Basically, wanted to know where people are at with mask wearing (as it relates to containing covid and all), I know it's been a while since it started. And I've seen people who say covid can still be threatening, like through long covid and such, even if the initial impact doesn't tend to be as bad. Being in the US, it's especially hard to tell what makes sense because the gov sorta gave up on containment a while back and only ever half-assed pushing mask wearing. And wearing a mask alone was a controversial thing in some places, even in the very beginning. Then there's vaccines, which of course help, but seems to be a thing like the flu where you have to get boosters to be fully covered for variant strains.
So in general, I'm wondering stuff like:
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Do you still wear a mask or not and why? And do you have distinctions like large crowds or anything like that?
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How does mask wearing compare by country, from what you know? For example, I'm sure China has a more pro-mask-wearing culture and policy overall, but I'm not clear on where they're at this late into it.
Partly asking cause I want to re-assess my own position on it, see if it makes sense to change it at all by now. I've still been doing it, in part out of inertia, but the US management of it is such a mess, in gov and culture, it's hard to tell when it makes sense to stop vs. just caving to peer pressure of people who were never acting responsibly to begin with.
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.
I don't want to beat up a fellow Marxist, but who cares what conservatives and libs think? Mask to protect you and your family. Those people who you're worried about judging won't give a fuck when you or your loved ones are disabled.