At-risk family members, long COVID uncertainty, and no real downside. Easy choice.
I ask because this very much applies to me. I have very at risk family members and if by wearing a mask daily I make them 1% less likely to die, that's worth it to me. But these family members themselves have stopped wearing masks... That doesn't mean my masking will do nothing, but when they're not even trying I find it hard to justify.
"Don't you want to kill your family members?" No, not really. Just my personal choice.
A comfortable mask isn't some great burden to me. The whole line of questioning feels strange, like someone incredulously saying "Do you plan on wearing pants for the rest of your life??"
I’m from Western Europe and mask wearing both never was political, was well followed during the much more stringent restrictions we had at the peak of the epidemic and has virtually disappeared from the past two years.
It’s a very different attitude that what it seems to be in the state but our relationship with diseases is already culturally extremely different than what it is in the USA.
As you may note, that's not what I said.
> Suggesting that a mask in 2022 has anywhere near the utility of pants
Didn't say that either.
It's simply strange to me that people get so worked up over it, just like it would be strange if people got super worked up over wearing pants.
In my experience, absent of the 'hot/stuffy mask face' it's no big deal. YMMV
> maybe even virtue signaling
Or maybe even, as they said quite plainly, "at-risk family members".
Personally I wouldn't wear a mask any more; as others have said I think there comes a time where unless there's a specific heightened risk you have to accept that you either stop at some point or wear one for the rest of your life.
That said, I have immediate family who are extremely immuno-suppressed. I either wear a mask, or every day I increase the risk of killing them. So I wear a mask.
Sometimes the argument is pointless. The "other side" may even agree with you. Yet life often makes a mockery of our choices and forces behaviours upon us.