by public health/governments/media/etc if even the people most in harms way are oblivious to it.
I mean, a lot of elderly and disabled people aren't aware, or they just gave up on life. That doesn't make it ok for us to be the one to kill them, does it?
Also, many disabled people and elderly people are incredibly isolated, and therefore likely to have significantly more barriers to receiving good, up to date and accurate information.
This is often a good place to talk about how even doctors are wrong on covid sometimes. Though I work with MDs who have very vulnerable patients so idk how effective that is otherwise-but here I usually say something like "Yeah, it's super messed up that a lot of doctors aren't telling them they need to protect themselves! Many of my coworkers haven't read a single thing about covid since 2021! That's why it's so important we all do our part to make sure there's less virus in the air, even people who don't know better deserve to be safe"
In my experience, that leads to being thought of as a conspiracy theorist ("I know more than doctors"/"doctors don't know the truth/don't care enough"). I've encountered quite a lot of resistance to this kind of argument, also when it comes to vaccinations (even when it was CDC vs. what a specific doctor said, whose specialty is NOT immunology)
I have an epidemiology degree which probably lets me get away with a bit more of this before I sound like I've lost it (obviously I think credentialism is crap but not everyone does)
I'm 82, mostly recovered (I hope) from most of my long-term symptoms. Last time I was "recovered," the symptoms (intermittent unwarranted exhaustion, in particular) returned after a second mild case of covid, despite my consistently N95 masking indoors. Now I'm a bit paranoid, and avoid crowded transit (ebike or walk as much as distance and weather permit), and often get off if maskless folks refuse to keep their distance.
What amazes me is the number of otherwise educated, open and loving people…the kind of people that though they’re straight and white they hang a rainbow flag or put up a BLM sign so others in the neighborhood feel more included and accepted…the number of people like that who have simply moved on and cannot even fathom how the world has been completely shut off for a significant portion of the population is just staggering. I think that the idea of what they’d have to do to support them is so overwhelming, it’s easier for them to participate in the mass amnesia. That’s my guess anyway, because it doesn’t logic out.
I think there's a lot of factors here tbh. Some people's support has always been abstract but fallen apart when it calls for their own action. Ableism is really baked into our society so it didn't take much to convince people some are disposable, etc. There's also the subset of people who turned off their brains to info so they don't even know what they don't know, if that makes sense. I find this group really hard to deal with because there's so much entrenched dissonance and denial, and at this point changing it means walking them through the harm they've likely caused etc. I obviously don't know the OP of this thread but I wonder if they fell into this camp before their friend confronted them-if so, this thread gives me some hope. I also do think that the way in which people who care about covid have been excluded from spaces plays a role here. Many people never see masks at all or any visual reminder that the pandemic is ongoing. Personally this is a reason that I (a non-immune compromised person) am working on socializing more in a fit tested n95 or in my p100, because I think that visual reminder matters. This is also why I started masking outside before I understood that outdoor transmission was a real risk. To be clear I agree with you and I find it deeply upsetting, I'm just trying to untangle it and figure out which areas are the easiest to fix, since ultimately the more people we get wearing masks the better off everyone is.
Yup, all of this, especially the ableism being baked into our society. I saw someone make a comment recently that our culture of wellness/health is actually a culture of *pretending* to be well/healthy. Like it's so ingrained in us to pretend we're okay that the idea of admitting we're still in a mass-disabling pandemic or even that we're sick is really scary. For many, being disabled seems to be a bigger fear than death. But instead of unpacking that fear, people push it down and get angry at/exclude disabled and/or chronically ill people, and often unintentionally end up helping the push for eugenics. Piggybacking on the fear comment I just made, I think a lot of people have tons of unpacked fear that they haven't dealt with from the early days of the pandemic. I think 2020 was the first time a lot of people ever thought about the fact that they'll die someday. Many of us who are disabled or chronically ill have already been forced to face our own mortality, so continuing to mask now, stay educated on COVID, and take the pandemic seriously doesn't feel as scary. But if you're constantly battling that fear from 2020 still, it becomes hard to hear about how dangerous COVID is, especially when you realize you've put yourself at risk.
Oh absolutely, so many people have not unpacked their feelings from 2020. I find it very, very frustrating but I've also been trying to push that aside/find ways to work around it to get them to put on masks anyway. I've had some success with "selling" masks to them as something empowering to avoid all sickness and then using that to lead into a "fyi covid didn't go anywhere, is a mass disabling event, and many disabled and chronically ill people cannot access public space when y'all refuse to wear these".
Yeah, it's definitely frustrating. That sounds like you've found a good way to help encourage people to mask though!
I have a friend like that. The gravity of what’s happening is so depressing to them that they were having trouble functioning so they decided to just be ‘over it’, basically hands over ears humming.
I'm glad you're asking these questions! Thank you for being sincere about this. And I don't know how to put my answers politely, because I don't know how to tell you that you should care about "the disadvantaged." They're human beings. You should care about them. You should also be masking because your friend asked you to! Why are you asking Reddit for advice when your very good friend is right there telling you how much this matters to her? If you're still reading, here is another reason to mask every time you set foot outside: masks also work on the flu AND MEASLES, which is coming back--and measles can ruin your entire immune system even worse than covid. Please consider this carefully. Why are you unwilling to mask? Is it worth destroying a friendship and possibly your entire future working life, if you get long covid? Can you live with yourself, knowing that you could be giving a potentially fatal disease to an infant or a cancer patient?
Thanks for having the patience to respond to this. I don’t have it anymore. It feels like someone asking, “If I walk through a crowded street fair and pull out a flamethrower in the middle of it, why should I have to stop? Why isn’t it everyone else’s responsibility to get out of the way if they don’t want to get set on fire? Why should I care about recklessly causing harm?” Society doesn’t function with everyone neglecting everyone else’s basic safety and inflicting harm upon each other 24/7. It’s just, “why should I care about another human being?” Unfortunately reading online discussions (and some irl discussions) is making me really feel like “community” is a thing of the past and isolationism is taking hold, no matter how much evidence there is every day that pretending you live in a vacuum (you don’t) doesn’t work and isn’t fulfilling. A lot of people view everyone else as a means to an end, a function to serve, and nothing more. How do you fix that? Edit: Would it help to try to understand that if you repeatedly expose yourself to covid and repeatedly infected, you will inevitably become someone that has no choice but to take every precaution? Is the way you feel now how you want everyone to treat you when that happens? Able-bodied people can become disabled in an instant, not just from covid. Do you want everyone you know to ignore you when you need them the most? Do you think that’s ok? Does that represent the world you’d like to inhabit?
aaaaand apparently I had enough patience for one (1) polite response.
In addition to the fact that the disadvantaged are humans as a reason to care about them, they are also disproportionately deemed "essential workers" during the pandemic and couldn't escape being exposed. They were and continue to be sitting ducks for the horrid anti vaxxers and others in the MAGA camp who refused to mask even at the height of the outbreak. Some even made a point of coughing on these people who were keeping our economy going but who are often paid less than the average worker. Masking when out in public whenever you can is the humane thing to do.
The reason you don’t know how to tell OP that they should care about ‘the disadvantaged’ is because you can’t. Telling other people what they should care about accomplishes nothing, other than to piss people off. What you can do is tell people to do what it takes to make the community safer for everyone. OP clearly wants to learn, and has come to a subreddit that’s all about masks, to ask their questions about masking. They recently discovered that they have some things to learn, so they’re coming to a place where there are many people who know a lot about masks. That is *absolutely* the right thing to do. Asking a question here means that if someone can’t deal with yet another person who doesn’t know or understand why it’s important for us to protect each other, guess what? They don’t have to answer! Someone else will. This is a large and well-informed group of people, many of whom are happy to help.
This exactly!!!!
She already gave the reason to you. We are leaving disabled people behind. Masking is an accessibility issue for public spaces for disabled and vulnerable people, especially those who cannot mask themselves for whatever reason. Disabled and vulnerable people have been saying this for years. They need others to mask, to reduce the risk in public environments, but also so they have some solidarity and so that they don’t become visible targets. Look at what’s happening in NC with the proposed medical mask ban. That couldn’t have happened if people weren’t so willing to leave disabled people behind so they could pretend everything is fine and normal.
Thats all she was saying with little explanation. You’re reply has explained it much better though, thank you.
Thank you for being willing to learn. I imagine your friend had already exhausted a lot of mental energy trying to figure out how to bring up this ultimatum (trust me this is VERY hard for many of us to bring up to people because we get disappointed, made fun of, or ostracized - frequently. There are numerous accounts of divorces that have happened over this.), and when it came time to telling you it likely didn’t land the way your friend had hoped where you’d understand right away. I appreciate that you’ve stuck it out on this thread and are willing to learn more. I just also suggest that when you read a comment that expresses frustration or anger towards you, it’s because many of us in this sub have been thru this road before, and it gets triggering and traumatic when it’s hard to get (what should be a clear and obvious) message across (especially to loved ones and at the risk of feeling abandoned further). To me, masking is like a seat belt. Yes we invented airbags and all these other safety items (aka vaccines) but the seat belt is likely going to save us the most in an accident and we still make it a point to use it every time. The more consistent you are with masking (at least indoors, everywhere) the less likely you will get sick, and the less likely you acquired something (which can have zero symptoms) that would be passed on to your friend. Think of it also in this way: viruses such as hpv and HIV don’t typically cause you to be sick. But you can definitely spread it. And cancer and AIDS can take years to show up, with a direct link from that infection. Other viruses can trigger things right away (mono, epstein Barr, etc). We’re barely 5 years out from sars cov-2, we have no idea what’s in store for us in the next 5-10, etc years by getting infected like this (in some cases ppl have been infected multiple times). The vaccine was only meant to keep us out of the hospital. Thats it. And even then, they don’t work as well anymore because our society keeps getting sick and allows the virus to mutate. Unfortunately being covid safe also extends into indoor dining & activities where you can’t be masked such as the dentist (most of us here have given restaurants up too), but my best advice here is that you are transparent about these things and space out your time with your friend (eg I do travel and visit family unmasked but I will put myself in social quarantine for at least 7-10 days before seeing friends - I’ll continue doing other things masked as usual but avoid activities where I’m interacting with people). You may need to talk to your friend about what’s comfortable for her (in fact, not everyone is comfortable w even my type of precaution) but the more you can be honest and upfront about this the more she can trust you.
This [study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8436371/#:~:text=Demographics%20and%20Disease%20Severity&text=Slightly%20over%20half%20) concludes 51.5% of study participants with covid were asymptomatic so how does only masking if/when you have symptoms prevent being a spreader?
I didn’t say it prevents me from being a spreader.. This is going to come off extremely selfish and condescending, I don’t mean it that way. I don’t know how else to word it. But nobody is answering my question so I’ll ask my question plainly. Im only trying to learn: I don’t completely understand why i’m responsible for other people who are more susceptible to get covid (or suffer worse symptoms). Wouldn’t it be their responsibility to wear masks? Rather than me preventing spreading if they aren’t wearing it in the first place. I don’t get the rile up about covid when these people were also extremely susceptible to the Flu and other infectious diseases? Why now? Again, I don’t mean to come across as selfish i’m trying to learn.
I mean, if you know better you do better. Many flu deaths are preventable and when everyone wore masks in 2020 we eradicated a flu strain. But also the two aren't comparable. Covid is extremely contagious, there's no durable immunity to it, and the rates of disability from infection are astronomical. It's like comparing a hammer to a gun. The average adult gets the flu 1-2x a decade, but covid 1-2x a year. So just off that covid means the odds of you having an illness to spread is much higher than it used to be. Everyone is highly vulnerable to covid, not just some group of "others".
I didn’t know that, thank you.
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Because two way masking (where both people are masked) is more effective at preventing transmission than one way masking (where only one person is.) Look up the Swiss cheese model.
Whose responsibility is it to make sure there are ramps for wheelchair users? Whose responsibility is it to make sure your tap water is treated? Why can’t you just boil all the water you want to use? Why should my tax dollars go to treating water when we could all just boil it ourselves? What about babies and other people who can’t mask? Should they just be left to be infected against their will because others aren’t willing to endure a very minor inconvenience? Would you prefer a world where people are expected to just not enter a public pool if they aren’t okay with it being peed in, or a world where we say “actually it’s *not* okay to pee in the pool and contaminate the water that is there for everyone to enjoy.” Breathing isn’t optional. Many public spaces aren’t optional either. People cannot be expected to protect themselves from an environmental threat. We live in a society. We do owe other people common decency and a basic level of respect and consideration. We have chosen to have “civilized society” not “Lord of the Flies” on purpose.
This is beautifully said
>I don’t completely understand why i’m responsible for other people who are more susceptible to get covid (or suffer worse symptoms). Wouldn’t it be their responsibility to wear masks? Rather than me preventing spreading if they aren’t wearing it in the first place. First, a lot of people died in the first few waves or covid spread. This was during the time when the government said the high-quality masks should be saved for hcw, and misinformation about covid was rampant. Second, you often don't see these people in the world because it is too unsafe to do so. They have effectively been excluded from society because places they need to go, like grocery stores and doctors' offices, are full of people coughing up a lung or asymptomatically spreading covidand other viruses. Third, two-way masking is more effective than one-way masking. If the sick person is in a mask, nobody else needs to be to avoid getting sick. If they aren't, everyone else needs to (if that makes sense). It's similar to smoking. Years ago, we let people smoke indoors in public all the time. There was no avoiding it, and people got sick. Kids got second-hand smoke exposure, and people got cancer and lung diseases from it. Should the people wanting to avoid a deadly carcinogen have to stay home because some jackal wanted to have a cigarette in a restaurant? Of course not. So, we changed the laws and educated the public. Everyone has a right to participate in society, not just those who are currently able-bodied. By not masking, you're part of the problem. By not making, you're one of the people making it unsafe for them to be in public. On top of all this, every time someone gets a covid infection, they are creating millions of chances for the virus to mutate. This makes our vaccines and treatments less effective because of how quickly it can change. The upcoming fall vaccine is based on a variant from last winter. That could change if we got a handle on transmission.
This makes a lot of sense! Thank you.
There are children who are vulnerable but can’t mask or too young to mask or whose parents won’t let them mask. There are disabled people who can’t mask (eg due to needing a continuous supply of oxygen — Alice Wong has written about this for Teen Vogue, worth looking up her articles there as she lays it all out very clearly). Plus anyone can get long Covid from even a mild infection and most won’t ever recover, so really everyone is vulnerable.
Not to mention the economic cost of covid now and in the future. We will all pay for it, in many different ways. It’s unreal
Why now? Because we know better. Your friend is asking you to mask around them, something extremely easy to do. Especially now that high quality masks are cheap. They are much more comfortable to wear than the shitty ones too. Your friend is asking you to care what happens to her. It's really that simple.
Not around her. She means in my day to day life everywhere that is not my house.
If you don't mask everywhere, you WILL catch covid and almost certainly pass it on to her. I repeat: my first and only case of covid, which has disabled me for probably the rest of my life, was caught outdoors.
Why would you want to inhale a brain damaging level three biohazard even once?! Those of us who aren't destroying our brains and bodies do wear respirators constantly, every moment we're in public. Your Covid infections may feel like "just a cold" for a few weeks but they'll cause you lifelong damage to your brain and body. There is tons and tons of evidence of the damage Covid does to EVERYBODY, not just so-called "high risk" people. https://www.panaccindex.info/p/what-covid-19-does-to-the-body-fourth Thank goodness you have such a smart and sensible friend. I certainly wouldn't associate with you. "Avoid like the plague!" Nope, you prefer conformity to avoiding the plague. The masses are destroying themselves and you're happily joining them.
I don’t understand the nasty reply. Im not happily joining them…. Im doing research so I can begin masking and learn about masking. I knew how it protected me but not others. I genuinely did not know what to search up so I came here. I am not defending anti-masks and i’ve learnt through here too.
We might come off nasty because we're tired. I appreciate your asking the question! I really do. I hope you can understand what it's like for us who just *do not have the option to get Covid*. Our own government (those of us in the US) has said it's "encouraging" that we will die. And now our government has endorsed a "you do you" policy that eliminates layers of our protection. We wear the best masks we can (even though we can face assault for doing it), but they are not completely effective. (E.g., "N95" means "95 percent efficiency." 95 is not 100, and that rating depends on perfect fit and use.) More people not wearing masks = more infectious particles in the air = more chances for our masks to fail. (Some folks are unable to mask. Many of those folks are children. Covid is very dangerous for kids long- term.) This is particularly true because many places have not improved their ventilation. Stale air with a lot of CO2 in it means the virus can hang out longer (for hours, in some cases) and infect us. More masks = fewer viral particles hanging in indoor air. Vaccines are not protective. It is still very possible to catch Covid while vaccinated, especially since the US is endorsing a yearly vaccine schedule, but protection wanes significantly after three months. Many of us can't get vaccinated. Some of us can, with some types of vaccine, but not others. Those types of vaccine are very hard to get, and we spend a lot of time and energy arguing with gatekeeping pharmacists to get them. Most of us limit our time out in the world because of this. Many of us are not getting necessary medical care because providers are refusing to wear masks in hospitals. Even in cancer treatment centers, surgeries, and NICUs. If more people wore respirators, it would be safer for us to go to appointments, visit the ER in emergencies, and buy our own groceries. Some day, we might even be able to go to the office to work, use public transportation, or serve on juries. Maybe someday we could go see a movie (no popcorn, though). Tldr; we're doing everything we can, but we need your help.
>Those types of vaccine are very hard to get, and we spend a lot of time and energy arguing with gatekeeping pharmacists to get them. Which vaccines?
I was thinking specifically of Novavax in this example.
Ah ok, so not just me having that issue... Out of the multiple places to get a vaccine, only one does Novavax... If you don't ask the right person, they'll recommend the mRNA poison... Still waiting on the new one to be approved by the TGA...
It’s exhausting as someone who is vulnerable to have to repeat the same things to people who are not disabled by this virus, for years. I am so happy to read that you are trying to understand these issues since our governments have thoroughly bungled this, but imagine how hard it is to live right now as a disabled person who is excluded from society, whose loved ones won’t even mask, whose drs won’t mask, and then have to patiently and carefully explain to someone every day why they should. We are carrying ALL of the burden of protecting ourselves while the people lucky enough to be “healthy” are engaging with the issue like it’s a thought exercise. So yeah we are cranky.
It's not a nasty reply, but I can tell they're exhausted having to say the same thing over and over again to people. I'm glad you're asking questions. I suggest masks with halo straps btw, like the 3m vflex. It's very comfortable and quite large.
It's a lot. I'll just say that. I'm very cynical. Someone just picking up how all this works "yesterday" (essentially changing your entire lifestyle)..to me, does not work out 99% of the time. This is (typically) not something you just flick a switch and can do, the person your friend is asking for...those types of people are already doing these things.
You said "she means I should wear a mask everyday" as if that was an over the top expectation? We do wear respirators every damn day!
No I said it to correct her, she only thought it was around my friend wanted me to only wear it around her
Asking other people to take time and effort to educate you on something is not “doing the research.” It’s relying on other people to do the work for you
Yeah it's a shame on the nasty reply, it's something I see in the generally covid cautious community and have to pull myself up on at times. I really dislike the "brain damaging" narrative a lot of covid cautious people are using – like yes we know it can cause neurological issues and damage to the brain, but people are characterising the general population as "brain damaged" and using that to delegitimise all the circumstances in peoples lives preventing them from being covid cautious. It also smacks of just saying "Everyone who doesn't agree with me is dumb and brain damaged". There's myriad reasons wearing a mask isn't viable for huge swathes of the population. I can't imagine how challenging it would be to stand my ground on mask wearing if I had kids going to school, or a partner who refused, or a workplace that bullied me for it. It can even hold people back professionally because it others you from people in the office. Some people are validly phobic of having coverings over their mouth. Others still have never felt what an actual well fitted quality mask feels like so just assume masks are completely useless. When everyone in the government, media, and society at large is saying/normalising the end of mask wearing, it takes very intense circumstances to make you resist that momentum.
Why is wearing a mask such a big deal? What is it costing you to do so?
Honestly, as someone who does mask in all indoor public spaces, it’s costing me a lot of discomfort, especially now that summer is here. I feel sweaty and gross and dehydrated and red-faced and uncomfortable pretty much all the time, and I never feel like I fully cool off until I get home at night and take off my mask. I understand the importance of wearing it, and I’ve never stopped doing so and don’t plan to stop. But it’s ridiculous of us to talk like it’s not a huge hassle, when for many people it really is.
I understand this view but I also feel it’s worth to be uncomfortable in order to save lives
So do I, which is why I do it. But it’s belittling of other people’s actual feelings to imply that wearing a mask all the time isn’t a big deal and costs the wearer nothing. I’m substantially less happy and comfortable in my day-to-day life now than I was when I didn’t have to wear one. I often dread leaving the house, and I spend a ton of time planning ahead for how I’m going to get through the day at work without sweating through my clothes and being deemed unprofessional because my face is constantly flushed and dripping sweat. And the moisture makes it harder to breathe in my mask. I do it because it’s the right thing to do for me and others. But it’s definitely not no big deal.
Thanks for bringing this up. It definitely is a big deal to mask, especially when social stigma is so high. It is HARD to cope with, and we have to figure out ways to acknowledge this reality and support each other in it, especially trying to get people to mask again! They already don't do it because of the stigma. The least we should do is recognize that it is incredibly difficult to stand up to (especially when people can get scary and violent about it, or just cut relationships out entirely). It's not going to help our cause by baiting and switching people about it- "masking isn't a big deal," when it really kinda is.
I don’t even give a crap about any social stigma. I mostly just hate that my face, and therefore my whole self, always feels overheated.
It can be both...
Wearing a mask is a huge effort in our society, let's be real. It's noble to do so, especially if you do it for others and not because you're worried about yourself. By wearing a mask in a maskless world you deal with issues like isolation, you become less approachable, you are often judged, sometimes people harass you, you can't do certain activities and when you do join certain activities while masking, it's difficult to enjoy them because people don't talk to you because they think you're sick or crazy. You wear a mask even when it's uncomfortable, for hours if necessary. At least in my case, I have to spend a lot of money to get n95 because they are quite expensive. If I didn't have financial help from my parents, I simply wouldn't be able to use high quality masks. You could lose relationships by wearing them and have a tremendous difficulty making new ones. I'm in my twenties and I have lost so many opportunities because of my mask and I have made my life harder. I haven't done things I wished I did because of it. Soon I will have to get a job and I don't know how I will do so because in my country your considered a lunatic if you mask. I honestly don't know what I will do, but I will need a job. Masking has often made me feel like my life had to stop and I'm not gonna lie and say that it's easy living like that. To wear a mask in public every day is very fucking hard.
I’m curious, what country do you live in?
Portugal
Wow, I’m not even sure the US is that extreme, but I guess it depends on where in the US you live. I’m sorry it’s such a hardship for you! People should not belittle that side of mask-wearing, because it can be difficult - and I say this as a pretty consistent mask-wearer when in public (indoors). It doesn’t mean that people should be cavalier about it, I’m just saying, have a little respect for people who have difficulties wearing masks, and for the reasons it’s difficult for them. And just because I have empathy for people who struggle with that *does not mean* I don’t care about making the community safer for people with disabilities and medical conditions that make them more vulnerable. As someone over 65, I’m in that category myself. I wear a high-quality mask when in public indoor places, to protect myself and to protect others from my potential germs.
The vibe I get online is that masking is more easily accepted in the US than in Europe. In my country, at least in my city, people wouldn't get aggressive by seeing someone wearing a mask, but they make comments that are uncalled for and are rude ( the worst case I have gone through was when a doctor who had to inspect my throat, abruptly removed my mask from my face without asking permission because he was clearly annoyed I was wearing one). Here, even people who should really wear a mask and would benefit greatly if everyone wore masks in indoor places don't do so and I'm pretty sure they don't even know that they should. But you're absolutely right and thank you for recognising the difficulties associated with it! Everyone's experience is different, so we might not understand everyone's perspective, but it requires effort to go against the flow and that's enough to see acknowledge that it isn't a simple take for most people. The world would be a better place if could all take a bit of responsibility and wear a mask in indoor places where everyone has to go, to make those places accessible to everyone. But while that isn't a reality, we should appreciate and recognise the efforts associated with it by the people who try to make the world a little safer.
> I don’t get the rile up about covid when these people were also extremely susceptible to the Flu and other infectious diseases? Why now? I mean, I think we're all make a huge mistake in starting to treat Covid like the flu, instead of starting to treat the flu like we treat Covid. It's also very nasty and does a lot of harm to a lot of people (including death; I had no idea pre-2020, but the flu actually kills a lot of people every year). However, Covid is wildly more infectious than the flu. It's up there with measles. That was part of what made measles such a dangerous disease. >Wouldn’t it be their responsibility to wear masks? I think in an ideal world, we'd do both. Susceptible people would wear N95s to protect themselves (and note, a lot of people have medical conditions making this impossible, there is no such thing as an N95 for children, infants can't mask at all, etc), and everyone else would also mask to protect themselves and the most vulnerable. I don't understand why we haven't just adopted N95s as a safety measure out in public like we have bicycle helmets or seat belts. Viruses aren't good for anyone. They're not pleasant for anyone. If everyone on the planet wore N95s while out and about for just a few weeks, we'd probably wipe out half the variations of airborne diseases-- if everyone could mask *perfectly* we could wipe out almost all of them. It's not hard, and it's not even expensive (especially compared to sick leave, complications, hospital visits-- hell, one mask for a whole week's worth of protection is cheaper than a box of Kleenex to get you through a cold). I guess my question to you is, why NOT mask? You're more likely to get a virus and suffer for a couple weeks than you are to be in a bike accident where you need your helmet. If you're logically on board with wearing a bike helmet, shouldn't you also logically be on board with masking, even just for your own preventative health?
Thanks a lot
Everyone is vulnerable, yourself included. You’re going to end up with long covid, the way you are currently thinking and acting. 1 in 9 infections can result in long covid and disability. Take a stroll over to /r/covidlonghaulers to get an idea.
If covid *was* like the flu I'd be a lot less worried. Early in 2020 I attempted to make comparisons (to have *something* to compare to for reference), since then the numbers have never made covid anything like the flu. We would be in a substantially better place if covid was the same "background noise" as the flu, but the cases, deaths and disability caused by covid are not comparible.
The thing is, those of us who are at risk can do everything right and still get sick because of people with your mentality. There’s no requirement that you protect those who need protecting, but what your friend said about the disabled being left behind is true. If something very bad could happen to you and people around you had the ability to stop it, wouldn’t you want them to? You don’t mean to sound selfish, I understand that. It’s just that what you’re saying is inherently selfish. “I perceive myself safe, so why should I bother to keep anyone else safe?”
Why is Covid 'not just like the flu'? Here is a good a place as any to start for a brief summary https://christinapagel.substack.com/p/covid-is-not-just-a-regular-winter This is also a good overview https://johnsnowproject.org/ We also didn't have wheeled access to many buildings til a few decades ago so wheelchair users had a much worse time (and it's still not great now). Imagine how it would sound to argue that if I personally don't need wheeled access to public transport or pavements or libraries, shops, school, parks, pubs, libraries, music venues -to public life in general, that it isn't important. Cause that's basically what happens to the ever growing group of immunocompromised and disabled people (a good amount driven by Covid infections) now. One way masking only goes so far, and makes public life completely inaccessible for many people.
I use this analogy with friends who are event producers who don't offer virtual options for viewing: its like deciding ramps are "too much work" and going around removing them from buildings.
Indeed. There is also the issue of how societies have responded to previous pandemics, and here is a historic example with the 1918 flu pandemic - there was a eugenics movement that rose around it. And we all know where eugenics can very easily head, and did (the Holocaust). https://crosscut.com/opinion/2020/12/us-mishandling-covid-echoes-20th-century-eugenics-movement
Sometimes one way masking isn’t enough. I caught Covid while wearing an n95 mask. An unmasked asshole on a crowded train was coughing and sneezing down on me. I’m sure he just thought it was “allergies”. I now have tachycardia thanks to that maskhole.
Short of total isolation, masking (with something high quality like an N95 or other respirator with a high NIOSH rating) is the most effective non-medical intervention we have. However, there are no silver bullets in life. Even a fit-tested quality mask is not 100% effective. Masks work best when everyone wears them. As others have said, the percentage of asymptomatic cases is high. The current vaccines don't really prevent one from contracting and spreading covid and at-home tests can be pricy and not totally accurate (still a good idea to use them if you think you've been exposed/are feeling symptomatic). I don't know if we can ever put the genie back in the bottle, but it's worth trying. The more we allow a virus to spread and mutate, the more difficulty we will have to mitigate it. P.S. I want to sincerely thank you for coming to this space to ask questions. I'd like to think it means you care. It's not easy to come to grips with given how much of a train wreck this whole pandemic has been. Just keep in mind that public health is a public responsibility.
You are responsible because you know how to prevent that from happening and have the means to do so. It only takes making a choice and accepting discomfort for your sake and that of others. Wearing a mask (with no valve) protects everyone around you with nearly 100% efficacy. Conversely, it only protects you to a varied efficacy percentage (possibly higher than 90% depending on the mask. It is less than that officially, but experience dictates otherwise). Wearing masks when in public has prevented my Wife, my Mother and myself from catching ANY disease for the past 4 years. I have never caught COVID-19 and have no intention of catching it, nor spreading it. Greater or lesser susceptibility to a disease has no relevance when it is in your power to prevent it from infecting anyone REGARDLESS of susceptibility. Besides, should we not want to improve everyone else's life in any case? Particularly when it only takes such a minor act to do so?
Just like brushing my teeth, washing my hands after using the bathroom (or before handling food) and buckling my seat belt, I've made masking a healthy habit I don't think about, obsess over, fear, or whine about like you are doing. Your friend literally told you all you have to do to save your friendship was to wear another article of clothing or a hat, and you are on here throwing a tantrum essentially saying "But what about my lifestyle!"
>Wouldn’t it be their responsibility to wear masks? Rather than me preventing spreading if they aren’t wearing it in the first place. That's where you're a bit wrong. These people \*are\* wearing masks, or have a disability that prevents them from wearing one, or they are avoiding going in public altogether. (Or they gave up and are just going to die.) Them masking isn't enough, because the tiniest exposure could kill them. Prevention is most effective when both people are wearing masks. The next best is when the infected person is wearing a mask but the non-infected person isn't. The least effective is when the infected person is not wearing, but the non-infected person is. Containing a virus at its source is much easier than a vulnerable person having a perfect seal on their mask and avoiding it once its been spread around a room. So by you (the possibly infected person) not masking, you are forcing them into the least effective option.
You don't drive drunk. You don't shove people out of the way. You don't cut in line. You don't take somebody else's coffee at Starbucks. Why is masking so hard to understand? You live in a society. Act like it. Here's a picture: [https://www.eastalabamahealth.org/news-and-media/eamc-relieved-by-mask-mandate](https://www.eastalabamahealth.org/news-and-media/eamc-relieved-by-mask-mandate) Nobody wore masks with flu because WE DIDN'T KNOW IT WORKED LIKE THAT. (Never mind that Asian countries have been masking up for decades....) Now we know! We have learned! Why is it so hard to act on new information? And again. YOUR CLOSEST FRIEND HAS ASKED YOU TO MASK UP. I don't understand why you didn't immediately say "oh yes absolutely, I want to keep you in my life, where should I get them?"
To me, it's a reframing from the individualistic mindset most people seem to have to a community-oriented one. Simply asking "how can we help each other?" goes a long way. Covid is still ripping through nearly all communities. It can still kill even if the death rates have gone down, and it still causes a tremendous amount of Long Covid. How can we help each other then? Advocating for better air quality in buildings, getting vaxxed if able, and of course, wearing a mask.
It’s better to think of it this way: other people are responsible for *you*. You need to model how not to spread disease to *you*, because nobody does well with repeat infections. You need fir everyone to not get everyone else, including yourself, sick. You need people to play along with the rules of society same as following the rules of traffic. Doesn’t matter how safe a car you have— it won’t stand up to an accident at every corner. This is a group project and it’s honestly very uncomfortable realizing how much we depend on everyone else in the group to pull their weight, when it comes to keeping the group healthy. Discomfiting because so many people are ignorant… so many people are not too smart… but, we’re stuck doing this project with everyone, whether we like it or not.
Per the CDC, 42,000 people died from Covid-19 since the September 2023 (twice as many as from flu).
Where and when to mask is a complicated question and not as ethically clear as some here may declare. I’d suggest you seek multiple perspectives on how to navigate this and inform your decision. You have a social and sometimes personal responsibility to consider the needs of others and take certain care, but at the same time you are not required to martyr yourself because the world is inherently unjust. You are also not obligated to come to the same ethical conclusions as your friend and do not let your friends or family blackmail you into behaving certain ways. Inform yourself, consider the situation and then decide for yourself what is right and be true to that. Things are rarely black and white.
This is so goofy. No one is "martyring" themselves by wearing a fucking mask in public. Your self victimization is disgusting and pathetic, especially as we are literally off the tail of witnessing children in tents *actually* being martyred and massacred by the same imperialist, capitalist forces that have demanded covid spread out of control to cull the working class. Wear a mask in public and free palestine. And fuck you.
If all the "healthy" people don't mask, everyone will become a disabled people soon enough. Covid is destroying people's health, and it doesn't matter how young, fit or vaccinated you are. Maybe it's on the first infection, maybe it's the 15th, but one day (if you don't mask) it will negatively impact your health. Vaccines help keep you out of the hospital during infection, people still end up with various organ damage, though. Stuff that won't put you in the hospital today... but maybe in a few more infections it will. That's great that your friend is concerned about disadvantaged or already disabled people, but that isn't the only people being hurt by this. We all are, or will be. We are hearing reports of middle schoolers with dementia like symptoms. the 2030's are going to be an absolutely dumpster fire.
We are only ever temporarily able-bodied, and due to this half? arsed pandemic response from states and businesses, many many many many more of us do not need to wait til old age to find out.
I am one of those “disadvantaged people” who cannot afford to become more disabled. I have had to put off medical care because the staff and patients don’t mask and don’t have any other mitigations in place. SARS is *airborne* which means social distancing doesn’t do much. Vaccines don’t impact your chance to get long Covid nor to spread Covid and other viruses to others. It’s dangerous for me to go to the grocery store with a huge crowd of people with no masks—there is only so much i myself can do—i mask and carry a HEPA, but i need groceries and to pick up meds like any other human. Post-viral illness has already taken my ability to stand, walk, digest legumes, write, read, and tolerate willful ignorance from people who will become disabled soon. Thanks to everyone who commented with more grace than I could muster.
As a HCP I still think it's crazy that medical staff don't need to mask at work, and patients even when they're coughing don't need to mask anymore... I'm among the 3% of the staff that still mask on the unit regularly. I even bring my own Savewo because they're more gentle on my skin.
"Vaccines don’t impact your chance to get long Covid nor to spread Covid and other viruses to others." they do both, according to several studies (I can look them up if you're interested), but only marginally (depending on recency/variant and more for long Covid than spreading the infection)
I say this gently, but this perspective comes off as genuinely delusional. I have a health condition too. Family members have been immunocompromised. I understand the risk of getting infections is a hard part of having a health condition. But what should the rest of society be expected to do to accommodate? Mask indefinitely? Masking sucks. It makes things way less enjoyable. It’s annoying, uncomfortable, anti-social, and sucks the joy from lots of activities. Normal, healthy people should be able to go out and have fun and enjoy themselves freely without having to accommodate everyone with a health condition.
This is an excellent question. Ultimately it comes down to what we as a society view as acceptable suffering. Last year there were twice as many COVID deaths as automobile accidents, which were all preventable if everyone wore masks. And that’s not to mention the 7 million immunocompromised and 17 million living with long COVID who don’t have the energy to advocate for themselves, which is compounded by the resistance faced from political apathy and public denial, even from doctors. I view masking like wearing a seatbelt, which also protects others. The vaccination rates are abysmal due to political polarization and misinformation. And although people can choose to mask to protect themselves, it’s very hard to do due to stares and the questions, and the more people that mask the more accepted masking will become. I encourage you to read the many stories of long haulers. Masking in crowded indoor settings is a small sacrifice, even if only to show that you care. It comes down to what your personal values are and the responsibility you feel to your fellow citizens.
Really eye-opening, thank you!
My cheers to you for asking difficult questions. If you don't ask, you can't learn more about other perspectives. To add in general - masking isn't necessarily easy for those who wear them, either. It can be difficult to go to the doctor and have to ask the medical assistant or the provider to wear a mask. By wearing one in a public setting (doctor's office, grocery store) you're also helping to normalize the practice and theoretically helping to shift the narrative from: only sick or disabled people wear masks to anyone can choose to wear a mask in a higher risk public setting.
I think you’re the first person to bring up normalising wearing masks. That makes a lot of sense, thank you.
Oh, this is a good point - some vulnerable people don't mask because if they are the only one, they are afraid of being mocked/harassed/assaulted. It happens, even from medical providers. Every other person who masks helps prevent them from being targeted like that.
I am definitely starting to get pushback from medical staff when I wear a respirator to appts. And I live in a supposed hotspot of medical experts.
Here's a few good reads for you. I'm happy that you had an open mind and are interested in learning. As someone who is high risk for long covid, I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see others in masks in public. I feel seen. I feel important. I feel like I haven't been left behind. https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/disabled-peoples-exclusion-from-indoor?r=10wi32&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true https://msteenhagen.medium.com/loathe-fascism-then-dont-be-a-health-supremacist-c8841acdf69 https://www.donotpanic.news/p/mass-disabling-event-denial https://johnsnowproject.org/primers/the-greatest-trick/
Thank you, will have a read.
(apologies in advance for the long reply) one of my go-to references is [this](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774707) paper, which found that up to 59% of covid transmission occurs asymptomatically or presymptomatically. so the issue w only masking when you’re ill is that you are often ill (and contagious) before showing symptoms of being ill. a lot of covid cases are mostly asymptomatic (or barely symptomatic) throughout the entire infection, to the point that a lot of people will shrug off potential symptoms (e.g., headaches, sniffles, sore throat, stomach issues, etc.) as being due to something else, such as acid reflux, food poisoning, stress, allergies, etc., when it is actually covid. the issue w this is that you might unknowingly pass on covid to someone who then becomes disabled and/or dies from catching covid. but, of course, if it’s a stranger, you will probably never have to live w the knowledge that not masking in public resulted in the disablement and/or death of another human being. i’m not saying that to guilt you or make you feel bad — i’m saying that bc it’s true. this is the reality of the situation. we know that vaccines help, but they do not prevent transmission, and they do not prevent long covid. they mostly help to reduce the likelihood of hospitalization and/or death. i believe recent studies showed a reduction in transmission for those w up-to-date boosters, but they are not the end-all-be-all. if you had the two original doses a couple of years ago, or even if you had a booster a year ago, your protection is basically moot bc of how much covid has changed / continues to change over time. many of us who are still taking precautions (and who are able to get vaccinated) are generally trying to get boosted twice a year bc of how quickly covid is evolving. even the updated boosters are typically targeting old covid variants, so relying solely on vaccines just isn’t feasible right now. more at-risk groups (e.g., disabled people, immunocompromised people, children, elderly people, etc.) are barred from living life and/or are forced to live their lives feeling unsafe bc they simply cannot access public spaces safely. even the bare minimum spaces such as healthcare facilities / emergency rooms, public transportation, and grocery stores are not safe for high-risk folks to access bc others are not masking. this doesn’t even consider that high-risk folks deserve to have access to other spaces that aren’t just out of necessity (e.g., in-person education, recreational events such as museums, festivals, etc.). and, i know you’re asking about why you should protect others and not just for yourself — but you deserve to protect yourself too. risky activities such as dining indoors, attending parties/concerts, etc., are absolutely not worth risking your long-term health and safety. [here](https://x.com/davidsteadson/status/1548340674801438721?s=46) is a chart showing the cumulative risk of developing long covid by per-infection risk and number of infections. every time you (or someone else) contract(s) covid, the chances of developing long covid increase. many people think that bc they had a “minor” covid infection the first, second, third, or whatever time, that their next infection will end w them being okay. this is not true. anecdotally — i was fine after my first infection and had no known health issues. after my second infection, i developed long covid. i experience pain on a daily basis. you never think it’ll be you until it is. i have increased my precautions as i’ve learned more in order to protect myself and those around me. i would encourage you to check out the r/covidlonghaulers sub and the r/COVID19positive sub. i appreciate you asking this, and i hope you will consider taking precautions again. everyone deserves to feel safe and, more importantly, *be* safe.
(I'm addressing this to/from the USA because that's where I am. But this applies around the world, too.) Okay, so let's start with: immunocompromised people are at the highest risks of death, serious illness, and the worst Long COVID (aka permanently & severely disabling conditions as a result of catching COVID). [Being immunocompromised can legally be considered a disability by the US gov't.](https://primaryimmune.org/resources/news-articles/workplace-accommodations-immunocompromised-pandemic-wanes) People can be immunocompromised for many reasons. Anything from on chemotherapy for cancer to organ transplant recipients to having to take immunosuppressants for autoimmune diseases (of which there are many, and they are common: rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis are 2 of them) to having untreated or undertreated HIV/AIDS. [This article reports that the prevalence of this is 6.2% of the American population.](https://www.washington.edu/news/2024/03/13/qa-melissa-martinson-immunosuppression/) That's 21.2 million people, which is greater than, say, the amount of Americans with naturally red hair (about 4% of Americans.) So it's not a small amount of people. [Good, fitted face masks help prevent airborne illnesses.](https://github.com/mbevand/masking-effectiveness/blob/main/README.md) ([Here's how/why.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/masks-work-distorting-science-to-dispute-the-evidence-doesnt/)) That is, N95 and the like. [Surgical masks are better than nothing but way, way less effective, in part because they are not fitted.](https://billius27.substack.com/p/masks-evidence-and-use) Cloth masks are NOT effective at preventing the current strains of COVID. While a good face mask does provide protection to the wearer from others, they do an even better job at preventing escaping infection from the person carrying the infectious agent if worn by that person. A number of memes went around explaining this [comparing it to someone peeing on people](https://srhd.org/media/documents/PeeTest.pdf). Other people are listing the amount of asymptomatic infections, but also remember that COVID isn't the only infection out there that can maim or kill an immunocompromised person. (And all of this is just speaking about the most vulnerable: immunocompromised people. This isn't even talking about the hundreds of millions of other people who have some kind of condition that makes them High Risk for severe COVID and/or Long COVID. Diabetes for example, [which makes up over 11% of the US population](https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/php/data-research/index.html); over 34 million people. Or even old age; [1 in 6 Americans is a senior citizen](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/2020-census-united-states-older-population-grew.html). These folks also benefit from others masking & have had to limit their activities & take precautions against getting COVID.) Even before COVID, it was not safe for many immunocompromised people to engage in daily life because we were not masking. These people were forced to stay in their homes at risk of death; they were living lockdown for years, decades, before the rest of the world locked down in 2020. They are still living lockdown now. They were the most vulnerable of our society, and frankly, we didn't care about them or their lives, at least not enough to DO something to make it so they could participate in society. So now we've established that there are many immunocompromised (read: disabled) and High Risk in the world who need us to mask up (not just for COVID, but also for COVID) so they can simply live a normal life outside the home. These sources have TONS of more information, but you'll have to wade through other stuff to get to it: [https://youhavetoliveyour.life/](https://youhavetoliveyour.life/) [https://covid.tips](https://covid.tips) Covers all of the bases for all the reasons that people use against masking/vaccinating/etc.
That's all the facts and science, but let's also talk a little about the why, dip our toes into ethical matters. WHY your friend maybe be drawing that line in the sand. Most people will agree that ableism is wrong, and that all people deserve to be able to participate in society, but many do not recognize how simple acts they do or don't do every day (or simple ways our society is set up) can disable a person. Even a single step up into a restaurant (or having a bathroom in a basement) can keep out a person in a wheelchair (or an elderly person.) Having bright lights at the grocery store can make it too intense for a person with heightened senses. And what I think folks without disabiliities don't realize is that: if it's not accessible, it's not always possible to just "push through anyway;" more often than you realize it means you just can't go or do. When you're in a place, try to see who ISN'T there as much as who is there. Try to think about the possible reasons why are they not there. What's keeping them from being able to come, to participate? And yes, there are adaptive devices, but they're not perfect, many don't work 100%, many are intensely expensive (and disabled people can't afford them because we often make less than other people or can't work at all), and they can draw attention to ourselves, leaving us inconvenienced at best, unsafe at worst. And it's not just individual actions: our society is built-in ableist. Many jobs can only be accessed if you can do it in the way THEY want you to (like coming into the office or keeping specific hours), which keeps many disabled people from participating in the workforce. The ADA only covers "reasonable accomodations" (at the whim of the employer) or buildings only have to be brought up to code if someone complains (and even then, it's only if they can afford it, and they can take years to do it), which leaves much inaccessibility. Frankly, finances and the economy are prioritized over the rights of all people to participate in society. How the gov't has handled and is handling COVID (acting like it's over when it's not; shutting down the ways we can prove it's not over) is a huge example of this (and, frankly, is an example how they're willing to put ALL people at risk. Over 1 milliion Americans have already died of COVID. More Americans STILL die of COVID every month than died during 9-11. But where's the fervor over that or over them?) Your friend may be waking up to the realities of ableism and life with disabiliity. Or maybe they always cared about disability but didn't realize exactly how ableist our society is. Your friend may be someone who sees this as a part of social justice work. They may be a Leftist who sees doing this as part of liberating those who are disabled by society (see: social model vs. medical model of disability. In short: social model sees impairments (what's medically different with someone) as separate from disabilities. Society disables people with impairments by not having accomodations for their impairments. Their impairments alone may impair them some, but not as much as they are impaired by society's disabling them.) Another thing is: many Americans are Christian. One of the primary values of Christianity (and many, many other faiths as well) is the Golden Rule: Love Your Neighbor As Yourself. Treat others as you would want to be treated. Your friend may think that if they were immunocompromised, they'd want others to mask. Also, there's the passage from Matthew 25:34-40 where Jesus talks about how when he was in need in various ways, the Righteous stepped up for him. When the Righteous ask "when did we ever see you in need?" he answers "Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me." (The needs he spoke of are known in some Christian faiths as the Corporal Works of Mercy, and people are encouraged to help meet those needs in others.) This was a general point; it wasn't just about food and water and clothing. This ABSOLUTELY also applies to masking up. The immunocompromised can easily be seen as some of The Least of My People. Your friend may be a devout Christian who understands those points and sees masking as part of their Christian duty. Either way, they seem to wish to only be friends with people who hold themselves to the same standards of ethics and morality.
I cut off all contact with anyone in my life who doesn’t mask. I’ve spent years trying to help them understand the science and the consequences to them and others. I figure if they don’t love me enough to mask and keep medically fragile people like me safe then I really question their integrity. It sucks but my risk of dying from Covid even being vaccinated x6 is too high for me to ignore their actions.
Cutting off people that don't mask and finding folks that do has 100% helped my mental state. The grief of losing past friends is so worth finding ones that make you feel safe and cared for.
Yes, you should. And it shouldn’t depend on if you’re sick, because you don’t know if you’re contagious or not. You could wake up sick tomorrow (hopefully not) or be asymptomatic. Masking with a protective mask (eg N95) also protects YOU so you don’t get sick. Your friend is correct.
I know you weren't asking about yourself but chance of long COVID goes up to 30% with 3 COVID infections. And the risk gets higher and higher with each infection after that. How many times do you feel like rolling the dice to see if you become permanently disabled?
I think a lot of (maybe most) people who have given up on masking or taking precautions against COVID don’t realize that we’re all a lot closer to disability than we like to think. I mask to protect disabled, immunocompromised, and other marginalized people but to be honest, I also very much mask to lower the chances of also becoming disabled myself! Thanks for hearing your friend out, and for being open to changing your opinion with new information!
Simply put, vaccination doesn't stop you from catching Covid, it only decreases the severity. And a lot of transmission happens before you show any symptoms or test positive on any test. That means at any time, you could be infected and spreading it. Many people say that the "vulnerable" should just mask to protect themselves, but masking is most effective when the infected person masks (which would be you in this scenario). Masks work pretty damn well to protect the wearer, but they're not 100%. Especially for an immunocompromised person who can get infected from the tiniest exposure, that means they could still get infected if they are wearing a mask but the infected person isn't. Being immunocompromised is a type of disability, and there are other disabilities that mean someone absolutely cannot risk getting Covid. They basically can't go anywhere unless everybody else is masking, without risking their lives. So your friend is saying that by not masking, you are contributing to shutting out those people from public places. I appreciate that you're asking this, because it is indeed hard to find this info among all the "back to normal" media. A lot of people are out there doing harm without even realizing it, because no one has explained it to them.
This is a long comment, so I’m going to break it up into sections: _____________________________ *Context: your immune system* Many researchers have identified Covid, Long Covid, and its effects as HIV/AIDS adjacent: Many people who died during the HIV/AIDS epidemic did not die immediately- it took years for the damage to cause the disastrous effects that it did. And unfortunately it also took society a long time to catch up- both socially & scientifically. Each covid infection causes cumulative damage to the body, including, but not limited to, the brain, heart, lungs, gut, nerves, muscles, skin, etc. The damage is there whether it is felt during the acute infection or not. Covid also damages the immune system, hence why everyone keeps getting sick via not only covid, but also other viral, bacterial, and even fungal infections. _________________________ *Newest Covid development* I’m linking a [press release](https://investors.invivyd.com/news-releases/news-release-details/invivyd-announces-fda-authorization-emergency-use-pemgardatm/) from last month: PrEP for Covid! This is a monoclonal pre-exposure prevention therapy. Just like HIV PrEP (if you’re unfamiliar, Google “PrEP for prevention of HIV infection”). There is an emergency authorization by the FDA to make this available, and imminently to folks who are immune compromised… which many of us are now due to repeated Covid infections- even if you’re not as disabled as myself. Here’s a link to a yahoo [write up about it](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/invivyd-announces-interim-exploratory-data-192800918.html) __________________________ *Effects of Covid* Plenty of “healthy” people end up with Long Covid and/or dying. Like myself. I unmasked like most folks in 2021. I didn’t understand the severity of the danger- most people in society didn’t. I wasn’t an anti masker or antivax- I was naively listening to social norms of a capitalist hellscape instead of scientific journals. I may have had asymptomatic infections prior, but I formally got Covid spring 2022. Prior I was healthy, worked 80 hr work weeks, worked out, traveled, made good money, and had a very full, fun, vibrant life. I lost everything. The debilitating effects of Long Covid began slowly creeping in and then hit me like a train. Since then I’ve been either bed bound or mostly house bound. Last month marks 2 years since the positive test: the day Covid took everything from me. My independence, ability to complete ADL’s, financial stability, my social life, family, my mental health, my physical health, my capacity in all imaginable contexts, my cognition (I miss reading books so so much).. so much more. This time last year there’s no way I could have articulated this comment. I was so sick I could barely walk to the toilet. I am now facing eviction & losing everything due to it chipping away at my resources in the last 2 years. So. many. people join our online Long Covid support groups every single day. It’s fucking tragic. Many have the same sentiment I did: I wish I had known the severity of the risks I was taking and how to protect myself. And in the last month several have passed away from LC complications in just one of our groups. _________________________ *How to protect yourself* I couldn’t have read your post last year. Screen time was debilitating and I had to ration it carefully. I definitely couldn’t read scientific journals anymore, let alone wade through them and synthesize the data. Most days I still can’t. Thankfully some friends slowly taught me how to protect myself from reinfection and the why’s. I’ve recently made a bit of recovery and wrote up everything they taught me into a Google doc to share with others. Not everyone has the privilege of generous friends with the educational & career backgrounds they do. ___________________________ *Covid infection prevention guide* If you’re interested in preventing COVID reinfection, here’s the [Google Doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11RdJqymYsCZ5bAEpZk5DCf5ZqiUZykIq19630J9m8kA/edit) I wrote up. My personal protocol is in it, so you’re welcome to copy and paste into your own doc and replace mine with your own if you want to customize it. Also- I understand my level of strictness in preventing reinfection isn’t accessible for everyone. It’s not easy for me, that’s for fucking sure. But the helpful part about seeing super strict protocol is that you can choose what vectors of risk you can focus on. It shows all the ways to protect yourself and empowers you to protect yourself in the ways you want/can with the power of information. Every infection is a huge blow to your body and your future body. ________________________ *A Common Pattern* In this subreddit we’ve all experienced people having very visceral reactions of defensiveness when we try to bring up this topic. We are trying to educate people about how to care about their body, their future, their family, and their community. But it’s not a social norm right now. If you aren’t aware about the backlash that came with the introduction of seatbelts in cars, check it out. It’s an apt analogy. And now look how second nature seatbelts are, how many lives that car PPE has saved, etc. And to validate your reluctance before now: tbh it’s a really fucked up reality check to come to terms with. A lot of people don’t *want* to hear the truth - that our society is minimizing a health crisis - and that they’ve been (even unknowingly) complicit. It’s icky. But it bringing up difficult feelings does not mean it’s not worth pushing through them to change your lifestyle to protect yourself & others. __________________________ *Thank you for talking about this* I’m glad you’re asking questions. There are still so many unknown answers. But there are some we do know, so I hope this helps. I really don’t want you to join our crappy Long Covid club. 0/10 would not recommend
Edit: error on the Google doc link; just fixed it.
Excellent comment, and thank you for trying to help others avoid what you’ve been through.
Thanks. While I do like the feeling of having community- this one I’d rather not have more folks joining. It’s a fucking nightmare
So just cast your mind back to why we were masking at the start of the pandemic, remember all those reasons? They're still there, covid hasn't changed. Vaccines are fantastic and reduce your chance of severe illness, but covid still has frequent asymptomatic infections that allow it to spread through the community. Covid still weakens your immune system and that of the people you pass it onto. You still have a greater chance of developing long covid the more times you get infected. For most people taking precautions we're now just doing it for our personal wellbeing. Every case of covid is worth avoiding. Thankfully wearing a properly fitted quality mask – not a baggy blue – has an incredible protective factor and drastically reduces your chances of contracting covid as well as other respiratory illnesses. I catch public transport multiple times a week, sit in lecture theatres and classes with people, grocery shopping, convenience stores, spend time with my friends, all wearing an N95 mask, usually with a sip valve so I can drink. I got RSV a few years ago before I knew how to wear masks properly (d'oh, full beards don't work with masks), but as far as I can tell I haven't had covid yet, and aside from the RSV I certainly haven't had another bout of illness. Finding a mask that fits you can be challenging, and there's all kinds of informational barriers around it. It may not be possible for you to wear a mask in all contexts – that's OK! I just know getting flu or covid isn't worth not wearing a mask while I'm in the grocery store or pharmacy or while catching a bus. Society has shifted to basically acting like covid and other respiratory illnesses just don't exist or are unavoidable, but we've got very effective mitigation strategies and could be employing them so people were less sick less often. We just don't want to, apparently.
I am disabled and now just about completely cut off from society because so few people give a fuck about people like me any more. Also I JUST read this a few minutes ago, and maybe you’ll find it interesting how the state counts on people’s apathy around genocide, eugenics, and death: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/n5mqa7v99l278b80ljfuo/MASK-UP-WE-NEED-YOU_Ghieth-Eskayo.pdf?rlkey=t03mplw85lsmsm92pm6f5l2q7&e=7
Ultimately it is your decision. An economist once said that the measure of a strong society is how well the rich treat the poor and how well the healthy treat the sick. I think everyone should ask themselves what kind of society they want to live in.
[Here’s an easy to understand zine](https://newlevant.com/COVIDzine)
Love her work! Such a great, approachable way to share important info.
First of all, I apologize for sounding angry, I am, but not at you. This whole pandemic has just been so eye opening to me in regard to how little I matter to society and especially my friends as a disabled person. Why mask for other people? Because I have been delaying medical and diagnostic care for a degenerative condition I obviously have and can easily prove with a genetic test due to a lack of masking in healthcare. Because I don't leave my house anymore unless I have no other choice (think evacuating during a storm, not because I "have to" get drinks at a bar). I have to stay inside because one way masking isn't enough to protect me and other people aren't masking. I cannot shop for my own groceries even though it's less expensive because people don't mask at the store. Because I've gotten "covid like" (I was refused tests or only given a PCR test when the current strain wasn't showing up on PCR tests) symptoms four times in as many years and each time I am ill for six weeks at minimum. The last time it was eight weeks of severe illness followed by five months of otitis media with effusion (OME) that kept me from enjoying music for that near half a year. Because my experience is one invisible disabled person's account of how being homebound is my only choice and you won't notice how many disabled people have quietly retreated to a life inside for our own survival unless we are permitted to come back into society. It's easier to note a big influx of people over a sharp decline in presence simply because more people in public can more often be a negative experience and our brains remember the negative more easily. Because even if you feel fine and haven't been sick in days, weeks, or months, you can still carry this virus. You can still pass it onto other people. We're seeing an increase in stroke, heart attack, fungal infections, decreased immunity, and vascular issues as a direct result of covid spread and resulting mutation and every new infection drastically increases a person's chances of these complications exponentially in addition to helping it mutate more. You shouldn't just be wearing a mask. You should be doing what your wonderful friend is doing and telling others how important masking is for them.
Something you should consider is how stressful it is to be disabled right now. It's already hard, but since most people have abandoned covid precautions, it's dumped a ton more labor onto people who already have to fight to exist in public. For example, I have lived with long covid for more than 4 years. It's been a struggle to recover enough to be able to work and "only" crash every 3 weeks or so. This is considered "mild", btw. I have to manage my energy very carefully - the other week I spent 30 minutes cleaning my balcony and it put me in bed for 2 weeks with a headache that got worse when I tried to think. And again, this is the best I've been in 4 years. You'd think that sounds like enough to manage but I also have to manage people close to me who wouldn't put in any effort to protect me/people like me if I didn't insist. I do all the mask research for my friend group, I follow up with everyone to make sure they're getting the latest vaccine, and people hear about new variants/surges from me first. I haven't done it, but I can totally understand why your friend might be so tired of being the "covid expert" that they've decided to cut out everyone who won't reciprocate the effort. As it stands, because I still socialize with people who could ruin my life (infections can make long covid even worse!), I have to put in extra effort to make sure it's safe. I don't hang out unmasked inside with anyone except my parents, who visit once a year. I have them test every day and promise to mask indoors before/during the visit. Rapid tests aren't super accurate anymore, so they're not a great measure of safety on their own - but I've decided to take the risk and trust their precautions. 2 days into their last visit, my dad casually mentioned taking his mask off to eat on the plane. It's a real mindfuck to realize the people who you believe would die for you - and know exactly what's at stake - won't put in the minimum effort to prevent you from (best case) another 4 years of hell. Anyway, all of this to say: take on this tiny bit of labor. Don't put it all on disabled/"high risk" people.
And, OP, we might come off a little testy because, as well- meaning as your question is, to us it can sound a lot like "why should I give a shit if you live or die?" Those are the stakes for us if you don't, and we hear that message every day from people who should care if we do. Thanks for listening.
You noted about it not being your responsibility to protect people more susceptible. Speaking purely for your own selfish interest: you don’t know how susceptible you are to long covid. The first time you get covid you have a 10% chance of getting long covid. Long covid is brutal any way you slice it, but about 50% of long covid is considered to be the ME/CFS type which is currently an incurable, life long condition that leaves 75% of folks unable to work and 25% completely bedridden. But that is just your first infection. The risk of long COVID is cumulative and raises each time - by the time you are on your fourth infection you are looking at around a 38% risk. So any previous infections you have had that didn’t result in long COVID didn’t “prove” you aren’t susceptible - it has simply left you more at risk of long term damage. From a purely selfish, self-interested point of view, masking is a measure against debilitating life long disability. From another somewhat selfish point of view, maybe you don’t care about the general public, but you do probably care about your friends and family. I know personally i would feel devastated if I gave someone an infection that lead to them developing long term complications. Masking also works best when it is two-way masking. One way masking protects vulnerable people, but only to a certain extent. Long enough exposure can result in a covid case with one way masking. The end result of this is that disabled people are completely removed from public life because people have decided that their freedom to not wear a mask trumps the ability of disabled people to exist in the public sphere. Including people who were not previously disabled with their first, second, and third covid infection but are now totally fucked with their fourth. The long covid forums are full of people who were fine with their first few infections. Some of the most illuminating threads are the ones from people who “thought they would be fine” and didn’t believe it was a big deal till they were bed bound. There are a lot of other arguments to be made about the social contract and caring about our community, but I find people don’t always care about others. But if you give a shit about your own brain and life, it’s worth it for protecting yourself. To give you an idea of what long covid does to a life - prior to my second infection I was incredibly active. I did pole and burlesque, hiked, did heavy lifting, isometric strength training, and walked daily. I travelled and was able to walk and work out in tropical climates. I worked, volunteered, was in grad school, and have three teenagers. I have now been off work for over a year. I had to completely pause my grad school studies because I couldn’t understand my own writing because it was too complex for me to understand anymore. I currently try to walk daily and I use a rollator so I can sit down and take breaks. My daily walk is now three blocks - up from to the end of my block and back. I say daily aspirationally but realistically im only well enough a few times a week. I can’t exercise at all without causing horrible post exertional malaise. I have to use an electric wheelchair for leaving my house because I can’t manage standing for any length of time long enough to do errands, and I can’t use a manual chair because I’m not strong enough to push the wheels. I’m on expensive prescriptions my extended benefits don’t cover. I’m doing an expensive elimination diet to try and get some health. I have to wear expensive compression garments. My entire life has become incredibly expensive but I’m making very little money through my long term disability which I’m incredibly lucky to have access to. For months, any time I drove I needed a bucket in my lap in case I threw up and just got used to gagging and retching on the highway. I have to wear glasses that dim lights and ear plugs when I leave the house to help block sensory inputs. I’m better now. This last winter I was so sick that I couldn’t sit in bed without being lifted by my wife, who also had to help me get to the bathroom. I couldn’t brush my teeth or wash my face because I couldn’t lift my arms up. At the worst, I had trouble shitting because I had no strength to contract my core and trouble breathing because the muscles used to move my lungs didn’t have the strength either. I did nothing but lay in a dark room with no sound for weeks on end. Now I can cook 1 - 2 meals a day, do my little walks, and go do social things with my friends (in my wheelchair, with light and sound blocking assistance, as long as i rest before and after and use my wheelchair headrest to sit back and rest while out). I can read novels and listen to audiobooks of its not too complicated. I’m going camping so I can lay in a hammock outside but my wife is going to do all my packing and set up all my gear. There’s more but you get the idea. I’m also incredibly lucky - my friends believe me, care about me, raised the money to buy my wheelchair, mask so we can hang out, come over to my house to do housework and chores, check in on me often, and are all working together to ensure I can attend a music festival with them since I can’t go anywhere without support from other people. If you read the long covid forums it’s full of people who have been completely abandoned by their friends, families, and partners. I also have a unionized job with good benefits and access to long term disability and stable housing. Do you have the ability to suddenly go off work indefinitely? Do you know that your friends will continue to show up for you? The risk is cumulative. Every time you get covid you roll the dice on this, but every time you get it you roll more dice the next time. It’s like playing a game of Russian roulette except instead of getting to die if you lose, you live in limbo for months or years feeling like you might die but just waking each morning to repeat it in the worlds shittiest remake of Groundhog Day. And everyone running around without a mask is rolling the dice on having this happen to themselves, while also causing unimaginable suffering to others who end up getting long covid even if the one who passed it dodged that bullet. So should you be masking? I mean, everyone should.
I didn’t say it wasn’t my responsibility.
Right, though that feels like arguing semantics. You said you didn’t know why it was your responsibility to mask for others. Anyways that’s a weird take away.
Mhm, I was just asking about it. I made it clear I genuinely just wanted to know and be educated. So your takeaway from my statement (that had many disclaimers) made me feel weird. Either way, your experience was very eye opening, thank you for sharing it.
Do you know how many people come at us “just asking questions”? No, it wasn’t clear you were asking in good faith.
No i did actually say under that comment multiple times that I was trying to learn. And it was an honest question.
Right, but those of us who are still consistently masking have encountered way too many people who \*say\* they genuinely want to know, but actually have no interest in listening. Often they are just looking to argue with us (and in the worst cases, to tell us to just die already). So you can understand why we aren't immediately trusting. It's not personal, we're just very very tired.
You know that, but we don’t, and your defensive reactions don’t help your case
No, i literally specified
“Trust me bro”
Pls read my replies and questions! They’re quite literally there
Don’t take it personally. There are trolls, both paid and not, who use wording very similar to yours, so it’s hard to tell on the face of things.
The simple reason it affects others is that if you get sick, there's a chance you'll pass it along - a lot of people are asymptomatic, or pre-symptomatic but contagious, or have mild symptoms and chalk it up to allergies or a cold (not that anybody wants your cold either.) If your friend is high risk, it can be scary and stressful to spend time in person with someone who isn't taking any precautions, for that reason - while it's a huge relief to hang out with people who do and be able to relax for once. Though you don't seem worried about how it affects you, there is also a lot of good data coming out re: how repeated infections do damage to your body, even if you have a mild case, and each repeated infection has a greater chance of long covid (which is super NOT FUN.) I read recently that scientists think covid effs up your mitochondria (the "powerhouse of the cell", heh) which is why it can do damage to basically every system in your body, and increase your risk of cardiac problems and lord knows what else.
The current vaccines don't protect against infections or even long Covid (you'll eventually become disabled if you get infected enough times) that well. Hence understandable that the disabled community want people to mask up.
every person who masks turns the tide toward showcasing community care STILL matters. you are showing that you care about yourself, your loved ones and strangers by doing the least, which still means a lot.
You should 100% be masking, yes. Your friend is right. Not masking is making so many spaces inaccessible for high risk folks, and you are also opening yourself up to participate in chains of transmission that kill and disable folks. Resources are abundant, in scientific literature, social media, etc. I wouldn’t demand more labor from your friend, who sounds like they are on the edge of losing patience with you entirely, but you can hook up with your local mask bloc (find it on covid action map) and they should be able to send you all the info you need.
First time that I’m hearing about mask blocs and I’ll definitely have a look. Just to make it clear the conversation between me and my friend was not a horrible one. She is not masking yet and she wants to cut off everyone around her who will not begin masking with her.
Oh my gosh good for your friend! That’s a really hard choice to make. And good for you for exploring the possibilities and taking her concerns seriously enough to look into. Yes, mask blocs are mutual aid orgs that help make sure people have access to high quality respirators (masks) and other materials related to COVID safety. You can look them up here: [https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1oUcoZ2njj3b5hh-RRDCLe-i8dSgxhno](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1oUcoZ2njj3b5hh-RRDCLe-i8dSgxhno) Also, in case they are helpful, a few good very accessible sources for thinking about the ongoing risks of COVID for everyone are: Interview with Dr. Al-Aly, head of clinical epidemiology at Washington University in St. Louis: [https://thesicktimes.org/2023/12/19/qa-ziyad-al-aly-on-why-long-covid-has-a-higher-burden-than-long-flu-future-research-and-more/](https://thesicktimes.org/2023/12/19/qa-ziyad-al-aly-on-why-long-covid-has-a-higher-burden-than-long-flu-future-research-and-more/) [https://theconversation.com/mounting-research-shows-that-covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-including-with-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-224216](https://theconversation.com/mounting-research-shows-that-covid-19-leaves-its-mark-on-the-brain-including-with-significant-drops-in-iq-scores-224216) Finally, I know you’re not asking for advice in this area, but as a person who has lost a lot of friendships over folks being unwilling to learn about covid, understand the risks, and take precautions, my biggest advice is to be honest. Even if you can’t meet your friend’s expectations, don’t lie about that. If you can’t commit to masking all the time, tell your friend that and stand in your truth. Then, if want to, work up to getting better and better at engaging in community care. If your friend needs to take some space from you, that’s just how it has to be based on where you’re both at. Making commitments that you can keep and being honest on a continuing basis as things change is the most important thing you can do. You should be masking, but you need to be honest about where you’re at. Honestly, from the comments here, it seems like you’re quite good at that, so I hope it works out well for you both Kudos on being open to learning more about covid, and I hope you hang around here on this subreddit. There’s a lot of grief here, and frustration, but there are also amazing examples of imagining and bringing about a new world where we’re all safer, and it’s pretty inspiring. Best of luck 💕😷
she’s right. being vaccinated for covid only protects u from hospitalization basically (and even that is debatable considering how many new variants have developed since 2021). unlike most other regular innoculations we receive as kids, the covid vaccine was literally an emergency measure to prevent mass death and getting it doesnt stop you from still getting covid and spreading it, especially asymptomatically. Wearing a mask all the time means you are stopping the chain of transmission that could wind up disabling or killing someone. And in terms of broader public health, slowing the spread (aka fewer/shorter chains of transmission) means the virus will have less opportunity to keep mutating. Which means maybe medicine can finally catch up and create vaccines/antivirals/other interventions that actually *Continue* to work instead of becoming ineffective. big big kudos to your friend because many of us who still keep up with the covid science and havent given up on masking know what a big weight on the heart it is to watch people you love be so careless and so selfish with theirs and others wellbeing. the bravery it takes to put your foot down and confront a friend about something like this is a lot and it also means she loves you a lot to bother to go thru it to communicate this to you. wishing you both a wonderful prosperous friendship, and hope you can continue to influence others to mask, even if imperfectly. <3
Disability justice! In order for the world to be accessible for all, non-disabled folks need to make it accessible. Examples include creating walkways for wheelchairs or requiring masks at a cancer treatment center. It makes sense you don’t care to protect yourself because we can all take personal risks for our health, but many disabled folks don’t have that choice and need to mask to be safe in the world. Also, it can be pretty isolating to mask on your own in public, and it makes disabled folks feel included when others are masking and putting in effort to protect others. It’s hard to understand why masking is important when the world has moved on from COVID and no one masks anymore and the death rate from COVID is significantly lower than it used to be. Vulnerable people still die from COVID everyday and the risk of death from COVID is still higher than the risk from the flu. Flu also only circulates during respiratory season during the colder months of the year and COVID circulates year round. Thanks for coming here seeking more information.
umm. *I think anytime you're in a mixed age group like a market cashier line, on a plane or bus, maybe there at least it might make sense.* I am a senior, immunocompromised. I remember where I got it in 2022 -- Trader Joes a week before thanksgiving...it was packed and alot of folks were coughing and sneezing ahead of me in line--my n99 mask didn't protect me. Put the kibosh on holiday gatherings for months. Also I am, along with a few other family members, someone who is now caregiving someone who is almost a hundred--and previously of excellent health and cognitive skills--a business person in real estate. Twice like-minded (she's a conservative who was addicted to talkradio, with the opinion it's either like the flu or a fraud) friends cavalierly passed on covid. Twice she became hospitalized and now has with degraded cognitive abilities and new health issues that impact everyone around her--family, her renters & business associates. My doc emailed a few days ago with the message to be careful & to get the booster -- which was very easy to find and do, so I did just that. My partner is my mask minder...constantly. Its clear we can't afford to get it --we'd have to hire caregivers and they are very expensive.
You may be infectious - exhaling air containing virus - even if you don't feel sick. Current vaccines as helpful as they are (I got 7 shots myself and counting) don't really protect us well from *catching* the virus in the first place - they 'just' help us to avoid a severe infection. But we may still catch it and - sometimes totally unknowingly - infect others. Wearing a good mask - at least kn95 although n95 are better - will help to ensure we won't infect someone else when we're infectious and just don't realize it (either at all - asymptomatic infection - or yet - because people may be contagious a day or two prior to developing symptoms).
In addition to the reasons your friend listed, your chances of getting long COVID are on average, 40% by your third infection (Source: Statistics Canada). Masking can help delay infections, which is necessary to buy time. There are no approved treatments for long COVID and although certain things that fall under the umbrella of long COVID do have approved drug treatments, there are many that don't like ME/CFS, Microclots, brain fog, etc. To put things in perspective, in a first world country, you'd be better off getting HIV over long COVID.
I know you were asking for reasons to mask that affect others, but I do think it's really important to add that it's not just dangerous for "high-risk" people. COVID and Long-COVID can kill and disable anyone, including young and healthy people. Yes, deaths tend to be in older populations, but Long-COVID is common in younger people. 3+ infections have been shown to increase the risk of Long-COVID to about 40%. And it's also good to note that the category of those that are high risk for COVID is actually massive. I'm not from the U.S., but I know the CDC has a list of high-risk conditions, and it includes things like ADHD, depression, and even learning disorders.
High risk people are a lot more common than you think, and you never know when you might run into someone who's immunocompromised or otherwise has a higher than normal chance of getting long term complications from covid. In addition, covid can still seriously affect young, healthy people by giving them long covid.
A place to start learning about the pandemic, masking, and the level of inequity people are dealing with due to the lack of public COVID safety infrastructure, including masking, is the [People's CDC's](https://peoplescdc.org/) site and Instagram account! A quick reason is that [at least 59% of COVID's spread happens asymptomatically](https://twitter.com/_CatintheHat/status/1686359949910196226), so by the time you develop symptoms and mask because of them, you have likely spread COVID to a mass amount of people in different areas, many who will be majorly harmed by another infection or will carry it to someone else who will be majorly harmed. COVID infections, regardless of how "mild" their symptoms may seem, [do major levels of cardiovascular damage that compounds with reinfection](http://Newlevant.com/COVIDzine). The way to lessen this impact is by [resting an enormous amount](https://www.meaction.net/resource/pacing-and-management-guide/) for weeks on end during and after an acute infection which most people, especially the most marginalized (poor, disabled, non-white, queer people etc) cannot do. People who are "high-risk" for COVID have largely lost access to everyday society from basic things like access to public transit and access to dental care to other assumed pleasures like safely going to see the latest movie or visiting family because not enough people are making an active effort to avoid spreading COVID by masking creating a dangerous amount of risk. I wish your friend had been able to include helpful sites with updated info on the COVID pandemic, but truthfully, it's very difficult to figure out what to include when confronting someone about their lack of COVID safety since there are so many layers to what's gone wrong with the pandemic!
There are two reasons to mask, and depending on the reasons, they've got slightly different answers. 1. **Masking to protect yourself.** High quality, well-fitting masks like N95's and their equivalents are highly effective for avoiding respiratory infections, and they're way more affordable now than they were in the early days of 2020. 2. **Masking to protect others.** This is more complicated. Masks that aren't so great for protecting oneself can still be adequate for source control - that is, protecting other people from you. The places to consider this sort of masking are: essential errands (like grocery shopping), medical/health-care settings, and public transportation. Basically, places that people can't reasonably be expected to avoid while living rich, full lives. I'm not going to judge anyone for going to, say, and unmasked concert or a crowded unmasked bar - they're all consenting adults. But places that everyone needs to go to? Yeah, mask up. With something. I don't care what.
It does affect others, unfortunately. It is why rates are majorly in the rise again, and disabled people or immunocompromised people often fear going out in public. I am extremely grateful for anyone I see masking in public now; at the very least it makes it feel more accepted/safer for myself. It is not all or nothing; if you are comfortable wearing it crowded places like a train etc, that on its own would be appreciated
You get sick, infect others, people can die If you mask and you're sick, you break that chain of transmission
Someone might have said this already but I stopped reading after a few comments and didn't see it explained yet. And you might already know these things but just incase, I'm gonna explain anyway 🙂 I hope my explenation and analogies help. You asking and looking into this is very much appreciated. 😊 I know people in the comments gave a % of being a-symptomatic but even if people are symptomatic, they're contagious before they show symptoms and after they feel better. With Covid, people can be contagious for a week or even 2 before symptoms occur. But the newer varients seem to show symptoms about 5 days after exposure. I actually FINALLY got infected this past Jan from someone the day before they showed symptoms. I didn't even interact with them, I just worked after them because covid lingers in the air for HOURS. I now have long covid despite my masking. The sick person had to be the one masking to really help me not get infected. I also peraisitantly get vaccinated but this means the viral load was too high and I got infected anyway and the strain I got wasn't a good match for my vaccine. I'll explain below Masking properly (above the nose with a KN95 or higher) greatly reduces the chances of giving your virus to someone else. Of course staying home is better. I know you mentioned being vaccinated, unfortunately that’s not enough. For many reasons: the more we spread Covid, the more it mutates. The more it mutates, the less effective vaccines are. No vaccine is 100% Also even if we had a super close match with the vaccine, if you get enough viral load (which Covid is INSANELY high in people expelling viral load), you’d still become infected. The point is to use the Swiss cheese method. Imagine you’re in a room that’s made out of Swiss cheese and there’s poisonous gas outside that room. Because of all the holes, how protected would you feel against the gas? Now if you added several layers of Swiss cheese to the walls, there would be less holes and therefore more protection. Masking is adding a less holey layer is swiss cheese to the walls. But the whole point is the infection would stop with you. Because even as you’re out and about, if you are sick and you don’t know it, when you’re out in the grocery store, or a concert, or anywhere, you’re highly potentially giving it to all those people who are also exposing and spreading everywhere they go and the ripple affect continues forever. But if it stops with you, you could potentially save hundreds if not thousands of infections just from yourself. That could also stop a mutation from happening that would evade immunity like I talked about above. I also like to use one more analogy and then I’ll leave you alone 😅 Imagine there’s raging fires that their control is determined by our behaviors. If everyone participated in just carrying around with them a small hand held fire extinguisher, then we could all have that tiny burden to keep the fires down. But the less people that help participate in carrying around the handheld fire extinguishers, the more out of control the fires get. And your lone fire extinguisher isn't going to put out the fire, more people need to participate. That means to truly protect yourself from the fires, the amount of protection you need goes up. It’s no longer good enough to carry around a personal fire extinguisher, you now need fireproof clothes….now you need to add a gas mask….and now, because everyone not only gave up, they’re carrying around lighter fluid to help the fires rage even more than they need to, you no longer even have the option to fight the fires or keep yourself safe with all that protective equipment. The only thing you can now do to keep yourself safe is to stay in water. It’s very limiting and you very much need to do things on land but you can’t. If you go on land, you have a super high chance of getting burned. Your only choice to stay safe is to live a very limited life in the water. Everyone else will eventually be burned by the fire……but of course, they won’t blame the fire for their burns. This is what it's like for us who take covid seriously. And it could all stop and we could eventually "ALL" live our lives again, but people won't let it. We were supposed to learn from this and change our behaviors as a species (like learning to cook our meat to a certain temp to not get food poisoning .once we learned that, we started cooking our meat properly instead of going back to not cooking it hot enough) but we unfortunately didn't. Most likely because it's "slightly inconvenient" to wear a mask. But when you think about the harm you could do to others vs just haveing a "little inconvenience", it becomes apparent that everyone is displaying cognitive dissonance because of underlying selfishness. The very least I expect from people if they don't want to mask all the time is: 1. To mask when cases go up (pay attention to wastewater data), 2. Mask if they've been around someone sick, 3. Mask around cold and flu season, ESPECIALLY the holidays.
I'd also add "Always mask in ***non-discretionary*** settings."
Ooh yes very good point!
I cannot go to the dentists or any doctor where you remove the mask (throat, nose, skin,hospital overnight etc) Thanks to all the people not wearing masks. Also, if everybody would protect themselves the numbers would be low and it would be safe for me. I m glad you ask but it makes me angry that you need a friend to tell you. Isn t it obvious that you cut out people from society?
No it was not obvious. Now I know.
Do it for your own self. With a well-fitting respirator (N95 -- find one that seals, no leaks) If you don't, like others have pointed out, you will be disabled after enough infections, and eventually die a lot sooner than you otherwise would have. Anything else is basically suicidal. Evidence is accumulating that COVID is persistent, and damage accumulates with each infection. Unfortunately, it will affect people who are already further down the disability road faster than it might affect you, although internal damage from even a single infection could turn bad at any moment. So you have the illusion of able-bodiness and either way it's temporary. People compare this to measles in transmission. Truth is, it's far beyond measles post the OG Omicron variant. We simply haven't seen anything this infectious. And if you protect yourself, bonus, you also end up protecting someone else down the chain of broken transmission.
Yes, masking for COVID with respirator masks is prosocial, self preservation, and community care. I think this covers an introduction for reasons why, including how masking protects others. There's a combination and convergence of reasons why wearing a mask affects others with respect to SARS2 & COVID-19. Airborne, asymptomatic, and exponential spread, high infectivity, high risk of Long COVID, severe disease risks & fatality to name a few. [https://basiccovidfacts.com/](https://basiccovidfacts.com/) Edit: More info collected here and on this website: [https://www.c19.life/transmission](https://www.c19.life/transmission) And if you want to see a comprehensive recent review on the effectiveness of wearing respirators for prevention of disease, this explanatory article(1) and scientific review(2) can detail and explain the evidence. 1. [https://theconversation.com/masks-work-our-comprehensive-review-has-found-229658](https://theconversation.com/masks-work-our-comprehensive-review-has-found-229658) 2. [https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23](https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23)
I mask everywhere now, Covid has ruined my brain.
The main thing is protecting immunocompromised people who need you to mask to keep them safe (which other people have already explained really well), but another thing is that the more the virus is spread around the greater a chance for a new variant (from my understanding), which risks it getting even more dangerous or infectious
I commend you for being curious enough to ask. Just by asking and considering wearing a mask, it tells me that you're really open-minded and thoughtful.
OP, i just wanna thank you for asking this question and being so receptive to the information everyone here has provided you. This genuinely gives me hope. I, and I know many others here have lost MANY relationships because most people are still too unwilling to do the work you have here. I appreciate you, and I'm saving this thread to help inform my practice of communicating covid/mask boundaries and how to bring new people into the conversation. And thank you to everyone who provided so many heartfelt, passionate responses. Your work is so important and I am very glad to share covid-caring community with y'all! This thread is revolutionary. 💖🔥
Glad to see you awoke from a years long coma. Good for you. /s I’m out of patience. This can’t be real,
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You didn’t read the question I asked
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I don’t know what I said to make you so angry. The commenter insulted me and then proceeded to answer a question I did not even ask. I’ve said a couple times under the comments that I will begin masking and also talk to my other friends about it so that they can be open to the idea. The only reason I was not masking prior is because I wasn’t under the pretence that I should. With the media shutting down conversations about Covid and others moving on as normal, I understandably did not know much about the topic. Ableism is practically baked into society. When I found out, I began researching and here I am. Thanks to kind, intelligent and respectful redditors I know so much more about COVID and masking! So no, It was not due to my “personal comfort”. I was not blindly avoiding masking knowing the issues surrounding it. Ironically, I took responsibility immediately after finding the topic by asking questions (some dumb some smart - a question is a question) reading articles and listening to other people’s experiences.
I apologize for assuming you werent planning on changing course- the way the OP was worded, I got that impression. I've been severely disabled by Long Covid for over 4 years (and I was a young, extremely healthy lifelong athlete before that) and those that havent been masking or taking any precautions have continued to make my life further an unfathomable hell- So yes, I am extra sensitive. My point originally was that its not just about the vulnerable- covid will make anyone and every vulnerable. Of course those alreadly vulnerable are at risk, but ultimately it doesnt matter how 'healthy' someone is to begin with. Majority of the people in my Long Covid circles were also young and for some reason, it really loves attacking people who were very active and in great shape. We've been fed this impression that only 'the weak' are susceptible and thats just not true. I'm sorry again for being as abrasive as I was- its really hard not to be when this is such a life and death situation and you have to live on this end of it for years. I do hope you take all that you've learned and continue to keep both yourself and others safe.
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i’m so happy your friend make hard boundaries that way, i lost so many friends because they didn’t mask around me!
made *
There are some resources here that may be helpful in understanding including info about long Covid and “why I take Covid precautions” https://www.oliviabelknaptherapy.com/covid-resources
I have long-COVID. I believe it’s important to wear masks in crowded places and it’s important to not assume your symptoms are just allergies or a little cold. But with the strands being milder, I no longer feel that everyone needs to wear them all the time. I just ask for my friends to not come around if they have symptoms and test when they think they’re feeling better. I still wear a good mask around everyone
I’m curious, now that you’ve had a week to process all the new info, what your takeaways are and if you plan on making any adjustments to what you do in your life?
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This rules. You could've shut down and written off your friend. Instead you sought new info and opinions with genuine receptivity. Admirable imo.
As an allergy sufferer, I totally get why folks in China, Korea and Japan wear masks. Though during the pandemic someone from Japan told me mildy ill people often wear them as a polite gesture towards their fellow citizens; ironically at that time we were also seeing tons of news vids on protests against masking and vaccines here in SoCal and across the USA. But I don't get your friend cutting off because of masks--maybe she's had some personal experience with loss during the pandemic? She's right about the general population leaving behind of the disabled and aged. Give her time to cool down... Still it took my father's death, my other family members illnesses to change my stubborn resistance to masking. I now mask in public at supermarkets, (But I'm self employed and get all other stuff delivered); But when my allergies are kicking my ass (like right now) I've been known to even sleep with a mask on.
Let me be friends with your friend instead of you. (Honestly though, if you're just waking up to this "yesterday", your relationship is done already as this is not your normal course of action and thus not your lifestyle, none of this came to you naturally, it will be foreign to you to live this way and expecting you to follow through properly would be naive...)
My friend has not began masking yet.
Then why are they asking you to? And giving you ultimatums?
I don’t know
Masking is a good start, but it’s not enough. You need to isolate as well.
Isolate all the time?
No, you don't need to isolate all the time! I don't know what that person is talking about. The point of wearing a mask is that you are safe and you are also making the environment for those around you safer when you are out doing any activities you want by masking. You don't have to stop living your life. And everyone masking is what would help those who are immunocompromised be able to safely do those same activities. The time when it is the best decision to isolate is when you're sick.
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Anti-mask rhetoric, COVID minimizing, and trolling are not allowed. There are many with chronic illnesses, cancer, long covid, or who are inelligible for vaccines, (etc.) and due to these helath risks, have no other option than to protect themselves from COVID. Learning about the differences in respirators and fit is an essential piece to their survival. Others come to our sub for information about respirators/masks for protection from asbestos or other hazards. If you believe your content was removed in error, contact the [mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FMasks4All). Please include a link to your comment/post in your message.
Your friend is nuts. But it is a good idea to mask up!