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.
This community might be of interest as they still talk about it a lot there: !covid@hexbear.net
I still wear a mask. I wouldn't necessarily wear one or keep one on if I was walking around a lightly populated park or down the sidewalk but I would before going into a store or a crowd (even outdoors) or any enclosed space with people like a train or station.
I'm not sure how mask wearing compares by country. In most of Asia it seems like it's been normalized for decades for people who are feeling ill or have certain conditions to wear the blue cloth medical masks so I doubt in most of Asia it's a big deal in most situations compared to the west where you have anti-mask reactionary sentiment and ideology that favors individual recklessness rather than responsibility.
The covid comm on hexbear has gotta be my favourite place. We also broke no bs and minimisation.
Bookmarking that to read more on later, thanks. And yeah, I've wondered about the difference there - like would people in those places in Asia where it's normal even face any reaction at all for wearing a mask long past public mandates or would they just be viewed as socially responsible people. Part of why I'm curious about that, is because if I only go by what the US is doing as a general thing, it could lead to some very irresponsible decision-making. There's a lot of science ignorance and the like here. And of course the individualism in the US that goes something like: "if the odds are low that it will inconvenience me, then why should I care if it might kill someone else?" Not that I think people are reasoning it out that consciously, but that's sort of the implication of the lackadaisical attitude toward it.