Remember: we were told not to wear masks with one-way valves because they didn’t protect others, only ourselves, but at this point people have made their choice, so if you prefer that kind of mask, feel free to wear it in public spaces.
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Here in Tijuana, it feels kind of 50/50. Many chain stores still have their employees masking and asking visitors to mask and use hand sanitizer, but also many little mom & pop stores aren’t doing that.
Many restaurants here are roomy and airy because many non-USian chain restaurants don’t do air conditioning, but have open windows and patio dining instead.
Either way, I spent a majority of my time at home, so my personal risk is greatly reduced.
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well I’d been trying to keep out of public indoors spaces and masking when I couldn’t but I got COVID last week anyway so 
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So while there is a lot of commentary about Long Covid and the risks/dangers it brings, that 1 in 5 people getting Long Covid includes you, because you have symptoms long after you’re infectious related to the illness.
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I feel like I’ve kind of given up. I don’t want to get it, and I avoid indoor spaces as much as possible. The only places I’ve been indoors, other than home, in the past (checks notes) over two years!!! have been the grocery store, the hardware store, and a friend’s house, with precautions. And the library.
But it feels dumb to wear my mask when no one else is. I’ve been taking my cues from the staff. If the staff are wearing masks, I do, too, out of respect, like someone else mentioned upthread. But if no one else is wearing them, idk, I just try to get in and out as quickly as possible everywhere, anyway. Except the library. And my friend’s house.
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But you’d know you were the smartest person in the room if your wore one! Others might mask up if they see your courage!
I put that feeling aside and have become, unnaturally for me, assertive.
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I never stopped masking. I am an RN and did infection control and prevention at one point in my work. We are still in the pandemic and, pandemic fatigue aside, we must protect ourselves and each other.
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Food handlers are required to wear hair coverings in California, but not masks. Which seems like a really backwards set of priorities. A basic surgical spit mask would seem like a good idea, more so than a hair covering.
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3M 9205+ Auras are great N95s - waaaaayyyyyy better than the old cup style masks. They fit more people better than the old 8210s. Available at Home Depot and on Amazon (if you get Shipped and Sold by Amazon they should be legit - 3M even now links to Amazon from their own site.)
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I agree, and I’m not proud of my giving up feeling.
I just can’t help feel a little hopeless when I see and hear about people eating out in restaurants and going to concerts and shows in indoor venues. I mean, fuck. I have avoided those kind of exposures for years now. And the associated joy of those experiences 
If the worst I’m doing is popping in and out of the store in 15 minutes without a mask, when no one else is masking, I guess I still feel like I’m not adding much risk to the situation.
And I’m NOT anti-mask or public safety at all, I’m just sharing the thoughts of a really well-meaning person who has been doing everything right for 2+ years and who you might see maskless in a store nowadays. 
It wears you down.
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Community masking is quadratically more effective because the combined filtration efficiency multiplies. But if you get a well fitted N95, it can still provide hundreds of times cleaner air than if you were to go un-masked indoors around other unmasked people, making the time to infectious dose hundreds of times longer. The Aura N95s can punch well above their weight class in terms of protection. A well fitted N95 is a high percentage precaution, especially around unmasked people.
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So exposure time is an important part of this. <15 min and without with consistent exposure (ie not standing in one place in a small room), you are limiting your exposure to catching it - or spreading it if you have it.
Maybe not the ideal scenario, but of all the things you could do, it is still pretty low.
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Yeah, Oddly, the thing I’m most worried about is a conference I’m going to at the end of summer. The first in years. It’s all about building science and it’s been cancelled for the past 2 - 3 years, but back on this year.
The main topic is indoor air quality (IAQ) and there will be a few really great speakers talking about IAQ and COVID specifically, and what we’ve learned in the past couple years. All delivered in a hotel conference room with 500 people in it. 
It’s such a conundrum.
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Time to infectious dose is dependent on the transmissibity of the variant x concentration, neither of which you can know since covid is invisible. Limiting exposure is a good strategy in general, but you can get infected in seconds. Limiting exposure and wearing a well fitted N95 will be more effective.
That 15 minute number is the outdated “close contact” definition used by the CDC back in 2020. There is no reason to think that catching Omicron takes 15 minutes.
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Unless the organizers have insured that the venue has the superior ventilation and filtration (and maybe Far UV) needed to avoid being another White House Correspondent’s Super Spreader event, it would be ridiculous to go to an event of experts who know better and come home with Covid.
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So many people going maskless like it’s 2019 haven’t been told that:
- COVID spreads via aerosols that can remain suspended in room air for hours
- At current US infection levels, around 1-2% of people are actively infectious today. Not good odds if you’re sharing indoor air with dozens or hundreds of people a day.
- Getting COVID once doesn’t mean you won’t get it again when the next variant sweeps through town in a few weeks or months.
- Variants aren’t “getting milder.”
- Getting COVID means a 20% chance of Long COVID
- Vaccination is effective in reducing deaths and hospitalizations, but apparently not very effective in reducing incidence of Long COVID
- A COVID infection increases risk of heart disease, stroke, and organ-damaging blood clots over the next year.
- Even an asymptomatic COVID infection causes a measurable decreases in brain gray matter.
The first rule of pandemics is: survive the pandemic.
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Yeah, I know it’s not the same thing, but in years past I’ve marveled about how some of the experts go on about particulate matter and the dangers, etc., then, after hours, pile their plates high with charred meat to chow down on. It’s a funny thing, recognizing risk and being able to talk about it, but doing nothing about health risks to yourself.
Anyway, the Mr. is attending, so I’ll be exposed either way, so I figure I might as well go and get the knowledge to go along with the exposure.
The only comforting thing of our scenario is that we live alone and work from home, so our chance of exposing others (which is my main concern, and overwhelming the healthcare system, which isn’t an issue here now) is very very low.
It will be interesting to see the masking rate at the venue, for sure. And at least one of the speakers I know was volunteering making a bunch of Corsi-Rosenthal boxes for improving school ventilation, so I imagine the place will be teeming with them. I hope.
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Well the guideline is dated, but the point is the longer you are exposed, the greater your chance of catching something. But I think in a larger store that isn’t packed, and you are moving through quickly, avoiding people, and not lingering in any one spot, your risk is pretty low. Limiting your time of exposure does lower your risk vector. After all, there are people taking none of those precautions and still managing to avoid it at the grocery store.
I don’t know how I will feel at the end of summer, but if it were me and right now, I would attend with an N95 mask.
Comic Con was a 3 day event, and I managed to take the kiddo to two days of it, and we both wore N95 with a cloth covering to make it pretty, and we avoided getting anything. And there were tens of thousands there.
Good luck!
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You might need one for your hotel room. Some hotels have ventilation shared between rooms. And you can even get infected from Covid aerosol that wafts into the hall way from a door being opened, and into your own room from the same.
If I get covid it may be from the apartment next to me with a shared wall - clearly some aerosols get through because I can smell their cooking easily.
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I get pandemic fatigue, totally. It is discouraging seeing others who appear to willy-nilly ignore that the pandemic is still burning its way through our species and has killed 1 million Americans. It will kill and disable many more should we not practice the measures that we know work: masking, distancing, isolating, hand washing, vaxxes, and supporting our public health departments.
Stay strong and keep masking, my friend.
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