It's still surprising to me that so few after 4 years of this still do not understand the airborne nature of respiratory illnesses especially Rona with all that has gone on.
Then again I might be expecting too much from people...
If all my friends jumped off a bridge, there's probably a good reason. I keep pretty intelligent friends. The bridge is probably collapsing or some shit. Wear a fuckin mask tho.
I think one of the better cultural shifts, at least in the US, to come from the pandemic is the number of people wearing masks if they feel even slightly ill and have to go out in public. Better yet, a number of businesses seem to actually mean it when they tell employees to stay home if they're sick, rather than perversly commending those who come into the workplace when they are quite obviously suffering and contagious.
Get vaccinated, wear a mask if you feel ill, you just want to, or you'll be visiting someone at high risk indoors. That said, and I know I will lose most of you here, it doesn't seem necessary for the general populace, when they're not ill, to follow masking guidelines when in public. I'm not a medical professional, so I simply follow CDC guidelines. To my knowledge, there isn't a mask recommendatiom for the general populace at this time.
Purplely anecdotal, but since our hospital system is no longer critically overburdened, and folks are mostly vaccinated, it has been my observation that the negative impact on people's mental health, that the isolation of masking and social distancing induces, is a greater risk to the health of the general public than Covid and its variants. If you choose to take additional precautions, that is absolutely your perogative and you should feel empowered to do so. It'd be great if we could have it all, but people have to do what's right for them to make it through another day.
We lived in a small town with the bridge being one of the best spots to jump off of into the lake. So after the first time our parents used that saying we pointed that out and they never did it again hahaha.
It's 2024. Covid is no longer that much worse than the flu. Unless you have some condition, you don't need to mask anymore. Covid is still a thing, yes, and masks still help, but it's not going away, we're better prepared for it, and it's evolving to be more infectious and less lethal.
The good news is that studies have shown masks aren't all that effective so no one needs to worry about this anymore. If you want to wear a mask, ok, if you don't want to wear a mask, ok. Also, COVID mortality is way down. Any concerns about masks or COVID can be relegated to statistical insignificance when it comes to trying to control other people's behavior.