What is your reasoning for going maskless?
Mine is that a person I live with a lot has been going maskless. When I go out with them, I feel there’s no point in wearing a mask if they’re not going to. If they catch an illness we’re both going to regardless. I’ve been criticizing people in my head about no one wearing a mask, but I have to admit, now that I’ve been out without a mask I can see the temptation of things “feeling normal.”
The only times I don’t mask is if I’m on a walk outside in a non-crowded area, or inside my own home.
Sucks that the person you’re living with won’t mask, I’ve had to cut people off for that but I’m fortunate enough to live on my own.
They actually care about masking, but sometimes they won’t. I’ll have to ask why.
Edit: They say at the gym it interrupts workouts because it shifts around, and the heat and sweat irritates their shaved face. In stores, it’s when they feel it’s not too crowded, and they hold their breath while passing people.
Gym: skill issue. I lift in a respirator. I do cardio in a respirator. They should find a better fitting mask. Buy small quantities of different masks to try and then experiment. I had a problem like that with some masks and then found better ones. Ones with headstraps tend to sit tighter/more securely, which means they protect better and don’t shift as much.
If their shaved face is prone to irritation then there’s something wrong with their shaving regimen. They should invest in the effort to learn how to use a safety razor because once you get good with them they tend to leave much less razor burn than disposable razors. Idk why. The initial investment is a bit higher than just buying a pack of disposable razors but it works out cheaper in the long run
Store: this makes no sense. Covid is airborne, and they could very well be walking through suspended aerosols someone exhaled a few minutes ago in that empty aisle they’re walking through.
I do not buy their explanations; these sound like excuses. They need to actually take a measured look at why they want to not mask in these situations. When I’ve run into trouble masking, I figured out how to improve my system so that I would not have trouble masking, because I care very much about not getting Long Covid. And, being realistic, nowadays most of the “I don’t want to protect myself” sentiment just comes from conformity, or not wanting to deal “weak”/" vulnerable".
If this person is your partner you two should have a serious talk about what either of you would do if you or the other got Long Covid.
Do you mean N95 respirators?
P.S. The gym is one of the worst places to unmask, because people are breathing very heavily there. If someone’s contagious (which, again, they can be contagious before symptoms even set in!), they’re spewing more infectious aerosols in the same amount of time because the volume of air they’re exhaling is greater than if they were just sitting on the bus. Meanwhile, people are breathing in more air than normal as well, which also means a higher dose of aerosols
There’s an inherent contradiction in going to the gym and unmasking. Going to the gym: working out, trying to get/stay fit and healthy. Unmasking: gambling with your health, when if the gamble goes badly you may become too fatigued to ever work out again. May have messed up cardiovascular health. May struggle to walk up and down the stairs without getting winded anymore. I’ve known so many semi-competitive athletes who got wrecked by covid years after the pandemic supposedly “ended”.
At this point, wearing a mask is akin to not picking up the habit of chain-smoking. Actually that’s a bad analogy, because it would be far healthier and safer to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes in once sitting once every 6 months than to get Covid once every 6 months.
P.P.S. Is getting erections important to them? Better keep that mask on: https://hexbear.net/comment/6685613
Yep!
As CommunistCuddlefish said, their rationale for stores especially makes no sense and definitely needs to be reevaluated. Airborne pathogens can stay viable for several hours and travel long distances, and are still shed by people with asymptomatic infections, so you can’t just judge it based off of whether people nearby seem sick or not. This is why even unmasking outdoors in public is still not without risk. For that matter, a gym is a pretty bad place to unmask as well, since particles containing COVID pathogens are continuously shed through heavy breathing.