this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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You can do it, but honestly, the point of masking was primarily to slow the spread so we didn't have one massive surge as a world with no resistance got the disease all at once and had its healthcare capacity get overwhelmed. We did that. But we didn't stop the disease from spreading. COVID-19's been all over by now. It's endemic. Sooner or later, everyone will get it.
Viral infections aren't purely binary though. It has been shown that the peak severity of infection is correlated with how big of a viral load you are initially exposed to.
So a mask can help decrease the severity of the inevitable infection by decreasing how much viral bodies you inhale.
My form-fitting N95 is to keep me safe.
I wear a mask selectively to give a non-verbal "keep the fuck away from me" signal. Most frequently I wear it while grocery shopping; people keep their distance better when I have a mask.
My aunt and my coworker have not. Some people are called genetic super dodgers.
Also it's mostly to protect other people in the case of covid specifically from what I remember the doctors saying.
Well, yeah, the medical masks are. You can get N95 respirators, which weren't what people were generally wearing, and those are aimed at that. Might actually be possible to buy some this time around; the shortage was pretty extreme in 2020.
I managed to get a reusable N95 3M respirator and filters early-on in the thing, before it was really in the news and everyone was rolling out the door of hardware stores with N95 respirators to ship to China and the like.
Sorry I should have said that, I'm wearing an N95.