7 ms·

I know a guy who still wears a half-face respirator every time he's in public even for just a second. I think at this rate he'll be wearing it for the rest of

I know a guy who still wears a half-face respirator every time he's in public even for just a second. I think at this rate he'll be wearing it for the rest of his life, unable to accept a new level of risk and move on with his life. I'd like to help him but I see no possible way, he's convinced that I and 99% of the rest of the public are suicidally insane like people who play literal russian roulette.

thesaintlives 3y ago
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- wait_what 3y ago
  [flagged]
babblingdweeb 3y ago
This is an odd hot-take for an active globally invasive and life altering virus. That person has assessed their risk level and determined that their community's disregard for their personal risk, negatively impacts their personal model. Therefore they have to use a different device to mitigate their risk. Seems pretty logical, matches with known science, with a minor exception that the half face respirator may not offer greater protection vs a well fitting* N95/KN95 * well-fitting being the crucial note there.
steve1977 3y ago
What if he’s right?
- dingnuts 3y ago
  when almost everyone has already had the disease and was able to observe what it did to them -- which is the state we're at -- it's pretty hard to say that everyone needs to protect themselves. I know what COVID will do to me, because I had it already. He's not right. I was vaccinated, and the vaccine didn't work (it didn't prevent me from getting ill, get out of here with the 'better outcomes' bullshit, I'm healthy and COVID was still a flu-like illness for me, and I'm convinced the vaccine I was promised was 'safe and effective' did little or nothing) and masks didn't matter. It's like asking why we don't go around with masks on 24/7/365 to protect ourselves from the flu. Well, I've had the flu, and it's unpleasant, but it isn't worth the many downsides of proper N95 masking, and anything less than proper N95 masking is pointless. Most of the people I see wearing masks in public now are wearing completely ineffective cloth masks and a large number of them STILL wear them under their noses. These people are not thinking critically or looking at data. They're still just trapped in the media fear cycle from 2020.
  - doctorhandshake 3y ago
    I would argue you now know what COVID did to you that one time. You do not know what COVID will do to you.
    - weaksauce 3y ago
      yeah there have been studies showing repeat infection having an increasingly deleterious effect on your immune system. we don't know the long term harms associated with it.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    I don't think anybody has answered the question "is every COVID infection an individual gets going to give the same level of response"? IE, will you get COVID and then get better, but later get COVID and end up with Long COVID symptoms? Is it random every time you are infected?
    - PaulKeeble 3y ago
      At least 3 big studies looking at this, the most recent of them on 150k people, so very robust numbers. Subsequent infections do increasing damage and each infection increases your chance of developing Long Covid and not recovering. People with existing new symptoms after a Covid infection also get worse very often. Rather than building immunity we are accruing damage and the evidence underpinning it from the VA study and the more recent ones is massive.
      - dekhn 3y ago
        Well, if that's true, it would be really bad (in a simple model it means basically everybody gets infected repeatedly and gets more and more damage and then most of the population has long covid). I am not hearing much concern this from my larger medical community. Large numbers in a study is good, but if the study design isn't right, then large numbers won't make up for that. It's absurdly hard to really conclude reliably. For example, from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/well/live/covid-reinfection.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/well/live/covid-reinfecti... """For many people who get Covid multiple times, subsequent infections will be as mild as or milder than their first, emerging data shows, likely because of partial immunity from previous infections, vaccination and the fact that the latest circulating variants generally cause less severe symptoms.""" which is much more consistent with my understanding of COVID repeat infections. If you have a link to the VA study I will look at it.
- thesaintlives 3y ago
  The existence of the human race says he is wrong..
  - elil17 3y ago
    Medieval Peasant 1: "I think we should stop dumping raw sewage near our water supply. It is probably making us all sick." Medieval Peasant 2: "If it was making us all sick, how come only half of my children have died before the age of five?"
    - thesaintlives 3y ago
      Don't forget to take your 10th injection and make sure to always have a dirty piece of paper in your pocket!
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Right about what? That there is risk in taking off the mask? Of course he's right about that. Right about taking off the mask being suicidal, like playing russian roulette? He obviously isn't right about that.
justinator 3y ago
> I'd like to help him Help yourself by minding your own business.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  You know that's self-defeating advice right? You telling me to mind my business is you not minding your own business. You clearly don't live by this principle, and I won't either. I don't subscribe to the kind of radical individualism you are promoting, and you don't either. Nobody should, we live in a society. Everybody has a responsibility to speak their mind when they see somebody else behaving foolishly. You do so, you freely share your perspective on the way other people live and so do I.
  - justinator 3y ago
    I'm not telling you to do anything - are you hung up with how English uses second person possessive adjectives to communicate? I don't know if I have a solution to that. "behaving foolishly" is a judgement call you made on someone else, for an act that doesn't really affect you directly. You yourself are allowing it to affect you - it seems to be overpowering you, maybe ask yourself why you allow it to. You do have a choice: just put it down. Keep carrying a load of heavy things, and you're not going to go anywhere very far. It is your choice. Have a good one.
willcipriano 3y ago
People who lived though the great depression often had trouble throwing things away, their kids sometimes would inherit the disorder and now we have hoarding television shows. Prediction: in 30 years a TV crew will follow someone around who needs to go maskless in public for some reason (dental care, kiss wife on wedding day) as they struggle with it.
chaps 3y ago
There's a good chance your buddy has an immune disease or something along those lines. Or knows someone who does. What's the harm? Especially when long COVID can cause long term effects that can cause professional harm (ie, an existential threat)
gumby 3y ago
"a guy"? I see people like this every day...and I'm one myself. Not outdoors, but when I enter a building. We don't yet know the long term sequelae of an epithelial infection, nor do we know why about 10% of those infected appear to get "long covid". Why should I risk it when the burden of reducing the chance is negligible? I also wear a seatbelt.
- thesaintlives 3y ago
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- mcpackieh 3y ago
  "I know a guy", as we grew up down the road from each other and I was a groomsman at his wedding. We've known each other for 30 years. This isn't some random guy I see on the street. I see maybe one in a hundred strangers in public still wearing a mask, which is why I mentioned 99% of the public. That's my estimate for how many people gave up masks. I take it you are among the 1% of those who keep it up.
  - elil17 3y ago
    It used to be 80% of people didn't wear a seatbelt. By your logic the 20% that did should have had someone try to "help them" be normal.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      > It used to be 80% of people didn't wear a seatbelt. A few years ago, 80% of people who wore a mask. Which way are these things trending? Wearing a seatbelt has become the normal attitude towards car risk. Wearing a mask was briefly the normal attitude towards risk, but has since become [again] an abnormal attitude towards risk. If you're so keen to be abnormally safe and think everybody else is being unreasonable, why don't you get your three-point seatbelt replaced with a five-point harness? It's established well characterized technology that undeniably makes you safer You'll definitely be an odd man out rejecting social trends so expect to have people wonder why you're so paranoid. But by your logic you shouldn't care about that.
decremental 3y ago
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mk89 3y ago
I don't wear a mask, but you should not judge. Probably some are people at a higher risk than you are - they might look "normal" and alright, but they don't have to tell you if they have heart diseases, diabetes or whatever.
o11c 3y ago
If there's literally no downside for him to wearing a mask, why do you even care?
- libraryatnight 3y ago
  I thought the anti-mask revolution was because they didn't want to be "forced" but now nobody is forcing them and they still can't shut up about masks worn willingly by others.
  - notabee 3y ago
    It was always about forcing a consensus about what's normal, same with so much other human antagonization of outgroups.
  - terminatornet 3y ago
    easily one of my biggest annoyances about people online who say mask wearers in 2023 are sheep. There's maybe 5-10% of people masking when i'm on public transit or shopping and that's a pretty big maybe.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- talldatethrow 3y ago
  If I was sick, or if there was a meaningful sickness in the air, I would wear a mask. But I wouldn't say there is zero downside to wearing a mask, atleast the way 98% of people wore one during covid. (The same one all day, if not a week, touching it, putting it in pockets, around your neck, on your greasy forehead, so on). I used to wear a mask because allergies when I mowed the lawn or even dirtbiking during certain seasons. It absolutely reduces your ability to take it oxygen easily. I get winded a lot easier wearing a mask. Is that meaningless to children wearing them all day at school? Idk.
  - elil17 3y ago
    "It absolutely reduces your ability to take it oxygen easily." This is absolutely false. There is very strong evidence that masks do not effect gas exchange. One example of many: https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/face-masks-may-increase-feelings-of-breathlessness https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/face-masks-may-inc... Masks do make your lung muscles work slightly harder, but there's nothing wrong with that.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
I get your perspective, but everybody has their own risk assessment and comfort, and yours is no more necessarily right than his :). Some people still wear masks, some people still take booster shots, some people people still wash their hands, some people sneeze into elbows, some people stay inside, etc. Others may not do some or any of those things. "Accept new risk" and "this is the new normal" is as validly executed by him as by yourself. (Also, honestly, wearing a mask in public may not be as life changing/limiting as it seems. I know people who haven't stopped complaining about seatbelts for 3 decades now, but it's a habit that doesn't bother me :).
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > I get your perspective, but everybody has their own risk assessment and comfort Yeah I get that, but with him it seems very out of character. He likes to ski and is a general aviation pilot; these aren't low risk activities. I hope he comes to term with the new normal soon because he's still young and spending the rest of his life paranoid behind a mask would be truly sad.
  - progman32 3y ago
    For him, the reward of those activities possibly justifies the risk in his mind. I sometimes also mask in public, because it bothers me approximately zero.
  - NikolaNovak 3y ago
    But again, the risk stats and perspectives and acceptance may differ. You may need to work on yourself to develop empathy for your and his personal choices and stop thinking of him as "sad", more than work on him and try to "help" him :-). The word "paranoid" seems out of place as well - the risk is actual and demonstrable. For example, skiing is fun. Flying airplanes is fun. And general aviation is quite safe for those who take it seriously. So while there's risk, there's also a reward. And that risk / reward ratio may be what they choose to personally accept. There's no reward for getting covid! There's no fun in it! And many people either don't want to get it at all (given the risk of either bad immediate symptoms or long term impact), or had bad experience and don't want to recur, or don't want to contribute to chain and infect others yet. Heck... I'm persuading myself to start wearing mask again (the only reason I stopped is that I work from home, but have a 2yo in daycare and 4yo in kindergarten which massively outweighs any risk I bring into house). (I do want to ask though - are they wearing like n95 or surgical mask... Or as you mentioned in original post a full painting-sryle respirator with two big round filters etc? That, I'll agree, is a significant comittment if they don't have significant personal risk factors)
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
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- donkers 3y ago
  Or they have immunocompromised loved ones at home, or are vulnerable themselves despite looking healthy. It’s their health and passing judgement on them as neurotic or germophobic without knowing their situation is pretty shitty at best.
  - freitzkriesler2 3y ago
    [flagged]
- elil17 3y ago
  Is someone a germaphobe if they wash their hands after using the bathroom?
  - freitzkriesler2 3y ago
    Is someone who argues with false equivalence making himself look like a fool?
    - elil17 3y ago
      How are they not equivalent?
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Two men are taking a piss in a public restroom. One finishes first and with a smug look strolls over to the sinks. "My father was a surgeon," he says, "He taught me the proper way to wash my hands. You see, most people just get a quick lather with soap then carelessly rinse it off, but most people are fools. I know better. First I wait for the water to get hot and take off all my rings and watch. Then with lathered soap I scrub under each individual fingernail. I then watch the clock to time washing each individual finger on each side. This takes no less than two minutes. Then, with hands raised above my elbows so that dirty water doesn't slide down them, I scrub each of my arms. After I am fully scrubbed to within an inch of my elbows, I rinse. But I don't rinse carelessly of course. First I rinse my fingertips, making sure to keep them above my elbows when I do so. I then rinse down my hands and arms, never backtracking and being careful to never let water run down my arms towards my hands, for that would soil my hands and I would have to start from the beginning again. With this technique, I can be sure my hands are truly clean." The other man zips, smirks, and walks out of the room. "My father taught me not to piss on my hands." Jokes aside, do you wash your hands normally like 99% of the public, or do you do the full surgeon scrub each time? Still wearing a mask in late 2023 is like the full surgeon scrub, most people don't bother with that.
ycombinete 3y ago
This reminds me of a comment I saw there a few years ago, by an HN user who wears safety goggles every time they leave the house because they once almost walked into a low hanging tree branch.
UIUC_06 3y ago
27 years ago, there was a movie that perfectly shows that mindset: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114323/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114323/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5 If it wasn't covid, it'd be something else with people like your friend.
buildsjets 3y ago
I know several people who continue to wear masks for completely non-health related reasons. Perhaps he is trying to avoid interacting with you specifically.
notabee 3y ago
One of the first proponents for hand washing and hygiene during medical practice wound up dying in a mental asylum. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7240806 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7240806 What's considered normal socially is not always what's supported by the evidence at hand, and sometimes what that supports is well outside of the acceptable range of discussion or behavior at the time. Are you truly concerned that this person has made an error in judgment based on evidence or do they just make you uncomfortable for breaking norms? Are you motivated to post about this because you've considered their reasons and think they've made a harmful, critical error in judgment or are you just seeking approval of your normalcy bias? Do you know enough about their health situation or their family's to be sure that their risk calculation is unreasonable? The best course of action if you're absolutely sure that there's no threat to you is to ignore them and move on with your life.
- Cupertino95014 3y ago
  What you just demonstrated is called Survivor Bias or Survivorship Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias what about all the people who challenged what was "considered normal socially" and actually were proven wrong? One never hears about those.
  - notabee 3y ago
    I'm not sure what kind of strawman you're building here. Are you thinking that I'm arguing that all or even most norm-breakers are proven correct? I am arguing only that some norm breakers turn out to be prescient and thus overconfidence based on norms alone is treacherous and bound to be proven wrong at times as we learn more, and Normalcy Bias often prevents people from adequately assessing that risk. Here's another wikipedia link! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
    - Cupertino95014 3y ago
      A "strawman" ? you said, "One of the first proponents for hand washing and hygiene during medical practice wound up dying in a mental asylum." Maybe if you'd added, "of course, lots of people who wound up dying in a mental asylum are forgotten, with good reason" then I would've had nothing to say. As it was, you cited an example as though that proved anything.
anonymouswacker 3y ago
Sadly, he'll lower risk of one thing and increase risks of another thing -- most likely, cancer.
LastCovidWave 3y ago
There is no living with it. None. There's no immunity. Only continued sickness and damage. Masking is a protection to help stop the spread and if you are not helping, you're in the way of us trying to live without it.
- nradov 3y ago
  You are spreading misinformation. There is immunity to COVID-19 just like any other respiratory disease. https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ Our ancestors apparently lived with HCoV-OC43 after it killed a lot of people in the initial pandemic. That virus is quite similar to SARS-CoV-2 in terms of genetics and symptoms. And it's still around infecting people today. So relax, we'll (mostly) be fine. https://www.slowboring.com/p/covid-1889 https://www.slowboring.com/p/covid-1889
- jamie1np 3y ago
  There is immunity in the sense of "the body is able to mount an immune response due to previous exposure." Early claims of immunity to infection didn't pan out, especially post-Delta. There are benefits to having immunity, but I believe they are often overstated. (I say this as someone who is currently wearing an N95 respirator around others 100% of the time, including around my partner and family).
runamok 3y ago
Maybe they are immunocompromised or spend time with people that are? I had a friend that would never get together even after vaccines were plentiful and infection rates were low because he spends time around people that are.

thesaintlives 3y ago

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wait_what 3y ago
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babblingdweeb 3y ago

This is an odd hot-take for an active globally invasive and life altering virus. That person has assessed their risk level and determined that their community's disregard for their personal risk, negatively impacts their personal model. Therefore they have to use a different device to mitigate their risk. Seems pretty logical, matches with known science, with a minor exception that the half face respirator may not offer greater protection vs a well fitting* N95/KN95 * well-fitting being the crucial note there.

steve1977 3y ago

What if he’s right?

dingnuts 3y ago
when almost everyone has already had the disease and was able to observe what it did to them -- which is the state we're at -- it's pretty hard to say that everyone needs to protect themselves. I know what COVID will do to me, because I had it already. He's not right. I was vaccinated, and the vaccine didn't work (it didn't prevent me from getting ill, get out of here with the 'better outcomes' bullshit, I'm healthy and COVID was still a flu-like illness for me, and I'm convinced the vaccine I was promised was 'safe and effective' did little or nothing) and masks didn't matter. It's like asking why we don't go around with masks on 24/7/365 to protect ourselves from the flu. Well, I've had the flu, and it's unpleasant, but it isn't worth the many downsides of proper N95 masking, and anything less than proper N95 masking is pointless. Most of the people I see wearing masks in public now are wearing completely ineffective cloth masks and a large number of them STILL wear them under their noses. These people are not thinking critically or looking at data. They're still just trapped in the media fear cycle from 2020.
- doctorhandshake 3y ago
  I would argue you now know what COVID did to you that one time. You do not know what COVID will do to you.
  - weaksauce 3y ago
    yeah there have been studies showing repeat infection having an increasingly deleterious effect on your immune system. we don't know the long term harms associated with it.
- dekhn 3y ago
  I don't think anybody has answered the question "is every COVID infection an individual gets going to give the same level of response"? IE, will you get COVID and then get better, but later get COVID and end up with Long COVID symptoms? Is it random every time you are infected?
  - PaulKeeble 3y ago
    At least 3 big studies looking at this, the most recent of them on 150k people, so very robust numbers. Subsequent infections do increasing damage and each infection increases your chance of developing Long Covid and not recovering. People with existing new symptoms after a Covid infection also get worse very often. Rather than building immunity we are accruing damage and the evidence underpinning it from the VA study and the more recent ones is massive.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      Well, if that's true, it would be really bad (in a simple model it means basically everybody gets infected repeatedly and gets more and more damage and then most of the population has long covid). I am not hearing much concern this from my larger medical community. Large numbers in a study is good, but if the study design isn't right, then large numbers won't make up for that. It's absurdly hard to really conclude reliably. For example, from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/well/live/covid-reinfection.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/well/live/covid-reinfecti... """For many people who get Covid multiple times, subsequent infections will be as mild as or milder than their first, emerging data shows, likely because of partial immunity from previous infections, vaccination and the fact that the latest circulating variants generally cause less severe symptoms.""" which is much more consistent with my understanding of COVID repeat infections. If you have a link to the VA study I will look at it.
thesaintlives 3y ago
The existence of the human race says he is wrong..
- elil17 3y ago
  Medieval Peasant 1: "I think we should stop dumping raw sewage near our water supply. It is probably making us all sick." Medieval Peasant 2: "If it was making us all sick, how come only half of my children have died before the age of five?"
  - thesaintlives 3y ago
    Don't forget to take your 10th injection and make sure to always have a dirty piece of paper in your pocket!
mcpackieh 3y ago
Right about what? That there is risk in taking off the mask? Of course he's right about that. Right about taking off the mask being suicidal, like playing russian roulette? He obviously isn't right about that.

justinator 3y ago

> I'd like to help him Help yourself by minding your own business.

mcpackieh 3y ago
You know that's self-defeating advice right? You telling me to mind my business is you not minding your own business. You clearly don't live by this principle, and I won't either. I don't subscribe to the kind of radical individualism you are promoting, and you don't either. Nobody should, we live in a society. Everybody has a responsibility to speak their mind when they see somebody else behaving foolishly. You do so, you freely share your perspective on the way other people live and so do I.
- justinator 3y ago
  I'm not telling you to do anything - are you hung up with how English uses second person possessive adjectives to communicate? I don't know if I have a solution to that. "behaving foolishly" is a judgement call you made on someone else, for an act that doesn't really affect you directly. You yourself are allowing it to affect you - it seems to be overpowering you, maybe ask yourself why you allow it to. You do have a choice: just put it down. Keep carrying a load of heavy things, and you're not going to go anywhere very far. It is your choice. Have a good one.

willcipriano 3y ago

People who lived though the great depression often had trouble throwing things away, their kids sometimes would inherit the disorder and now we have hoarding television shows. Prediction: in 30 years a TV crew will follow someone around who needs to go maskless in public for some reason (dental care, kiss wife on wedding day) as they struggle with it.

chaps 3y ago

There's a good chance your buddy has an immune disease or something along those lines. Or knows someone who does. What's the harm? Especially when long COVID can cause long term effects that can cause professional harm (ie, an existential threat)

gumby 3y ago

"a guy"? I see people like this every day...and I'm one myself. Not outdoors, but when I enter a building. We don't yet know the long term sequelae of an epithelial infection, nor do we know why about 10% of those infected appear to get "long covid". Why should I risk it when the burden of reducing the chance is negligible? I also wear a seatbelt.

thesaintlives 3y ago
[flagged]
mcpackieh 3y ago
"I know a guy", as we grew up down the road from each other and I was a groomsman at his wedding. We've known each other for 30 years. This isn't some random guy I see on the street. I see maybe one in a hundred strangers in public still wearing a mask, which is why I mentioned 99% of the public. That's my estimate for how many people gave up masks. I take it you are among the 1% of those who keep it up.
- elil17 3y ago
  It used to be 80% of people didn't wear a seatbelt. By your logic the 20% that did should have had someone try to "help them" be normal.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    > It used to be 80% of people didn't wear a seatbelt. A few years ago, 80% of people who wore a mask. Which way are these things trending? Wearing a seatbelt has become the normal attitude towards car risk. Wearing a mask was briefly the normal attitude towards risk, but has since become [again] an abnormal attitude towards risk. If you're so keen to be abnormally safe and think everybody else is being unreasonable, why don't you get your three-point seatbelt replaced with a five-point harness? It's established well characterized technology that undeniably makes you safer You'll definitely be an odd man out rejecting social trends so expect to have people wonder why you're so paranoid. But by your logic you shouldn't care about that.

decremental 3y ago

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mk89 3y ago

I don't wear a mask, but you should not judge. Probably some are people at a higher risk than you are - they might look "normal" and alright, but they don't have to tell you if they have heart diseases, diabetes or whatever.

o11c 3y ago

If there's literally no downside for him to wearing a mask, why do you even care?

libraryatnight 3y ago
I thought the anti-mask revolution was because they didn't want to be "forced" but now nobody is forcing them and they still can't shut up about masks worn willingly by others.
- notabee 3y ago
  It was always about forcing a consensus about what's normal, same with so much other human antagonization of outgroups.
- terminatornet 3y ago
  easily one of my biggest annoyances about people online who say mask wearers in 2023 are sheep. There's maybe 5-10% of people masking when i'm on public transit or shopping and that's a pretty big maybe.
deleted 3y ago
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talldatethrow 3y ago
If I was sick, or if there was a meaningful sickness in the air, I would wear a mask. But I wouldn't say there is zero downside to wearing a mask, atleast the way 98% of people wore one during covid. (The same one all day, if not a week, touching it, putting it in pockets, around your neck, on your greasy forehead, so on). I used to wear a mask because allergies when I mowed the lawn or even dirtbiking during certain seasons. It absolutely reduces your ability to take it oxygen easily. I get winded a lot easier wearing a mask. Is that meaningless to children wearing them all day at school? Idk.
- elil17 3y ago
  "It absolutely reduces your ability to take it oxygen easily." This is absolutely false. There is very strong evidence that masks do not effect gas exchange. One example of many: https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/face-masks-may-increase-feelings-of-breathlessness https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/face-masks-may-inc... Masks do make your lung muscles work slightly harder, but there's nothing wrong with that.

NikolaNovak 3y ago

I get your perspective, but everybody has their own risk assessment and comfort, and yours is no more necessarily right than his :). Some people still wear masks, some people still take booster shots, some people people still wash their hands, some people sneeze into elbows, some people stay inside, etc. Others may not do some or any of those things. "Accept new risk" and "this is the new normal" is as validly executed by him as by yourself. (Also, honestly, wearing a mask in public may not be as life changing/limiting as it seems. I know people who haven't stopped complaining about seatbelts for 3 decades now, but it's a habit that doesn't bother me :).

mcpackieh 3y ago
> I get your perspective, but everybody has their own risk assessment and comfort Yeah I get that, but with him it seems very out of character. He likes to ski and is a general aviation pilot; these aren't low risk activities. I hope he comes to term with the new normal soon because he's still young and spending the rest of his life paranoid behind a mask would be truly sad.
- progman32 3y ago
  For him, the reward of those activities possibly justifies the risk in his mind. I sometimes also mask in public, because it bothers me approximately zero.
- NikolaNovak 3y ago
  But again, the risk stats and perspectives and acceptance may differ. You may need to work on yourself to develop empathy for your and his personal choices and stop thinking of him as "sad", more than work on him and try to "help" him :-). The word "paranoid" seems out of place as well - the risk is actual and demonstrable. For example, skiing is fun. Flying airplanes is fun. And general aviation is quite safe for those who take it seriously. So while there's risk, there's also a reward. And that risk / reward ratio may be what they choose to personally accept. There's no reward for getting covid! There's no fun in it! And many people either don't want to get it at all (given the risk of either bad immediate symptoms or long term impact), or had bad experience and don't want to recur, or don't want to contribute to chain and infect others yet. Heck... I'm persuading myself to start wearing mask again (the only reason I stopped is that I work from home, but have a 2yo in daycare and 4yo in kindergarten which massively outweighs any risk I bring into house). (I do want to ask though - are they wearing like n95 or surgical mask... Or as you mentioned in original post a full painting-sryle respirator with two big round filters etc? That, I'll agree, is a significant comittment if they don't have significant personal risk factors)

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

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donkers 3y ago
Or they have immunocompromised loved ones at home, or are vulnerable themselves despite looking healthy. It’s their health and passing judgement on them as neurotic or germophobic without knowing their situation is pretty shitty at best.
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago
  [flagged]
elil17 3y ago
Is someone a germaphobe if they wash their hands after using the bathroom?
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago
  Is someone who argues with false equivalence making himself look like a fool?
  - elil17 3y ago
    How are they not equivalent?
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Two men are taking a piss in a public restroom. One finishes first and with a smug look strolls over to the sinks. "My father was a surgeon," he says, "He taught me the proper way to wash my hands. You see, most people just get a quick lather with soap then carelessly rinse it off, but most people are fools. I know better. First I wait for the water to get hot and take off all my rings and watch. Then with lathered soap I scrub under each individual fingernail. I then watch the clock to time washing each individual finger on each side. This takes no less than two minutes. Then, with hands raised above my elbows so that dirty water doesn't slide down them, I scrub each of my arms. After I am fully scrubbed to within an inch of my elbows, I rinse. But I don't rinse carelessly of course. First I rinse my fingertips, making sure to keep them above my elbows when I do so. I then rinse down my hands and arms, never backtracking and being careful to never let water run down my arms towards my hands, for that would soil my hands and I would have to start from the beginning again. With this technique, I can be sure my hands are truly clean." The other man zips, smirks, and walks out of the room. "My father taught me not to piss on my hands." Jokes aside, do you wash your hands normally like 99% of the public, or do you do the full surgeon scrub each time? Still wearing a mask in late 2023 is like the full surgeon scrub, most people don't bother with that.

ycombinete 3y ago

This reminds me of a comment I saw there a few years ago, by an HN user who wears safety goggles every time they leave the house because they once almost walked into a low hanging tree branch.

UIUC_06 3y ago

27 years ago, there was a movie that perfectly shows that mindset: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114323/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114323/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5 If it wasn't covid, it'd be something else with people like your friend.

buildsjets 3y ago

I know several people who continue to wear masks for completely non-health related reasons. Perhaps he is trying to avoid interacting with you specifically.

notabee 3y ago

One of the first proponents for hand washing and hygiene during medical practice wound up dying in a mental asylum. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7240806 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7240806 What's considered normal socially is not always what's supported by the evidence at hand, and sometimes what that supports is well outside of the acceptable range of discussion or behavior at the time. Are you truly concerned that this person has made an error in judgment based on evidence or do they just make you uncomfortable for breaking norms? Are you motivated to post about this because you've considered their reasons and think they've made a harmful, critical error in judgment or are you just seeking approval of your normalcy bias? Do you know enough about their health situation or their family's to be sure that their risk calculation is unreasonable? The best course of action if you're absolutely sure that there's no threat to you is to ignore them and move on with your life.

Cupertino95014 3y ago
What you just demonstrated is called Survivor Bias or Survivorship Bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias what about all the people who challenged what was "considered normal socially" and actually were proven wrong? One never hears about those.
- notabee 3y ago
  I'm not sure what kind of strawman you're building here. Are you thinking that I'm arguing that all or even most norm-breakers are proven correct? I am arguing only that some norm breakers turn out to be prescient and thus overconfidence based on norms alone is treacherous and bound to be proven wrong at times as we learn more, and Normalcy Bias often prevents people from adequately assessing that risk. Here's another wikipedia link! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
  - Cupertino95014 3y ago
    A "strawman" ? you said, "One of the first proponents for hand washing and hygiene during medical practice wound up dying in a mental asylum." Maybe if you'd added, "of course, lots of people who wound up dying in a mental asylum are forgotten, with good reason" then I would've had nothing to say. As it was, you cited an example as though that proved anything.

anonymouswacker 3y ago

Sadly, he'll lower risk of one thing and increase risks of another thing -- most likely, cancer.

LastCovidWave 3y ago

There is no living with it. None. There's no immunity. Only continued sickness and damage. Masking is a protection to help stop the spread and if you are not helping, you're in the way of us trying to live without it.

nradov 3y ago
You are spreading misinformation. There is immunity to COVID-19 just like any other respiratory disease. https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/ Our ancestors apparently lived with HCoV-OC43 after it killed a lot of people in the initial pandemic. That virus is quite similar to SARS-CoV-2 in terms of genetics and symptoms. And it's still around infecting people today. So relax, we'll (mostly) be fine. https://www.slowboring.com/p/covid-1889 https://www.slowboring.com/p/covid-1889
jamie1np 3y ago
There is immunity in the sense of "the body is able to mount an immune response due to previous exposure." Early claims of immunity to infection didn't pan out, especially post-Delta. There are benefits to having immunity, but I believe they are often overstated. (I say this as someone who is currently wearing an N95 respirator around others 100% of the time, including around my partner and family).

runamok 3y ago

Maybe they are immunocompromised or spend time with people that are? I had a friend that would never get together even after vaccines were plentiful and infection rates were low because he spends time around people that are.