I still wear a mask after all these years.
Now, I realize it’s 2023. I really don’t hear about COVID-19 on the news anymore, and a lot of people are not wearing their masks nowadays. With the holidays coming, we are probably planning to celebrate it with family and friends.
What scares me is that we have forgotten what this virus did to the more-than-a-million Americans who have died over these three years.
And this fact should not have the lifespan of a meme.
At this point, I might just be afraid of COVID.
I consider myself to be healthy for my age range, and if I caught COVID, I’m sure I would survive. But I have heard one-too-many stories about how bad symptoms can get from people outside my circle and from those close to me.
I’m not the only one feeling this way. A few questions that are frequently asked on Google are, “When do you get back to normal after COVID,” “How do you get rid of COVID fatigue” and “Should I still worry about COVID.” I worry about dealing with Long COVID, especially when I do a lot of physically and mentally demanding activities.
Still, I’ve had friends and family make remarks about wearing a mask. They say things like “they’ll never see my face” or “how masks never really work.”
But, so far, it’s done me well. I have been in compromising situations in classrooms where I have gotten the dreaded “Potential COVID-19 Exposure” email and around people indoors who later tested positive. And while I regularly wash my hands and sanitize, in all these times, I believe the mask has protected me.
There were still a few scares I’ve experienced. I wore my mask out of an abundance of caution for the people around me. Now—as I did in those moments—I have no idea if I will have symptoms or be asymptomatic, but the last thing I want is to expose the people around me to COVID.
I would not want to think that I was the cause of someone’s decline of health, or even worse, a death of a colleague or loved one.
For that reason, I still wear a mask.