People when they talk privately to me (since they know I'm #COVID19 cautious): “Oh, we take it seriously and are being careful.”
The same people on social media: “Here I am a crowded concert, crowded bar, crowded restaurant, at a conference, and traveling without a mask!”
I can't tell if people tell me what they think I want to hear or self-deluding themselves into thinking that being safe a couple days a week means they can do high-risk activities the other couple days.
Or, "I don't understand how I got COVID. I only take off my mask when I eat inside of restaurants."
I think it's self-delusion, or just an astonishing lack of critical thinking, personally, but I've been told by multiple people that it goes back to the early days of the pandemic where the NYT(I believe David Leonhardt pushed this idea, off the top of my head) published the idea of risk estimations where you kept a bank of points that you used up with each thing you did in public. Eating in restaurants used up some of your points, grocery shopping, etc. The idea being that if you kept your points low enough, somehow you'd be forever safe. A lot of people seem stuck on early 2020 advice.
People really suck at figuring out that doing something that has a, say, 10% chance of going wrong over and over will eventually catch up with you. See: Long COVID.
I'll eat in less crowded restaurants at off times when COVID in wastewater is lower. When it's higher, I avoid restaurants. Some people are all-or-nothing, but while COVID cautious, I'm also an extrovert. I think all-or-nothing advice to people only encourages them to crack and abandon all caution. For me, it's about mitigating risks, not eliminating them, since true elimination requires extreme and unpleasant measures.
Pretty sure I got sick from what should have been a lower risk activity- some family visiting, well ventilated with CR boxes. Because my sister came saying her kid had just gotten over a cold- she had a little cough, I should have put on a mask. I will in the future. Don’t think it was covid but tests could be wrong.
Every respiratory illness I get sticks around for a month.
I wear a mask around others even though they say they don’t care if I get them sick.
@BE @augieray It's almost like you have to take off your mask to eat the food? 🤷🏼♀️