I hardly know whether to bother wearing a mask anymore. The places I go, no less than half of people aren’t wearing theirs. Last time I went grocery shopping, my estimate is that four out of five bared their faces.
I know that the point of wearing the mask is for me not to spread COVID if I happen to be carrying it. But if most people aren’t wearing masks, it makes the whole thing seem ineffective. Masking works best when we all cooperate and do it.
I had a surprisingly severe cold in October. It drove me to take a couple days off work to rest, but to be fair I have also been suffering from very real exhaustion thanks to extreme work stress. My symptoms were more consistent with a cold than with COVID. But on the chance it was COVID, I didn’t go into places unless it was critically necessary, and when I did, I masked up and didn’t linger.
Otherwise, I’m going out and doing things that I want to do. In places where masks are required, I mask. In places where they’re optional, I mask only if most other people are masking.
I still work from home most days. It’s no longer about COVID, but about not commuting. I suppose that if more people were in the office every day I might go in more often to enjoy the office buzz. On a normal day in the office I encounter three or four people. I still spend most of my day on Zoom; I just do it from a different place. I don’t see the point in spending so much time in the car just for that.
The major upside of this pandemic is that my car is going to last a good long time – I hardly use it!
