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> I wear N95 masks on local trains, long distance trains, planes, buses (most of the time), and movie theaters when busy. The few times I haven’t, in particular local train (unfortunately, lots of unhealthy people) and Amtrak, I have gotten sick - strep and covid. Being sick is in some ways not a big deal, but is serious enough I will keep wearing the masks forever. I get sick far less often than my non mask wearing peers.

I used to get sick when I went into the city. Once I started commuting, it happened a lot less as I built up immunity. I'm not saying everyone should lick doorknobs for maximum health.

Anyways, I got to a lot of shows as well, and wearing masks is joyless. I wear them when I'm feeling sick, to reduce the range of transmission (although I just try and stay home)

That said, for institutions where there are sick and weak people, it's almost criminal that they aren't investing even more heavily in testing these sort of technologies.

> I wear them when I'm feeling sick, to reduce the range of transmission (although I just try and stay home)

I really, really wish more people would do this. If you are feeling sick and need to go out into public, put on a mask. This is doubly true especially if you need to take a plane flight. I understand that you probably can't reschedule your plane flight for a lot of reasons, but, for the love of God, if you're hacking up a lung on an airplane put on a damn mask.

Have some common courtesy.

masks suck. life is risky. but they're a tool and an important one.

> Once I started commuting, it happened a lot less as I built up immunity.

To give another anecdotal evidence: before COVID I used to catch 3 to 4 colds per year. Winter was basically a nightmare season where I was always living in fear of when I would get sick next. After COVID I started wearing an N95 in populated places. As a result, I went to 0 cold per years instead of getting sick even more often because of the additional virus in town. Now I feel I can live normally in winter without always worrying of getting sick and I always feel healthy.

I tried switching to a regular surgical mask (and in general being less careful) to try to find a good middle ground between cost, appearance and protection; while I did not catch colds I did get COVID at the same time as unmasked people around me, so I'm back to N95s (this was likely following something like hours and hours of continuous exposure so makes sense a leaky surgical mask did not prevent it). (my bout of covid was quite mild fortunately; but first time being mild does not mean future ones will be or won't lead to long-term symptoms).

Some people told me that wearing masks will "weaken" my immune system, I still need to see that; after two/three years I just feel healthy and this is refreshing after decades of getting sick all the time.

Plus, instead of the advice of "cook your own food to eat well, sleep well, do sports" that probably requires something like 28 hours per day with a standard-issue job while likely not being as effective as respiratory protection, putting a mask on takes only 30 seconds per day. That's probably good general advice anyway, but not the shortest path to solving the "getting sick often" problem.

I got similar results when i changed 3 things: making sure d levels were around 60, adding glycine and nac supplements and adding a high quality fish oil supplement. My 3 young children have been their usual trainwreck of sickness this winter and inatead of getting sick with them 80 % of the time i have had zero sickness.

i am not here to advertise any of this stuff so i am not going to link or even get the units or amounts right unless i remembered them off the top of my head, just here to point out there are two ways to not get sick: eliminate exposure or increase resistance. For some of us limiting exposure is a painful experience (i cant comfortably wear masks i feel like i am dieing slowly from oxygen deprivation the whole time and the extra moisture gives me a rash eventually)and there does appear to be options on the other path to limit our own sickness.

Does everyone know how often their peers fall sick? I’ve had maybe two illnesses in the last five years and I don’t do all this. In fact, I was masks off as soon as we were allowed to, traveled often via plane and train. I also was at many EDM shows as soon as they opened up.

I used to wear masks whenever I fell sick but it’s been a while. After the pandemic, though, everyone started using these as political symbols and I want to opt out of that personally. A thing I’d been doing for decades is suddenly some kind of statement. I’ve no problem looking out for others but if there’s enough schoolmarming over this, I might just not.

I think people are neurotic about this stuff but probably the reality is that others fall sick often and need to take these precautions and I don’t and therefore see no need to.

At the population level, if it’s worth it, then that’s fine but I think it’s not a given that these things are worth it.

It is a given these things are worth it, as long as they're done properly.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Reduction-in-infection-r...

That paper is about mandatory masking and social distancing at the population level. It does not speak to the question of whether it's "worth it" to wear a mask on the train if you're the only one who is doing it.

I used to get sick a lot more often, pretty consistently 3-4 times per year. Since I’ve started masking on trains (specifically because others who are sick and coughing aren’t wearing a mask) and other things (elderberry, zinc, NAC at signs of cold) I’ve gone down to 1-2 times per year. And that is mostly from hooking up with people who had COVID and didn’t realize it.

It’s hard to say exactly what led to the reduction in illnesses, but the N95 masks have the strongest evidence base of the interventions I’ve tried.

We also have found out that Covid decays less quickly in air with high CO2. So highly polluted areas and poorly ventilated ones compound the problem by trapping CO2 in and allowing the virus to survive longer in the air. That is very likely the case for other viruses as well as it impacts the aerosols.

That's really interesting; I had thought it was just the high CO2 was a proxy for greater occupancy, but it does look like there is a physical effect.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47777-5

Yes, it's due to changing the pH of water in the air.

ChangeTheAirFoundation.org