You may want to consider these N95 masks for comfort:
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/v000057779/
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/p/d/v100553014/
I found the first one of these to be better fitting and more comfortable than one of the KF94 masks mentioned a few posts ago. But it does take a bit longer to put on with the two head straps instead of the ear loop straps (but then the head straps may help keep it in place better).
Except if you are fully vaccinated with one infection and have long covid. NOT FUN.
I am so happy to be home. But I was in the hospital for 8 full days. And I am still on a ton of meds and will be on more; a zillion visits to the pulmonologist, have to do a special kind of PT only available at the hospital, etc. etc. Not fun.
Iâm so glad you are back home but so sorry that you are going through this. Just awful 
I sympathize and am happy you are feeling better. I have developed post Covid POTS and so far have been off work for 5 weeks. (I was fully vaccinated and bolstered) itâs really bothersome to hear people trivialize Covid as just a cold.
Covid isnât just a cold. But the symptoms can be so mild it can be mistaken for a cold, and I think thatâs where the danger lies. People wonât know to look for the long-term conditions it can cause because they probably wonât even know they had it.
But if they listen and are not in denial, they can know right now that covid is dangerous and life-altering in a not-insignificant percentage of people who get it.
Someone upthread said that with hybrid immunity you are so unlikely to catch covid (I, myself, have not read the data on that). But how do you get hybrid immunity? You have to get covid â and risk long covid!
See Inside Medicine. What Are You Seeing? [COVID-19 medical news] - #5914 by ucbalumnus and the paper linked from it at https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00801-5/fulltext .
You obviously do not want to get COVID-19 intentionally. However, lots of people did get COVID-19 despite trying to avoid getting it. For those who had both vaccines and infection (i.e. hybrid immunity) in their history, the risk of getting COVID-19 is generally significantly lower than vaccine-only, infection-only, or none. Of course, the risk is not zero, and some unlucky people get it again, and should probably consider themselves to be at elevated risk in the future.
Also, the long COVID risk if you do get COVID-19 appears to be significantly lower after vaccination than without vaccination. My observations on the matter were posted at Who here has not gotten COVID? Who has long COVID? - #104 by ucbalumnus .
Thank you. I will read those. Itâs not that I donât believe it, I just hadnât read it yet.
My only point is that getting covid is not nothing. Relaying to others that âsymptoms were so mild it was like a cold so itâs not a big deal to get covid and therefore why maskâ is a red herring. Because the acute symptoms are not the point.
My exact thoughts.
Actually, I think itâs cognitive dissonance in the true, original sense of the theory. The starting thoughts are âI donât want to wear a maskâ and âI want to eat indoors in a crowded restaurant.â But you canât follow through with those desires AND ALSO appreciate the not-insignificant risks of long covid, post-covid blood clots, and post-covid heart disease without angst. Therefore, just minimize or deny the risk â and voilĂ ! â you have no angst about skipping the mask or eating indoors.
For those of you who are masking seriously, and aware of the serious long term threats from covid, how are you preparing and what precautions will you be taking to send your kids to college? Private room/bathroom? Living off campus? Gap year?
(whenever I pose questions like this, people will invariably say that Iâm kidding myself if I think my kid will mask as seriously as I think. She is very aware of the potential debilitating effects of covid and takes it very seriously on her own. She has voluntarily left places that felt too crowded even outside with her mask, and decides on her own to not attend things she thinks will be unsafe. I know she will take whatever precautions we can manage to work out, very seriously.)
Donât forget the actual college classes â if an in-person class is in a packed indoor classroom with poor ventilation, that means an unavoidable potential exposure for any student who is highly concerned about potential exposure.
Beyond the classes, a student who is highly concerned about potential exposure may find that typical high density frosh dorm housing at residential colleges to be less than optimal, since many other students will be less concerned. The main mitigating factor is that many of them probably have already been infected, so they have some immunity (not 100% of course); if the college draws students from a vaccine-favorable area, that bumps up the population immunity level some more. Unfortunately, the level of population immunity is not high enough compared to the R0 of the Omicron variants to give herd immunity.
Living off campus or attending college as a commuter would likely limit frosh year socialization with other students. A gap year would just push the decision on these matters back a year, so it would only be advantageous from this standpoint if there were a medical breakthrough on COVID-19 (e.g. if a nasal spray or pan-coronavirus or other new vaccine were extremely highly effective at stopping any infection) during the gap year that became available to the concerned student.
You keep saying this. Yes covid is dangerous and life altering but only for a very small percentage of people. As Iâve said before, most people I know have had covid and no one has had it severely or has had long covid. The odds look pretty good from where Iâm sitting. Yeah, I could lose the covid lottery, but thatâs how I look at it. The possibility of a very bad outcome are so small that Iâm not going to alter my life at all in order to avoid it.
Would you alter your life at all if you got it so that others wouldnât get it? Would you test? Would you isolate until you test negative? Would you mask around vulnerable friends or loved ones? If you had to go to the doctorâs and knew you were positive? If you had to go to the pharmacy to pick up your Paxlovid prescription (that is, if you would even want it)?
Just wondering how far you would go to not âalter your life at allâ so that others wouldnât get it.
If I was sick I would test. I would not continue testing til negative. Iâd stay in until I felt better. I do not mask around vulnerable loved ones. My elderly mother has leukemia and she has the same attitude as me. She does not mask at all either. All doctors here require masks, so when I go to the doctors I wear one because I must. I would not call my doctor because I had a positive test and would not bother with Paxlovid.
@me29034 I appreciate and recognize your honesty to those question prompts.
The fact is, the same prompts could be given to 20 different people (or 200 or 2000) and you will receive a very mixed bag. A whole bag of variety of yes and no to each question. Some will test till negative, some not. Same persons may pick up their own paxlovid, while some may not and some wonât even consider taking it.
The categories of who does what when are going to be there - for the duration. A good portion of the population was very good for a long while - 1 year? 2 years? Masking, vaccinating, keeping 6 ft distance, washing hands, etc.
Now, March 2023, people have trickled down into different categories of engagement with Covid responsibility. You can drive yourself crazy weighing what is right or wrong. For the most part, minds arenât going to change a lot for increased caution/responsibility - unless something unfortunate happens - like a new wave - or sadly someone personal becoming sick.
This mentality may be hard to grasp. I donât think there is a lot of room for minds to be changed at this time. People have filtered their Covid practices into something that works for them (like it or not) and thatâs where they will stay.
Signed, someone who masks at work, would test, would test till negative, will still avoid indoor high volumes of people especially unmasked but doesnât mask in general in public anymore, who would not go to the doctor if negative and would consider Paxlovid but would aim for someone to pick it up for me.
Iâve been wrestling with posting on this topic.
Itâs very difficult but itâs also increasingly difficult to avoid covid unless you decide to become a hermit who doesnât have obligations such as work.
In mid 2022, my daughter was wearing a mask to work. Because she had cancer and had surgery scheduled. But her job is in person, couldnât be remote. And she was planning on taking leave which ultimately became lengthy.
Surgery was on Monday. On Friday she tested positive for covid. She was wearing a mask but her co worker was not, just back from his European vacation where rates were rising.
My daughter did everything she could. She also did everything she could not to get cancer either. A vegetarian health instructor on the side. It is a genetic mutation from her father. So sometimes you can do it all, but things happen.
My husband and I were very careful. But unfortunately we decided to go out to dinner with a friend. Canât eat with masks. Caught covid.
You can do everything right. Except be a complete and utter hermit. Things happen. Like get cancer or an autoimmune disease. And being a hermit doesnât help that. Yup there is the possibility of long covid. But at what cost? Wouldnât want long covid, just like I donât want my kid to have cancer. Or my husband having an autoimmune disease.
But we do what we can. Like be vaccinated. And get the boosters.
Thank you for your honesty.
I will admit to not being as careful as before. H still masks at work all the time. I spend most of my day alone in an office with far less exposure to people than my prior job. I typically donât mask at work now. Iâve resumed attending church in person, but still mask. Grocery shopping or Costco? I mask.
Weâre both vaccinated and boosted, as are D and SIL. Theyâve both had it, we havenât. I was sick earlier this year and tested continuously, but it wasnât Covid. Several of my coworkers arent vaxxed, their choice. When I was sick, I masked. They felt no need.
Our transmission rates are low right now. But we also have a large group of residents who donât think Covid is real.
I am not as careful as I was last year, but H & I still do take precautions when we feel that it is prudent. The most important precaution we take is wearing a KN94 mask when we visit MIL in assisted living. It is ârequired,â but I have noticed that we are the only ones wearing them other than staff. My SIL visits her every day and never wears a mask. We canât control anyone else, but we can control ourselves. We go to comedy shows, but we go on slow nights (Thursday) or ask to be seated in less-crowded areas. We avoid crowded places for the most part, and we wear masks in public when we feel itâs a good idea (like around the holidays or in certain stores). We donât take Covid lightly, but in all honesty, we are doing more in public as time goes on.
If someone asks us to wear a mask, we will do it without complaint. Itâs not a big imposition, and it is not taking away my freedoms (I can choose not to go to the place or see the person).
I was pretty careful until after vaccines came available. I briefly hoped enough people would get vaccinated and Covid would be stopped in its tracks - how naive that seems now! - but once omicron and delta happened and it became clear that Covid was never going away I mostly gave up. I can take precautions in hopes of defeating something but if itâs not going away Iâm not willing to live my life like that forever. So Iâm back mostly to normal, albeit with the consciousness that life is a little more dangerous than it was in 2019. We rarely mask even on planes, trains and other crowded places. We see friends, family, etc. I do work meetings in person. It actually feels great - Iâm a partial introvert but really missed seeing people in person. I literally cried the first time I went yo see a play in the theater about a year ago (admittedly still wearing masks then). My introverted daughter is so much happier living her life, seeing her people. So is my elderly mom - she doesnât go out much but sees her friends for lunch (at someoneâs house), attends concerts (she does mask there, but most donât). When I got sick, I tested and tried to stay home until I tested negative (it took freaking forever so I did drive down to take some stuff to my daughter around day 8 but stayed outside and masked. Also ran in the store very briefly, masked, on about day 9 or 10 and stayed distanced even though Iâm pretty sure I was no longer contagious). I asked permission to work from home the week before I went on vacation and limited other contact and voluntarily stayed out of the office (I can work from home although some in office time is usually expected) for 5 days after returning from vacation to avoid infecting others just in case I had picked something up. I mask when asked but not otherwise. Bottom line is I recognize a small extra bit of danger in life now but since itâs not going away Iâve decided I just need to live with it. Car accidents scare me too, but I still drive. I feel terrible for those who have long Covid (or other post-viral syndromes - this isnât new) but of the people I know in real life - almost all of whom have had Covid - only one had long-lasting symptoms (past one month, all are vaccinated). Plus a few more from CC. I worry of course, but have decided to move on. I think a lot feel the same way. Honestly climate change, politics and war in Europe keep me up at night more than Covid.