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:
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Do you still wear a mask or not and why? And do you have distinctions like large crowds or anything like that?
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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.
I wear a mask ~10 hours a day at work. When I was doing more laborious work I didn't though due to sweat and fit.
Imo the bare minimum should be masking for all short interactions. I understand not wanting to wear a mask all day at work, but it sacrifices very little to wear one for 30 minutes at the store or wherever.
I just switched from auras to a flomask. More comfortable, but still working out the seal.
But even without covid, there's other diseases and cameras everywhere. I'm happy that masking is more normalized (to the degree that it is. Still had people get very angry at me)
I gotta say, wearing an N95 all day was a lot easier after doing it long enough. Some silly part of me doesn't want to go Flomask because of the opinions of strangers, but really I need to disregard this.
It's pretty sleek tbh, although since it's not guaranteed to fit and a lot of n95s are relatively reusable I'm not sure it's a great value proposition.
I took the gamble and don't think I regret it, the fit seems to have settled in for a decent seal now that I'm on my third day.