To be upfront, I’m not OP of the Lemmygrad thread. Masking obviously is important and a good thing to do for your community. Personally, however, living in a place like Texas where almost nobody still masks though, 54 months (4.5 years) after the initial declaration, and everybody says COVID is relatively a non-issue like the flu, I understand why the OP would be demoralized.

クロスポスト: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5723508

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:

  1. Do you still wear a mask or not and why? And do you have distinctions like large crowds or anything like that?

  2. 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.

  • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.ml
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    19 hours ago

    Do you still wear a mask or not and why? And do you have distinctions like large crowds or anything like that?

    Yup; I can’t afford to get taken off the pace I’m making money at, otherwise I’m definitely going under the surface-- which means I can’t even joke about courting COVID. I avoid large crowds of unmasked crackers the same way a cracker’ll cross the street in front of a singular Black person at this point. Those settler petri dishes ain’t worth risking my health or money for their ‘comfort’.

    • Ivysaur [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      15 hours ago

      So infuriating to see your shit get removed but the little fucking weasels get to call us “virtue signaling” and “uncivil” unimpeded after we call them out for literally risking our lives for the sake of assimilation! That is plague rat behavior!!

      Incredible, incredible stuff, truly. If I hadn’t lived in America my whole life I’d almost be surprised.

    • FishLake@lemmygrad.ml
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      14 hours ago

      I believe (without any serious research into the subject) that when people ask for super granular masking directions they are looking for a way out. So they can say, “Well that’s too complicated! I’m not going to mask at all now!”

      How hard is it really to put on a mask when you’re at risk of getting the virus? When people ask I kind of refuse to be specific. I just say, “indoors and away from your home.”

      • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        11 hours ago

        So they can say, “Well that’s too complicated! I’m not going to mask at all now!”

        I think not quite, I think it’s about trying to find a scheme that allows them to wear the mask the minimum amount possible.