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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

This is a sincere question:

When everyone around you is living like Covid is in the rear view mirror, which they are (hence reinstatements of mandates), what is one to do? Wearing a mask in a restaurant full of people without them is pointless. And what of meetings? I’ve been careful to ask about mask protocol when meeting older people (70s/80s) only to have them advise they’d already had it and been vaxxed and didn’t care.

Should one turn down social engagements? Turn down business entertainment?

Whose level of vigilance is controlling? Whose should be the standard? Surely, one cannot say we should act like it’s March 2020 all over again. And yet, it’s hard not to translate a lot of tsk tsk’ing as demanding exactly that.

I’ve danced with this disease twice and been vaxxed and boosted. Perhaps my choice of mask was lacking. But now, when in the grocery store where I’d be one of maybe 3-5% of people still masking, am I still duty bound to mask up?

It is not a heresy to say that when in Rome, one might as well do as in Rome. And to say that Covid cannot continue to define us, control us, to the extent it has. These are reasonable and eminently defensible propositions.

There are a lot of people around me these days not wearing masks. I'm not going to try to change their behavior, but I'm also going to keep wearing a mask. That doesn't mean Covid is controlling me. It means I don't want to get sick, and I don't want to make my wife sick.