I don’t want to wear a mask now but I will until the reductions in cases probably drop for another month or so and we reach 70% or whatever we need for herd immunity. It will all depend on where I’m going and I’ll probably wear one in my hospital and Dr offices, and even their parking lots. I’ll hold off on indoor restaurants for awhile until I’m convinced there won’t be a spike in the next month. I won’t wear one to the beach but will put one on to enter a boardwalk store. Basically I’ll just try to use common sense as I evaluate the relative risk of various venues and I’ll obey the requirement of the business establishments who are trying to protect their workers, or you from them. Wearing a mask is not anout protecting the mask wearer from Cocid, its about protecting the non masked from the infected nasked person.
To each their own. You do you. As long as you're not judging others for not wearing a mask, I won't judge you for wearing one. But based on 1) The data regarding fully vaxed transmitting the virus; 2) Vax being available to everyone for 2+ months now; 3) Existing natural immunity; and 4) Transitioning from spring to summer, a fully vaxed person is more likely to win the power ball three nights in a row than is the liklihood that them wearing a mask will protect someone from a negative outcome RE Covid.
Ok, that's a bit hyperbolic, but probably not by as much as you think.
Let's look at a hypothetical fully vaxed individual in the US who isn't raging at college parties:
- Chance of individual even being exposed to the virus at all = Fairly low.
- Chance of exposure being enough viral load to cause PCR-detectable infection = very very low.
- Chance of that infection becoming serious enough that individual becomes symptomatic and infectious = ridiculously low.
- Chance of that symptomatic infectious vaxed individual coming in contact with and exposing individual vulnerable to unwanted negative outcome - i.e. not someone choosing not to protect themselves. (very very low)
- Chance of that individual receiving sufficient enough viral load from contagious vaxed individual to become infected themselves (very very low, maybe ridiculously low).
When you multiply the chances of (fairly low) x (very very low) x (ridiculously low) x (very very low) x (very very low), you end up with an overall chance that is ridiculously insanely very very low. If you could accurately quantify all of that, it probably would literally be in the ballpark of powerball odds (yes, not powerball three nights in a row odds though
).
Again though.... As long as you're not judging others for not doing something they would prefer not to do - something that the data over the past year has shown to have somewhere between minimal and no effectiveness anyway, btw - to lower the chances of something that already has powerball-low chances of happening in the first place, more power to you. Wear your mask. All good. I'm just here trying to correct all the Covid misinformation that has calcified over the past year.