Ask Lemmy

I wear one when I'm sick. Outside of places like the United States it's actually very common to wear masks when you are sick. There used to not be a stigma about masks even in the US before COVID. This is because masks were never meant to be used as a way to prevent getting sick but as a way to not get others sick, therefore slowing the spread of disease. Somewhere over the past few years the lines got crossed and everyone started calling masks bullshit because they misinterpreted the actual use for them. Doctors don't wear masks because they don't want to get sick. They wear them so they don't get their patients sick.

The way you phrased the question is a tad bitey.

That person may or may not be immunocompromised or they are caring for someone who is and are taking precautions.

Why does it matter if someone chooses to wear a mask or not? Maybe it’s a great excuse to avoid facial recognition software.

Change the view that if you have a contagious illness that wearing a mask helps prevent the spread of it? Never gonna change. I don’t wear one daily but choose to if I start showing signs of a respiratory illness because it works and I care about people around me.

The rest of my life, no question. I haven't had a cold or the flu in years. It's not inconvenient, other than a few assholes so why should I stop?

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?

It's been nice not getting a cold or the flu for a couple of years...

I don't for quite a while anymore, but I did longer than most others. I had to stop because people were laughing at me at that point as I was basically the only one.

I simply felt more comfortable with it. It felt good to have a large portion of my face covered, people not seeing all of my face, most of my face expression. I didn't have to worry if I got too carried away with my thoughts and imaginary conversations while walking in public so much that I started quietly whispering to myself, and of course moving my lips. Or doing something else weird like licking or biting my lips. Or inappropriately smiling against my will.

When I stopped wearing it, it basically felt like being naked in public. An awful feeling so bad I wished for another wave of the pandemic only so that masks would seem acceptable again.

Maybe I wasn't the only one. Perhaps it's such psychological thing for someone else.

I talked to a Baskin Robins ice cream shop manager during a summer (not peak time for the disease) in the pandemic who was wearing a mask (surgical, not the N95 variety) and asked him when he planned to stop, and he had an interesting point. He said that it was that some customers got upset if they saw someone working at the store not wearing one, that it affected their sales. It sounded like for him, it wasn't so much whether-or-not he thought that the mask was providing much of a benefit, but a straightforward computation as to what brought in customers: like, if he could get more sales by wearing a fluorescent outfit, he'd wear fluorescent.

I noticed during COVID, I had almost no problems with hay fever. I wouldn't mind going back to wearing one full time.

I've started to skip the mask for small groups for short time periods but I still mask up for the grocery store, and large gathering, and any time I'm in a smaller room with people for a long time.

I get sick so rarely now, it's great. And it's so much less socially exhausting to wear a mask and be able to hide my face. I dont have to take a smile or watch my expressions nearly as much.

And it helps support my friends who are immunocompromised by normalizing mask wearing.

I don't plan to stop for a long while. And I plan to always mask up if I'm sick, even just a cold, to avoid spreading it.

Probably until either the nurses stop panicking in my local area or the immunocompromised people in my life die of a preventable illness.

I only wear one if I'm sick, or travelling by plane.

Why do you give a shit? Are the bad mask people hurting you? Leave people alone ffs.

also the most disarming response when somebody asks "why are you wearing a mask" is, "because I don't trust the government".

If you take the pollution out of the sky and guarantee sick people actually do wear masks and that facial recognition cameras are dismantled, then I'll stop

if I have something contagious, I'm going to wear a medical mask, because that's the purpose of medical masks. That's considered standard etiquette in other parts of the world, and I think it's a little rude that people walk around with colds and flus without masking up. if I'm going to be in a tube with a bunch of other people, like an airplane, I'm wearing an N95. That's not even about COVID, that's just about fuck that shit

also, I'm autistic, and there are times where I really don't feel like having people see me. COVID made it socially acceptable to wear facial coverings indoors, so I might be at the grocery store wearing a hat, sunglasses, and mask, just because I'm not in the mood to be perceived. in this case it's usually not a medical mask or n95, it's either a decorative mask, or a neck gaiter pulled up.

I still masked up everywhere for a lot longer than most people did, before deciding exactly what I was and was not comfortable with. I figured, now that we've got the vaccines, and more than one antiviral that can treat it, plus other treatments in the hospital, I'm comfortable treating it more like influenza. not something that I'm going to avoid like the plague, but something that I still want to avoid, and when other people have it, they should be going out of their way to not give it to others.

oh and with the autism thing, if you have a place that's blasting some oil diffuser, it helps a lot. people walk around blasting scent like it smells good and it's just a headache

Maybe they just have really bad breath and are doing everyone else a solid?

Does them wearing a mask affect you in any way whatsoever, or would minding your own business be the prudent choice?

Were people like this when shoes were first invented?

Yeah, it'll be the rest ofy life. We should'vbe been doing this two decades ago, honestly.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/04/the-people-who-plan-on-wearing-masks-forever.html

I'm still wearing mine and we are in a covid surge right now. We can talk again if there are a few consecutive months with no significant spread. That might in fact be never.

You should feel more threatened by covid than by masks.

Covid kills people. Masks don't.

Your focus should be on how we can get rid of Covid rather than when you'll stop seeing bits of fabric that don't affect you (other than protecting you from germs).

I have asthma (is that technically immunocompromised?) and before COVID I used to just get bronchitis every year or two. I haven’t had bronchitis since 2020, except when I caught COVID by taking off my mask. If wearing a mask means I don’t deal with that shit again you better believe I’m not raw dogging public air anymore. Feeling unable to get a full breath is the worst feeling in the world.

Forever, because I look cool.

Most scented products give me a headache or hurt my throat. I noticed during Covid that my N95 was blocking much of the smells in the stores.

Most likely I'll be wearing a mask for the rest of my life.

A cashier at Walmart asked me why I'm wearing a mask. I had no problem telling him why. Ask your co-worker

Edit: Also, I'm a privacy enthusiast and facial recognition is going to be one of our biggest invasions of privacy.

I see wearing a mask in a similar light to washing my hands. It is possible to be a carrier of an infection without having any symptoms yourself, and it doesn't hurt to wear a mask in certain spaces such as crowded streets, hospitals, shops, and public transportation where there are a lot of people. There could be people around me who are immunocompromised, and if wearing a mask will help prevent others from getting sick, that makes it all worthwhile! It's a small thing that can go a long way!

I tend to wear them on public transportation:

a) in my city I wear them because we have bad public transportation and people tend to be dangerously packed inside the buses (this issue recently has started to be alleviated), so to protect my self (and also show that things arent well inside) I wear the mask.

b) in other foreign cities I wear the mask in public transportation because:

1)I dont want to be sick on vacations

2)Different countries probably(?) have kinda different strains of viruses and such, so it may be more dangerous for me.

I'll wear one on public transit in the winter. It reduces the chance I'll get sick (or as sick), and it keeps my face warm when I get back outside.

The last time I got really sick was the last time I was in the office and at least two people nearby were sick. None of us were wearing a mask. It took me out for a solid two weeks, and I had residual effects for almost a month longer (at the minimum).

Because of that, I could understand someone wearing a mask in the office all the time -- they wouldn't want to not wear a mask, then put it on the second they hear someone cough, lol

Maybe they're anxious or self conscious.