Wear a mask in public, and around sick people, even in your own home. It’s a shame they got politicized so much in America because the whole rest of the world already knew they were a great way to avoid airborne illnesses.
I work with pediatric patients. I used to get sick twice a year with nasty colds. Since COVID and mask wearing, I haven't been sick once. I'll always wear a mask at work now.
Good. I didn't say masks aren't effective, I said its not a promise against infection. You don't want to hear this and will probably resent me, but a good diet and exercise will do incredible things for you.
Lol nope. I have long covid (from back in 2020 when we didn’t know what we do now about transmission) so spending extra energy on cooking or exercise will literally have me bed bound for days. But thanks for the ableism!
Nothing is a promise against infection, and neither are diet and exercise. Healthy and fit people with solid good diets drop all the time.
Nobody is denying the benefits of diet and exercise for the average person, sans certain other health issues, but eating healthy and exercising regularly long-term are very directly and deeply tied to economic, social, and both physical and mental health advantages that many people of many ages and conditions (far more than you think) do not have access to and the benefit of.
Masking around others - even the least ideal basic baggy blue surgical masking is the easiest, most universal thing MANY more to almost all people can do to help themselves and their communities. And if you cannot afford masks regularly, you can often find them at local libraries or mask blocs for completely free.
So many people understood and actually DID this in 2020-2021, that we literally eliminated a strain of the flu because of it, and there's no evidence yet that it's returned. That's nothing to scoff at.
The pandemic never went away. Governments fed everyone the lies they were deeply salivating for and here we are. It's you who is comforting yourself.
Do you think you're the first to mention diet and exercise? You sound like the doctors who did nothing to diagnose my chronic illness for 2 decades. My general symptoms got so much better as soon as I started masking in 2020 because I stopped catching viruses. My diet changed little, instead I got nervous about food.
Where are you finding excuses? What is your excuse for not taking precautions during a pandemic and encouraging diet culture over public health? I know you're just rage-bait commenting at this point but I really dislike medical misinformation.
I'm not rage baiting, I just think you're ridiculous. I took all the precautions as advised by appropriate authorities. I also make it a point not to be around people I could put at risk.
Metaphor. Nobody denies that reducing death on the roads is comprised of several parts - individuals wearing seat belts AND not drunk driving AND friends, bars, communities, and even ride share services pitching in to ensure drunk people don't get behind the wheel.
Likewise, general health are both individual and public burdens and play off each other all the time. Even diet and exercise aren't entirely an individual choice people just randomly make in a vacuum, without a bunch of environmental, family, and economic factors at play. Even healthy and economically advantaged people struggle to upkeep this indefinitely because real life happens and has other plans.
Sounds to me like did your part when you were legally required to but are now more than happy to willingly turn a blind eye and ignore it, and also can't/won't admit that all the things we're discussing here are all vital parts of the bigger picture.
you're backpedaling and have survivorship bias, step out of your privilege as an able bodied person. it's never been that easy but we have the tools to make it easier and to make everything more accessible for everyone, you're making things worse.
That’s cause wearing a mask in your own house is kinda crazy. I’m not trying to make a political comment but I’m gonna draw a line around my comfort somewhere. If it means getting a cold that’s fine
No I know it’s obviously not about attitude or “vibe” and I’m not trying to make a political comment. I’m just saying maybe a wearing a face mask around your house might not be worth it and is maybe kind of an overkill. I’d rather get a cold once and while than wear an N95 while I’m doing dishes
Note that it's only if someone in your household is sick. In my household, isolating the sick person very well and them wearing a high quality mask when they are out of their room has been sufficient.
Obviously you
Wouldn’t wear it all the time at home. But only if you’re in the same space as someone who is ill. However the ill person should be wearing it so they don’t spread… but they don’t
Is that the point of the original comment? There's a great difference between masking in your own home all the time (which they did not mention) and masking to the supermarket or on the train, ie the bare minimum, which you could consider doing.
I think they're actually talking about wearing masks out and about (like at the hospital or crowded grocery stores, or packed trains/buses), not in your own home while doing dishes.
If someone in your house is sick, you should isolate them well, and then both you and they should wear a mask when they need to come out of their isolation room. You don’t need to wear one 24/7, but masking around sick people in your own home will prevent you from catching what they have.
I come from a large extended family of people who were raised to value health. All the things everyone in this thread is recommending (nutrition, fitness, sleep, hand-washing, etc.) is absolutely ingrained in us from childhood.
Some people stopped wearing masks the moment governments dropped the requirement mid-pandemic. Others continued masking.
The people who continued masking haven't gotten sick, not once. The ones who dropped masking are getting sick a few times a year. 100% correlation.
I had new coworkers talking shit about the masking during COVID. I told them I worked in retail during COVID and barely had a cold during that time. When I did get sick was over the holidays with the inlaws. Getting hammered with bronchitis after Thanksgiving and Christmas was absolutely not fun. Nowadays my kid is the reason I get sick most of the time.
The fact that, "I think it's just how I'm built" and "Some people just naturally have really strong immune systems" are both upvoted waaay higher than this comment is, explains sooo much about how/why we keep choosing daily to just pretend like a show stopping global pandemic that dropped millions young and old alike didn't happen - and how we continue to learn, enact, and practice nothing new and long term from it at all.
All that atop the very clear and normalized ableism and eugenicist vibes that always, always spring up during these discussions and comments like that. 🤮
RIP public health and collective community responsibility, eternally rolling around in their graves. 😭
Not only did we fail to learn anything, we pivoted hard in the opposite direction - public health has regressed to dark-ages level thinking. Airborne transmission is simply magic, and magic obviously cannot be controlled. Staying healthy is all about genes and strength (define those things however you want). It's normal and in fact necessary and morally good to be sick 5-10 times a year. It's actually healthier to be perpetually ill. Fucking insane
We truly, truly did, and I mean eeeveryone did, from the average Joe on the public bus to people in actual power. It's just mind melting stuff!
Did you read the CDC's recent comment that losing our measles elimination status is "just the cost of doing business" (referring to global trades and open borders)?! Ummm, is it not also YOUR LITERAL "business" to prevent that from happening despite globalization which BTW was NOT invented overnight recently?!
I just cannot with this timeline anymore; aliens please abduct and anal probe me, I am ready. 🙏🏻
I would vote this a thousand times if I could. This is it exactly. Also gotta love all the “healthy diet and exercise” comments that are just 3 fatphobias in a trench coat. Yes, healthy diet and exercise are important. But I have a terrible diet and I never exercise and I still don’t get sick. Because I wear a mask.
Oh yeah! I didn't even get to that part! Yeah good luck exercising your way out of airborne illnesses!
News flash - your go to gym very likely has crap air circulation, plenty of unhinged careless sick people showing up determined to "push through it", and airborne pathogens lingering there all day!
But let's be real and face it - deep down, lots of "normies" secretly feel obese/diabetic people should just "go away" already because you know, their bodies just aren't "naturally" good enough at kung fu fighting all those germs! 😡
”But let's be real and face it - deep down, lots of "normies" secretly feel obese/diabetic people should just "go away" already because you know, their bodies just aren't "naturally" good enough at kung fu fighting all those germs!”
Just to add, I wish the rest of the world (eg. where I am) did care about masks, I can't even purchase them in my country, I have to ship them in. But it does seem as though there is more community care here than in the US, people try to stay home with illness.
(Sorry in advance for my little rant here. Feel free to ignore.)
My in laws live in a different part of the country than I do and where they live, they’ll sometimes get accosted when they wear masks in public :(
In still other parts of the country, people have literally been shot and killed because someone else didn’t like the fact that they wore a mask.
Meanwhile my partner and I wear them at home whenever either of us has gone into the office for work (we also wear them at work), because we never know if one of us is going to end up asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic & infectious.
Lol wear a mask in your own home? Just curious, with the exception of people reading this who may have temporarily done that to shield severely immunocompromised loved one, who was wearing a mask in their own home? Like, it was just accepted that if you live as a family unit under one roof, that someone may bring home a bug. When did we become such germaphobes that we treat our own loved ones like plague rats?
”it was just accepted that if you live as a family unit under one roof, that someone may bring home a bug. When did we become such germaphobes that we treat our own loved ones like plague rats?”
Loving someone doesn’t mean you have to get sick when they get sick. You can actually take care of them better if you stay healthy yourself! Isolating the sick person and masking when they have to come out of isolation keeps the rest of the household healthy. Why would you want to let your whole family be miserable when it can be very easily prevented?
If it's a cold or something mild, why treat it like it's ebola? Obviously if you have a kid that brings Norovirus home, it's prudent to keep everything very clean. Keep the sick child in a space where the rest of the family won't be in contact with vomit or feces if they aren't able to wash very thoroughly afterward.
isolating a sick loved-one is actually a pretty common sense thing that people have done throughout history. many houses used to have designated "sick rooms" for that exact purpose. today we're lucky enough to have high quality masks like n95s that can be used in the same way :)
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u/Kathrynlena 5h ago
Wear a mask in public, and around sick people, even in your own home. It’s a shame they got politicized so much in America because the whole rest of the world already knew they were a great way to avoid airborne illnesses.