Every time I want to forget COVID, my partner has another bi-weekly breathing crisis that’s been going on since her infection in 2022. My best friend has been out of work since she last got Covid in 2020.

People that give me shit about masking are the grossest boomer reactionaries that I know, and I revel that I piss those knobheads off. Granted my situation is maybe easier than most, I’m white, tall, old, and have professional credentials. I think it’s probably harder to fuck with me than a lot of other people.

I don’t mask at work (yanking it down to drink water over and over and over is irritating, but even worse is how fucking hot it gets when doing physical labor) but I think I’ll always mask in public spaces from now on.

This community might be of interest as they still talk about it a lot there: !covid@hexbear.net

I still wear a mask. I wouldn’t necessarily wear one or keep one on if I was walking around a lightly populated park or down the sidewalk but I would before going into a store or a crowd (even outdoors) or any enclosed space with people like a train or station.

I’m not sure how mask wearing compares by country. In most of Asia it seems like it’s been normalized for decades for people who are feeling ill or have certain conditions to wear the blue cloth medical masks so I doubt in most of Asia it’s a big deal in most situations compared to the west where you have anti-mask reactionary sentiment and ideology that favors individual recklessness rather than responsibility.

I don’t mask, but that’s largely because the state I live in here in the US is overwhelmingly non-mask. If there were even, idk, a few businesses in the area that did it, I might - but there’s not. Me wearing a mask around when nobody else is feels more like virtue signaling than anything. Damn near nobody else is wearing them, so few in fact that I can count the times I’ve seen them in the past year on one hand. If the idea is to wear the mask to reduce to spread, then it doesn’t make any sense because the overwhelming majority aren’t doing it.

But your situation is likely different. Perhaps you live in a more sensible state, where politely asking someone to mask isn’t met with a tirade about how masks are Nazism.

Of course not, it was torture when we had to, if they gave us plague masks to wear instead, then it would have been a different story.

I stopped masking basically the day I was no longer required to. I mask in hospitals/doctor’s offices (even though that’s no longer required in my area) and when dealing with the elderly (which is rarely). I mask when I visit my elderly mother if I’ve been feeling sick recently. I don’t mask at work, and I don’t mask at political events unless they require a mask (the only people who do are Anarchists who mostly only do it because they’re paranoid about “opsec”, because god forbid someone be able to tie together your name, face, and political beliefs - something that doing yourself, loudly and proudly, I believe is a prerequisite to considering yourself a Communist).

I work in a grocery store. I’m currently sitting in the cafe waiting for my shift to start. Practically nobody is wearing a mask. The only people who do are (1). the Chinese workers in the sushi department and (2). a few transfeminine co-workers who I imagine are not primarily wearing masks for the health benefits but due to face dysphoria. Maybe once a week I see an elderly person masking or a transfeminine customer, but that’s about it.

I agree with the other commenters - masking while practically no one around you is is functionally worthless and more of an act of virtue signaling than anything else. Someone elsewhere in the thread brought up the Chinese Long March and the dedication necessary for that. That comparison would be apt if masking was widespread, but masking while no one else is is about as useful as trekking through the Tibetan plateau alone.

Yes I wear a mask when I’m indoors away of my home. I do this for the safety of myself, my family, and others. And you should too. And you should be advocating for others to do the same if they can.

A better world is possible. One where we treat communicable illnesses as something to mitigate/eradicate. It is morally right to protect others, the indigent, the youth, the imfirmed, the vulnerable. Wearing a mask indoors while away from your home when there is an ongoing pandemic, one that causes systematic harm to the body and immune system, is the least you can do. Each COVID infection is a roll of the dice. It’s a chance for mutation in a disease that is known for mutation. If you feel personally inconvenienced by a mask then you should reconsider a lot of things. Accepting disease as simply part of life is uninformed. It denies that we live in a global, interconnected community. It is as fatalistic as accepting the unending supremacy of capital. That myopic view has no place in class consciousness. The pandemic is without question the fault of the owner class. They rely on our complacency, accepting preventable death whether by war, climate, or disease.

Rarely if ever now. Nobody else does it here, and I feel uncomfortable (both a tiny bit physically, but moreso socially) when I wear it as such. Like I’m reminding people of it honestly- and as a visible minority (Asian) that adds to it.

Admittedly also- the effort isn’t worth it, not for the society-at-large here (which has abandoned masks, but which also is a Anglo settler-hellhole country I feel considerably alienated from at this point for many reasons). If the rest of society here wants to let it all burn down- well, I have those I care about and would try to help decent people- but I say let it burn. Not like I see things feasibly changing for the better here in the imperial cores anytime soon, so honestly the world would probably be a better place without this country (whether it be the govt. or the settler-mentality culture). Letting it burn will be progress one way or another, either positive change can come of it or the beast of empire can continue its spiral straight to hell, far be it from me to stop it from doing so. The west’s loss is the rest of the world’s, and humanity’s, win (not because it’s inherently so, but because the imperialist mentality and regimes make it so), that’s just how it is right now and how it has been for the past 500 years, I suppose.

Masks and respirators for prevention of respiratory infections: a state of the science review

You may find this useful as an in-depth look on the topic of masking. It’s pretty long, but I think worth the read.

I do still mask every time I leave my apartment. There’s essentially no reason not to in my opinion. It would obviously be much safer if everyone was still masking, but at least in my experience, diligent masking has been very effective at preventing illness in my household despite the lack of precaution from the public. People can be kind of weird about it sometimes, but it’s mostly limited to staring and the occasional rude statement, which as a trans woman is something I was used to before the pandemic anyways lol. I do worry sometimes about the chance of someone getting violent with me or my wife, but also if the alternative is giving up the mask and destroying our health, and maybe even killing her if we get unlucky, just to please ableist assholes, well, the choice is obvious to me.

I wish I knew more about the masking culture of other countries. All I can say with certainty is that in my community (A large city in the US), nobody gives a fuck about public health at all, and largely refuse to change their lifestyle in any way to help themselves, much less anyone else. Unmasked people outweigh masked people by an enormous amount, and the few maskers are often wearing surgical masks or other insufficient PPE, and I frequently see people still wearing them beneath their nose or taking them off in public. Many people I talk to are well aware that Covid is still around and is destroying everyone’s health, but they either seem to think it doesn’t affect them, or prefer to live in a lie and ignore it.

It’s basically not a thing in my area, so I feel like it’s a constant social struggle. I mostly don’t, now. I will to the grocery store, or to places the people I live with won’t be. I don’t feel like my actions are meaningful, if I’m going to be exposed to their germs from school either way. I would traveling, though.

I’m weaker than I’d like to be.

Never stopped masking in clinics. In the last few months I am back to masking in crowded environments. Always wear KN-95 or equivalent quality mask. I don’t live in a high density or high population area.

Wore a mask to the theatre last night, and within ten minutes the stranger next to me started coughing and continued to do so throughout the film.

As far as I know, I have never gotten covid and I plan to keep it that way.

I wear masks everywhere I share air with people and request anyone that enters my home does the same. there’s social pressure everywhere to not wear them, but I’d rather deal with social pressure than risk getting covid. it’s a threat to any part of your body that uses blood and thus worth tremendous effort to avoid where practicable.

1. I do whenever I can, in my work I can’t, because it’s socially so frowned upon here. I try to work alone/remote as much as I can becaude of this and bought and aur purifier for my office, I have high risk loved ones, have longcovid and so does people closest to me. I’d rather mask everywhere, did not miss the smells of other peoples sweat at all.

2. In my country (Finland) masking was negatively framed from day one. Also it was strongly hinted that they don’t work, there’s nothing we can do and the frail will fall regardless.

There have been no masks used here for most of the time I masked everywhere, the mask wearing only happened for the delta wave, but when the vaccinations began, they disappeared. “Expert” opinion has been very anti-mask and covid has been “just a cold” that only kills old people all along.

This whole thing has been my single biggest eye-opener to the fucked up fascist values I have actually grown up surrounded by. It has also made me understand that covid and covid protection is 100% a working class issue and a matter of class consciousness. It’s the workers like me who don’t get protected that die from it or get longcovid. Also lots of eugenist brainworms in my country.

This is a country where unironically one popular saying is “there’s still room behind the sauna” and this is supposedly a joke about how the undesirables used to be shot behind a sauna in our fash past and gets thrown around whenever someone for example does something dumb. We are the baddies actually and covid made me see this in its entirety, because the society I live in is behaving like monsters without even realizing it.

I mask every day; I will stop masking and taking precautions the moment the pandemic is over. I will not risk disability or death for myself or anybody in my life for the acceptance of those who deny science or for the mild convenience of not putting on a mask

you have to get boosters to be fully covered for variant strains.

Speaking of boosters, friendly reminder that at least in the US, 2024 updated Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been out for a few weeks. If you haven’t already, look into getting your updated booster soon :)