Went to a clinic today for a routine medical thing and was once again amazed by the number of people who are happy to hang out and just freely breathe in all the air juice inside the germ emporium
Somewhat bipolar view on the issue that. It could just be that they have other things on their mind. There are some upsides to stop constantly thinking about germs and viruses. All we all get nasty respiratory infections once and awhile but most of us never worried before spring 2020.
It’s always funny to me when people think masking means you are constantly terrified and living in fear. I wear a seatbelt in the car, and nobody accuses me of constantly thinking about having a car accident.
i had a customer at work lecture me about how wearing a mask meant that I was still traumatized by the pandemic and I needed to "heal." well ma'am I'm going to find healing a lot easier if I don't have brain fog and fatigue from long covid
Yeah. I mean, in my ideal world I would love to not wear one, and I don’t wear one in every situation. But when I do, it’s … not traumatic. It’s just a thing.
Ma'am I have thought really long and hard about this and I am starting to think most of us are huge whiny babies actually? Like I didn't before but now I can't stop finding proof? That's all I wanted to say though thank you for your time 🙇
For the record I would also be less traumatized from the pandemic if people I knew stopped dying from it which we could reduce to as low as possible IF THEY WOULD JUST WEAR A FUCKING MASK
and even if you were - look, I AM constantly terrified and living in fear these days and if I could wear a mask to protect me from climate change and rightwing politics I would absolutely do that. I don't see what's wrong with that!
istg my ex-spouse was like this. mocked me and got this look of disgust turning to impatience and anger, when they caught me using oven mitts and tongs and things.
they would snap at me about wasting time, then leap in front of me to just reach into the oven and grab things with their bare hands.
they thought it was gross and unsexy that i was so afraid of a little pain i would take zero-point-five seconds longer than necessary. like i was somehow embarrassing them.
...
yeah. so. this mentality is a thing.
Putting on a mask is just so much easier than estimating usage patterns, ventilation, and the fraction of the population who are infected and either asymptomatic or going out to share their infection.
I’m not that concerned with catching the sniffles, but I’d hate to pass a bug along to an immunocompromised person when I could prevent it by taking ten seconds to don a mask. Treating courtesy and simple thoughtfulness as if it were cowardice erodes civilization. Fuck that take.
It’s also backwards. I mean if you’re subverting your rational life/health saving instincts because you don’t want to be “weird” and looked at sideways by unmasked people, who is living in fear?
How many nasty little colds/flus/viruses have I caught from air travel since masking, I wonder? (Zero, the answer is zero.)
How often was I sick from air travel before I started masking, I wonder? (A lot, the answer is a lot.)
It's not that difficult a decision for me.
I think I vastly underestimated how much a lot of people prioritize ending the slightest bit of discomfort even at the cost of killing people, even up to like within the past year. Not content to not wear masks, even the discomfort caused by seeing someone else wearing a mask is too much for them
I adore the "germs-and-viruses store" framing.
(And, yes, we still mask up in public and crowded private functions... society sure as heck ain't gonna take care of me or my family if I get sick/disabled.)
Also, it seems bad and a cultural failing that we didn't give this more thought before 2020, not some kind of validation.
Getting way almost no respiratory infections is *great*. A hugely reduced chance I am giving them to others, some of whom find them a serious health challenge, is even better!
It's nice not exposing health care workers to every random bug too.
One of my takeaways from COVID is we get colds and don't notice. Same virus in another person might not be docile though.
I still wear a mask everywhere and the more time passes the more I feel that people are actively treating me differently than they used to as a result of perceiving me as a person in a mask. Even people I know and have known during the pandemic.
My clinic wants me to be extra anxious now that I’ be been mandated to show up for assessment EVERY TIME I RENEW MY ANXIETY MEDS so staff won’t be masking, either. Hence telling everybody who comes near me I have shingles (i did, in Feb)
I had to spend some time in a surgery center recently while they worked on my spouse, and I wore a mask because I was sick. I wish that this was at least normalized.
I had to have a surgery last year and one of my nurses came in every few hours for a day after coughing with no mask. At least she didn’t say anything when I had a mask on.
Love when the guy who automatically concludes people who point out the lack of common sense in not taking easy, rational preventative measures (an extremely common human behavior) are "afraid of free will" accuses *others* of lacking nuance—while using ableist language to do so.
Those respiratory infections never threatened to render us unable to work for three to six months or to shorten our lives by increasing our susceptibility to heart disease.
I'm glad you've got such a good safety net around you that you don't have to worry about any of that, brother. I don't.
