How long do you plan on wearing a mask for? Will it be for the rest of your life? What will change your view?

This isn’t meant to be inflammatory. There’s someone at work who wears one everyday and I’m too afraid to ask them.

  • Zak@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’m not immunocompromised or any other kind of high-risk and I wear an N95 mask in most indoor public settings.

    I plan on doing it until something changes. That could mean any of:

    • SARS-CoV-2 mutates into a dominant strain with a low risk of long-term disability
    • A new vaccine is developed that reduces the risk of long-term disability following COVID, or probability of infection to virtually nil
    • Monitoring programs, such as CDC wastewater testing show a low risk of infection

    It seems to me people collectively decided to stop caring about COVID even though most of the risks that were present two years ago still exist. I would therefore ask the inverse: why stop protecting yourself before the danger is over?

    • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      For what it’s worth, it’s not exactly the same COVID. I’m no scientist, but as I understand, the majority of COVID viruses are less dangerous than the 2020 batch. Millions of people died that year. If that were still the case, we’d be seeing a lot more death.

      • Zak@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        That’s correct; the omicron variant that became dominant a bit over two years ago was more contagious and less deadly than those that preceded it. Current variants are similar to omicron in those respects.

        The rate of long-term disability is still high.