When you get close to the point that the average infected person infects less than one other person, modest reductions in transmission rates can make a huge difference.
I have also avoided getting sick for four years except for the rotavirus my kids give me. But airborne disease, masks work very well for. I used to always get sick when traveling. Now I never do.
Yes. I realized that we can't even mention masks without someone freaking out about how we can't connect with others unless we have our breatheholes out. And of course the mystery of how kids born years hence apparently can't speak because people wore masks?
I realize it's anecdotal from a rando, but I agree. We still mask when we go out. I used to get very serious colds/flu, and at least once a year got either serious bronchitis, or actual pneumonia. Now? We get colds, but not one of us (three, my partners and I, all women) has gotten REALLY sick.
I am not a hardcore masker, only wearing a N95 on public transit. Since 2020 I caught covid once and cold/flu zero. I love it, totally worth the "inconvenience".
This is exactly my experience as well!! On top of being exposed to every wave of cold and flu every year, I'm also on immune-suppressing medications, so the fact that I have been cold, flu, and COVID free for 4 years has been WONDERFUL.
I've been wearing a mask since Covid started and I've had only 1 illness in that 4.something years. I really think it needs to become just normal in dense public settings like airports.
I drove/delivered and now drive a school bus. I've been masking since early 2020, and ever since. I found I got less sick during the winter AND my ALLERGIES during spring and summer were almost NON-EXISTENT!
Anyone who has worked in/ around Japanese automakers has seen masks when sick for years. I had a Venezuelan student rock one when she was sick pre-covid era as well. Such a dumb hill to die on.
This was the goal I had hoped we would meet as a country. Ppl who are sick could prevent others from getting sick too. But no...we'll never overcome this. Too much selfishness. If they only knew.
My roommate is a teacher that masks every day. Went an entire school year without getting anything from him and the kids he taught. Two weeks into summer, non-masking teachers at a training retreat managed to give us both Covid.
I believe that if the CDC had advised the public to wear masks to protect themselves! (Instead of others) we wouldn’t have had the nonsense about them. The CDC underestimated American desire to take care of #1.
The real problem was that, in an effort to prevent a run on masks by people at low risk, our public health officials DID lie about masks very early in the epidemic. They said that they protect others from contracting illnesses from the mask wearers, but not vice versa. This was bullshit. 1/n
But that lie contributed to disbelief of susbsequent accurate advice, didn't prevent a run on PPE, & there's no reason to believe it was more effective than an appeal to not to buy masks & save them for those with greater need. Trump, who doesn't possess empathy, couldn't comprehend such an appeal.
It was well known, if not comprehensively researched, that mask use by either party reduces the risk of transmission of respiratory ailments between 2 people.
The horrible irony is that idiots have chosen to believe the initial lie, not the subsequent accurate statements.
And whose idea was it that the best way to preserve availabity of PPE for heath care workers, paramedics, etc. was for federal health officials to lie about the utility of masks? It was their boss's idea. He lies a lot as it happens.
And yeah, it sucks that society is like that. But a big part of persuasion is to mold the message for the audience.
Even I got pissed off about masks at times; I remember the time I was yelled at for not wearing one in an empty room at a con while I drank water. People got REALLY authoritarian.
My family and I won't stop masking, even if they try to pass mask bans in places we go to.
Cancer survivor- I have been masking since long before Covid, and also mask (especially at this time of year) to deal with severe environmental/seasonal allergies. Inhaling pollen makes me a puffy sneezy mess.
if it was just masks that would be fine but we are now so allergic to building or maintaining things that when my physics kids measured classrooms at 1000-1500ppm CO2 I got in trouble because "there's no money to fix that"
I can't vouch for that, but my sinuses are very sensitive to the dry air at high altitudes. They frequently hurt on long flights. Masks are a huge help and make flights more comfortable.
I feel like I have to reinforce this with mom. "Remember how you used to get sick every time you flew somewhere? Then the mask rules came out and you stopped getting sick?"
Yep. I didn't wear one on a recent flight and didn't fight to get my kids to wear them. An unmasked man was apparently coughing behind my daughter. She got COVID and later passed it on to the rest of us (while denying she had it).
My daughter goes into moral outage at the idea of people possibly spreading a disease to her and had next to no concern about her spreading diseases to others. I think she didn't want to be inconvenienced. She's young, but I'm worried.
I feel like a lot of people deny having COVID because either they feel guilty because they weren’t being careful, or because they want to believe COVID is over, therefore they don’t have COVID. And if they don’t have COVID then it’s not their fault if you get sick.
Studies have shown that there may be a link between episodes of high fever and Alzheimer's disease. Wearing masks could be a much bigger benefit than is easily imagined.
Yes, masks DO work. My husband brought covid home twice already. I wore a mask while at home (and slept in my gym). I'm still good. No covid. Not even sniffles since the first mask mandate. Of course those who want to FLiRT with covid are free to do so. Good luck.
Weirdly, a few colds (PCR confirmed) got through the defenses but had several direct exposures to covid—including several in kiddo’s actual classroom—and our masks WORKED
I’m never going on mass transit ever again without one
My Doctor still masks, says she's never going back to a structure where she sees a really sick person for 10 min, then proceeds to see 15 other patients that day after an exposeure to anytime, just makes no sense to a carrier
Never flying without one again. I used to have a sinus infection after every flight longer than five hours until masks happened. Hasn’t happened since.
Didn't people already know that masks work based on experience in Asia where their use was common before 2019?
That was my understanding and I never had any doubt they'd reduce COVID transmission. Fortunately, we already had a stockpile of KN95s from wildfires a couple years earlier.
I'm very happy to live in a college town with a lot of students from Asian countries. We saw people wearing masks before the Pandemic and it was fairly normalized here. Of course, we still have anti-mask idiots, of course, but I don't get grief when I mask.
I used to have a horrible time with respiratory infections - I'd get sniffles or a cold, it'd turn into a sinus infection, and from there it would turn into a panicked fight against it turning into bronchitis and pneumonia. This happened at least 1x a year.
I haven't had a single one since masking.
It wasn't chicken. Most chicken these days doesn't use antibiotics, Tyson has slowly reversed their stance on not using antibiotics in chicken but that's neither here nor there I wasn't eating Tyson chicken in 2021 and 2021 was my first time ever having a UTI. /1
It is EXTREMELY common in women who bicycle a lot. I'd mostly avoided it because until recently I didn't ride a road bike, and other saddle types reduce your risk. It's very weird when I explicitly note the cause - bicycling - to have someone chime in and say something unrelated.
(and I know I wasn't eating Tyson chicken because I was spending quite a lot of money buying my chicken from a libertarian farmer in Pennsylvania who was convinced soy is evil because of this)
This is teetering on woo but I do think avoiding OTHER infections has been helpful. Everyone I know who has had covid and even gotten a cold after it's been pretty miserable and aggressive like worse than the before times.
yeah no this tracks. while i haven't had any respiratory infections because mask, i was some sort of low level ill for 6 months after my first time getting the plague; uti's, gut issues, random stuff.
That wouldn’t be completely out of keeping with the evidence that COVID is associated with loss of immune memory. By adulthood, we all have a pretty wide repertoire of antibodies from previous colds - but if you think about it as going back to getting sick like toddlers do, whammo.
If you ever need back up in terms of serious people looking into that, the “multi hit hypothesis” (as in, multiple hits to the immune system) is an area of interest in the consortium PolyBio has assembled
I don't mean to be unsympathetic or assume anything re:social pressure, but I've been to many events, incl. work events, where eating inside was expected, and I didn't. I either moved outside, or opted to eat later. I understand this requires intense Not Giving A Fuck that may not be applicable here
I do a lot of “masked indoor dining” at work events, where I leave the mask on but just sneak bites of food in under it when necessary. Awkward as anything but relatively safe
Sure, you do get contaminated air in, just not very much. And that can be mitigated somewhat by exhaling when you’re putting the mask back. So yeah you’ll get some unfiltered air but a really tiny amount, compared to not wearing a mask.
Yeah, I've developed better techniques at this point - mostly involving a hundred bucks worth of granola bars per conference and many quick trips outside - but at the time, I was taken by surprise and didn't have any options that didn't involve dangerously low blood sugar. Live (luckily) and learn.
It's so unfair to be put into a high social pressure health-dangerous situation and have to make a choice like that unprepared. I'm sorry that you were faced with that. =(
Absolutely not downplaying the efficacy of masks and wore them religiously in 2020 and 2021. But if the price of not masking is the occasional cold or even bought of flu, it isn't even a contest. I totally support anyone who wants to mask as much as possible, but I think most people won't.
Unfortunately, that's not the price of not masking in the long term. SARS-CoV-2 is a nasty virus and acute infection has long-term effects we're still finding out about.
I'm curious why you say the cost is the occasional cold or even flu but don't mention covid and feel like maybe I'm missing a point you're trying to make? Or I hope I am.
I'm really grateful for the people who do, because I am immunosuppressed and I still haven't had COVID, but indoors I mask or socialize mostly with people who are very COVID conscious.
this makes me so sad. what happened to don’t be part of an infection chain, the “price” of not masking is that immunocompromised and high risk people can’t be part of society and have to take on exceptional risk to access care
I wore an N95 mask every day through the end of the 2022-2023 school year. Toward the end of that year one of my students - whom I had taught for two years at that point - said she had never seen me smile. Felt like I had to recalculate, so I bought a HEPA filter for my room. I'm glad it worked.
I don’t in the slightest. Nonverbal social cues are a huge part of the relationship building between teachers and students. Students notice when they’re not there.
Hm. That leaves out a lot of people who engage differently.
Besides, I’ve found students are quite capable of understanding why a teacher masks and forming good teacher-student relationships anyway. The mask doesn’t get in the way at all.
I don’t think anyone has ever had trouble telling when I’m smiling when wearing a mask but I also find it really weird if anyone tells me they need to look at my mouth so I guess that’s where I’m coming from
I made the choice that safeguarding my health and my time is more important than the social awkwardness of masking but yes I recognize that this is not popular!
Hey, it kept me from getting it for four years. (I have my first hopefully only infection now. Someone brought it home from work, where he had to unmask to eat.) My whole family still masks. Oh, and I haven’t missed having colds. So not popular but solidarity!
I will say I wish the idea of masking when you had a cold or other respiratory thing had caught on. That would have been an actual positive outcome from Covid.
Yep. I've stopped masking in most situations because I figure Covid's not going anywhere, so whatever masking rules I follow need to be something I can live with for the next 50 years. But "mask up when sniffly" is definitely such a rule - heck, East Asian cultures have been doing it for years.
While an occasional cold or flu may not be a big deal for you, for infants, immunocompromised, and others it is! All the more reason to mask when sick. :)
I’ve been sick several times a year my whole life, just managed to catch everything. I masked consistently through the first couple years of the pandemic and still mask anywhere crowded. Have gotten sick once since 2019 (covid after flying for work).
This. I’m a LMT and can’t tell you how many people come in wanting a massage while they are sick. I was sick quite a bit until after things opened back up and we had to wear masks. I loved it! About a year and a half after, I stopped wearing a mask and promptly caught Covid. 🫠
The thing is, they think I can make them better! 🤦🏽♀️ When someone has a fever, a massage can actually cause the fever to go up. Those that come in sick don’t give a damn about who they are infecting.
I never got the `rona. I'm retired, so I didn't have to mingle with shedders in 2020. I did take all the easy precautions (I am a pharmacist) Then dutifully received the mRNA vaccines. Of course, I could have been asymptomatic or subject to blind luck.
I take public transit every day, and it's places like that, public bathrooms, airports, etc. where I'm like -- who is sitting there thinking the experience would be *improved* if they could just smell everything and everyone around them a little more? I'm more than happy to mask!
It's too bad we also went insane about masks a hundred years before that, during the 1918 "Spanish" flu (which originated in Kansas). We can't even be terrible in a new way.
Comments
Wearing a mask , from July 2020-October 2023, was not sick even once.
I’ve flown more times during the pandemic than at any other time, I’d always get sick before and I’ve escaped all of my flights unscathed since.
I was sure we would become like Asian countries and mask when sick or during flu season.
https://www.miragenews.com/umd-study-n95-masks-block-almost-all-airborne-1245832
(I happened across it the other day, but wouldn't otherwise have been able to figure out the source myself)
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1e0wsyo/people_who_rarely_get_sick_what_are_your_secrets/
No con crud.
The first con ever.
I used to get the flu or whatever was "going around" once or twice a year. Then covid&masking. I realize I didnt get sick anymore.
So I keep masking.
Why does everyone act as if covid has gone away?
The horrible irony is that idiots have chosen to believe the initial lie, not the subsequent accurate statements.
2/n
If instead of mandating masks they had just said "Wear a mask to protect yourself from covid" I bet damned near everyone would have been wearing them.
The "masks don't protect you, only others" thing, which is even *more* wrong for N95 masks, caused a lot of damage.
Even I got pissed off about masks at times; I remember the time I was yelled at for not wearing one in an empty room at a con while I drank water. People got REALLY authoritarian.
Not that masks don't work! They absolutely do. I just can't imagine teaching in one every day willingly.
Cancer survivor- I have been masking since long before Covid, and also mask (especially at this time of year) to deal with severe environmental/seasonal allergies. Inhaling pollen makes me a puffy sneezy mess.
if it was just masks that would be fine but we are now so allergic to building or maintaining things that when my physics kids measured classrooms at 1000-1500ppm CO2 I got in trouble because "there's no money to fix that"
love to learn in rooms that do to my brain what leaded gasoline did to my grandpa's
An airliner?
I’m never going on mass transit ever again without one
waking up and coughing up blood is not normal
i may have permanent lung damage
That was my understanding and I never had any doubt they'd reduce COVID transmission. Fortunately, we already had a stockpile of KN95s from wildfires a couple years earlier.
I haven't had a single one since masking.
Scary thing was that the pathogens infecting me were becoming antibiotic resistant.
(see “Doctor’s Note” section in text below the video for more research & data)
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/urinary-tract-infections-from-eating-chicken/
con crud? nope
airplane crud? nope
any kind of winter sniffles? nope
the plague? once a year like fucking clockwork
I don’t know if it’s interaction with covid-touched immune systems or new strains or what, but they’re not following the same patterns they used to
(*except that time 20 other people and I caught COVID at a public health conference where we were required to eat indoors together, sans mask. 😬)
I guess it's very little but it just feels fuck-upable to me yk?
https://www.self.com/story/transparent-n95-mask-cdc-approved
They can tell if I'm smiling.
Besides, I’ve found students are quite capable of understanding why a teacher masks and forming good teacher-student relationships anyway. The mask doesn’t get in the way at all.
I also have KN95’s, and N95’s and 3M auras, and aegle brand too
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763852
Someone is sick and home , sure call the appliance people so we don't have to take another day off.
Or the kid(s) are home sick so I have to take time off anyway , sure let's get an appointment to have the dishwasher fixed.
I live in Texas. Do I need to say anything else?