don't answer this if you don't want to, but i have a question re: your masking at pride post -- hardly anyone masks where i live, and me alone wearing a mask at the parade won't make it accessible to immunocompromised people. the parade is always pretty small and outdoors, so risk factors aren't exactly through the roof. besides lowering the already-low risk for me and the people adjacent to me, what would choosing to mask do, exactly?
this is a very good and valid question, thanks for asking! having everyone masked would be much preferable, but i think that masking is still worthwhile even when you're the only one doing it. some reasons why:
i think a lot of people, understandably, think in terms of risk level and you have to in some ways. something is relatively low-risk, so we feel more comfortable doing it. this shorthand lets us make decisions without getting too much decision fatigue, or stopping ourselves from being able to do anything. however i think we often don't pull ourselves out of this vague hypothetical into the actual reality of covid. the fact that something overall is lower risk is not going to matter if the person you just talked to for 5 min is infected, or you are asymptomatic and just talked to 20 people. then suddenly, you have covid, or half of those other 20 people have covid, and that's that. it's not really a consolation then that the activity was "low risk." all it takes is ONE person. i think we often don't think about that because frankly it's scary. but covid is scary. i try to use risk levels to determine if i will do something, but not if i will mask.
while high-quality masks give some protection to the wearer for a certain amount of time, masks primarily protect others. it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that you feel fine, but could have covid and be asymptomatic because that's not intuitive! but it's true, you really could be the person at the event who is infected, and if you wear a mask you're helping protect those around you in case you are. obviously it's better if everyone does this, but it's still worthwhile to do what is in your control.
mask-wearing is a collective effort, and although it's true that most likely, other people will not be masking, it's one of those things where it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to operate from that assumption. if everyone assumes that, then nobody will mask even if maybe they would if it was standard practice. it's kind of like voting - "i'm just one vote, it won't matter if i don't vote".. but if 50k people all think that and don't vote, well now it does matter collectively.
you wearing a mask may inspire others to rethink their masking. maybe next week they decide to wear a mask to the doctor's office, not knowing they got infected from this event. but since they wore a mask, the immunocompromised person who sits near them in the waiting room doesn't get infected.
every one of these little instances matters. if you don't get covid, you won't spread it to your family, someone at the grocery store, someone at work. they won't then spread it to their family, their friend, someone in line at the bank. who won't spread it to their family - on and on. it cuts off one line of the circulation. and any one of those people may have otherwise gotten long covid, or been immunocompromised and faced severe illness or death. if it prevents even one of those cases, that changes the entire trajectory of that person's life, even though they'll never know. it matters.
anything you can do to not get covid, or not get covid again, is very important to your health. each time you get covid your chances of developing long covid increase dramatically. this will be around for a while, and we need to be in it for the long haul or we'll most certainly end up with long covid after 3, 5, 10 more years and however many infections that brings. (unless, fingers crossed, we get some new scientific breakthrough) i think people severely underestimate their odds of getting sick, and overestimate their ability to get better. there are currently no approved treatments for long covid. doctors are not like House where they obsess over your case until it's solved and you go home fixed. for the most part, they can do nothing for you. do you have people who could take care of you? can you financially handle cutting to 60% income on disability? can you mentally handle not being able to work, see friends, leave your house, leave your bed? (not saying this in a snippy way, but wanting people to really consider these questions. this is the reality of being sick. non-disabled people can choose to put this out of their minds and pretend it could never happen to them; disabled people have no choice but to live in the reality because it's our life.)