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.
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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Same here, and I get weird dirty looks. I've heard of people getting verbally assaulted wearing them, my go-to line ready is "I'm sick, I didn't want to get people like you sick, but if you don't care..." starts to pull down mask
Imagine a society so fucked up they verbally assault someone for wearing a mask. How fucking barbaric do you have to be to do that?!? 😂
people so easily triggered that a person wearing a mask makes them have to yell at someone
The fact that there is a stigma in the first place is incredibly silly. Masks are a great tool to prevent getting others sick. It's like if someone made fun of you for using a screwdriver instead of doing it by hand.
Yup! It's some kind of redneck macho moron thing with some of them. The same types who mock you for using an umbrella when it rains, or wearing a coat when it's cold, etc.
A facemask is a visible sign of casual compassion. It's a sign that you aren't going to let your own poor situation make anyone else's life harder, and don't want anyone to suffer needlessly. There are some people who don't care about others, but they also don't want to appear cruel, so their only recourse is to tear apart symbols of kindness and claim themselves superior for being "smarter" or "more honest".
That's my understanding of the "stigma", but I can't judge everyone.
You ought to wear a respirator (N95) rather than a mask (those baggy blue procedure masks). Respirators help keep you from getting sick.
If I'm sick in public and don't know the cause (i.e. could be COVID), I'll wear a surgical mask. If I'm in an environment where COVID/similar may be likely from others, I'll wear an N95 mask.
I have boxes of each, left over from the coronalypse, so it makes sense to me.
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.
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.
Why does it matter if someone chooses to wear a mask or not? Maybe it’s a great excuse to avoid facial recognition software.
Sunglasses are better for that. The idiots trying to ban masks aren't trying to fight crime, they just want to normalize spreading illness.
I wear a respirator whenever I'm in an indoor public space like a store, and I also don't spend more time in those spaces than I have to. I go into the store and get what I need, but I generally don't linger around browsing stuff. That means I probably buy less stuff, which is good for my wallet as well. But politicians hate that. They want us out there spending. That's why they are trying to play down covid risks. So they hate mask and respirator usage since it reminds others that the virus is still out there.
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?
For what it's worth, it's not exactly the same COVID. I'm no scientist, but as I understand, the majority of COVID viruses are less dangerous than the 2020 batch. Millions of people died that year. If that were still the case, we'd be seeing a lot more death.
That's correct; the omicron variant that became dominant a bit over two years ago was more contagious and less deadly than those that preceded it. Current variants are similar to omicron in those respects.
The rate of long-term disability is still high.
Why do you give a shit? Are the bad mask people hurting you? Leave people alone ffs.
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).