I guess I’m in the minority here, but I’ve never really minded the masks. I never found them hard to breathe in or uncomfortable. Sometimes I’d wear one into the store and forget to take it off even once I was back in my car, alone. I typically wore my mask even in drive-thru transactions such as Starbucks or the carpool line, and of course I wore it all day, every day, once I went back to work, taking it off only to drink my morning coffee, which I did with my office door shut.
I kept wearing masks long after I was fully vaccinated and mostly have continued to do so even once the CDC guidance changed. (It makes no sense to me that we should rely on the honor system for this – as though the very same people who are anti-mask are not also anti-vaxx.)
But the change in mask guidance made me reluctant to take my 9-year-old daughter anywhere because she is too young to be vaccinated and I just don’t trust most people. So after one week of camp (we paid for four, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk) where no one wore masks (and she got both a cold and a nasty lingering stomach virus but thankfully not COVID), she is back pretty much locked down.
I’m starting to read public health suggestions that with the Delta variant emerging as the dominant strain, we should all be masking again – but that’s almost certainly not going to happen as it would be massively unpopular.
I am hopeful, though, that masks will be enforced at school for kids who are too young to be vaccinated – and that a vaccine will be approved for younger kids soon!
Until then, though, we’re going to mask back up and hunker back down. It’s just not worth the risk until everyone in our family can be vaccinated.
What are you doing?
