These facts have remained the same since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in fact these protocols predate it because this is basic pandemic preparedness. This is epidemiology 101. Scientists warned us that climate change would cause a rise in pandemic or pandemic-potential frequency of bacterial and viral infections for years before 2020. The 2020-2022 era was when we, globally, were best equipped to eradicate many viruses including flu, cold, measles, and SARS-CoV-2. Due to mask mandates, we made entire strains of influenza go extinct. We had an opportunity at that time to undergo a medical revolution to eradicate disease, create clean, safe hospitals and workplaces with CO2 monitoring, ventilation systems, air purifiers. We were ready to drat and implement wide-sweeping economic reforms, climate change mitigation strategies, and cultural adjustments such as flexible working arrangements, disability accommodations, and a new suite of worker's rights.

We could have had a new normal which built the foundations of a truly just, unified, and socialist society on a global scale. I believe it was possible. For a moment, it was within our grasp. The opportunity was there.

Instead, we got a "new normal" where we had to "live with the virus" and let it infect us, our children, our elderly, and kill everyone that "didn't matter". Our world leaders pushed us back into the offices, cancelled our accommodations, told you all that SARS-CoV-2 (COVID) was "over" because capitalist infrastructure was at risk of breaking down.

And everyone who bought into the ableist, fascist, "back to normal" propaganda has killed that future, along with hundreds and thousands of your fellow humans. If you stopped wearing a respirator at any point in the last 6 years, now's the time to start again. I'm giving you permission, right here and now, to let go of the embarrassment, pick up a mask and keep yourself, your family, and your community safe again.

And the "mild" strains of COVID are not actually milder in the damage they cause, but are more likely to be asymptomatic so that you don't notice you're infected as the spike proteins settle into pockets of your brain and eat the tissue away for months or years. The vaccines developed for SARS-CoV-2, as of Feb 2026, are not good enough to stop the viral spread. They work to reduce the severity of infection so that you won't likely need to be hospitalised. You should get COVID-19 vaccination boosters every 6 months, as the immunity wears off quickly and they don't actually last a full year yet. If you don't have adverse reactions to vaccines, you need to keep up to date with all of yours to reduce the risk of spreading infections to vulnerable people.

Until we get a sterilising vaccine, and the population has a 95% rate of vaccination, you cannot rely on vaccines alone to protect you. What will physically stop airborne viruses? Respirators.

Respirators protect you from inhaling dust, smoke, pollution, pollen, and airborne pathogens. They protect your identity in public, clean the air you breathe, and keep you from spreading airborne diseases to other people, even if you're asymptomatic. The right to clean air is a worker's rights issue as well as a disability rights issue.

Respirators are standard personal protective equipment (PPE). I wore P2 respirators in horticultural and agricultural contexts for years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I wore respirators to protect myself from bacterial and viral infections on farms. From the toxic dust in chicken coops and grain sheds.

I wore masks around sick and elderly people and cancer patients, and in hospitals. Doing so was seen as normal, encouraged, even mandatory, back then, to keep people safe from my germs, well before SARS-CoV-2 existed.

I wore respirators in biology and chemistry labs in high school from 2011-2025. It was perfectly sensible to do. We all did it, it was required, and not only that, we knew the science behind why it was important. The fact that this has been forgotten - no, actively suppressed - since a deadly, global pandemic kicked off in 2020, is deeply concerning. More concerning is how otherwise-sensible, intelligent people have bought this narrative and deliberately memory-holed how things were up to 2019. Our sanitation, pandemic preparedness, and healthcare protections are worse than before, and that's not an accident.

95% of your issues "breathing" with a mask on are psychological, and once you get past the ick factor you will be fine. It's an air filter strapped onto your face, that's all. I can't believe people don't understand this.

I wore P2 respirators to protect my lungs from dust, pollen, and seeds while mowing lawns and trimming hedges. I wore them in >35°C (95°F) weather, in Central Queensland, during summer, while wearing full-sleeved shirts, long pants, and steel toed boots. It was sweaty, and it felt gross, but I could breathe just fine. And if you move outdoors, you can take the mask off, wipe your face, even change to a fresh mask if yours is damp. It's not hard.

At this point, it's not a skill issue - every anti-masker is deliberately avoiding the truth about this. It's weaponised incompetence on a societal scale. You "don't know" how to wear a good mask, and keep your face covered while indoors, and practice social distancing, and going outside to eat, drink, and take your mask off, because you don't want to do that.

Deep down, every anti-masker believes they're special. That's really all it is. You think that the thing that happens to other people isn't going to happen to you. You believe that you can "risk it" because you have some kind of special quality that means you won't catch the virus, and it won't kill or disable you, let alone the people around you. It's not about them anymore, we know you don't care about other people. You think you have some kind of innate quality (you can pretend it's luck and not genetics/health/lifestyle you're thinking of) which means you'll get away without being affected.

Whether you'll acknowledge this is eugenicist from a logical, historical, biological, and political viewpoint, and work on fixing that, well that's up to you. I doubt you will - but you could prove me wrong. Wouldn't that be amazing, to grow and change and make the world a better place because you decided it's worth confronting something awkward and embarrassing within yourself? If we all just stopped putting our comfort first for a moment and treated our health, our community's health, as a right, and a social responsibility for us all to not compromise, we'd change things for the better everywhere.

The pandemic response provided the opportunity for us to implement extremely important reforms and cultural shifts, which would have had a cascading effect in the rest of society. I believe we can still do that, if enough of us try. And we'll have to work even harder at it now, because everyone dropped the ball in 2022, but it's not over yet.