I started preparing in January. Bought my first ever car to avoid public transit, and bought emergency food and masks etc too. By the time China closed down Wuhan, I thought it was high double digits that a pandemic was inevitable. By the time the Diamond Princess happened and so many people on the ship got infected, it seemed likely that it was airborne (and the fact that SARS spread that way was an extra data point). I encouraged my SO to fly over because I didn’t think we’d be able to meet that year otherwise. (She ended up coming, but we were about a week too late for cohabitation, and she had to return.)
That being said, it’s still too early to stop wearing masks in most of the world. In most of the US, too, if that’s your metric. Even if prevalence is low where you are right now, depending on how many people are no longer (as) susceptible, you can still get huge numbers again. More than half of your states have less than 50% of the population vaccinated. Not to mention the variants that are much better at spreading compared to the baseline (which was relatively high to start with), which have an even higher herd immunity threshold.
As for me, I’m in Belgium, and I am still double masking. We’re starting to see another increase. Both the first and second derivatives are positive. But the government says it’s okay to do basically everything again so people are essentially acting as if COVID doesn’t exist. I haven’t even eaten in a restaurant since March last year.
I started preparing in January. Bought my first ever car to avoid public transit, and bought emergency food and masks etc too. By the time China closed down Wuhan, I thought it was high double digits that a pandemic was inevitable. By the time the Diamond Princess happened and so many people on the ship got infected, it seemed likely that it was airborne (and the fact that SARS spread that way was an extra data point). I encouraged my SO to fly over because I didn’t think we’d be able to meet that year otherwise. (She ended up coming, but we were about a week too late for cohabitation, and she had to return.)
That being said, it’s still too early to stop wearing masks in most of the world. In most of the US, too, if that’s your metric. Even if prevalence is low where you are right now, depending on how many people are no longer (as) susceptible, you can still get huge numbers again. More than half of your states have less than 50% of the population vaccinated. Not to mention the variants that are much better at spreading compared to the baseline (which was relatively high to start with), which have an even higher herd immunity threshold.
As for me, I’m in Belgium, and I am still double masking. We’re starting to see another increase. Both the first and second derivatives are positive. But the government says it’s okay to do basically everything again so people are essentially acting as if COVID doesn’t exist. I haven’t even eaten in a restaurant since March last year.
Wait, you can’t get N95 or KN95 there?
Belgium is in Europe, so there won’t be N95 masks but FFP-2 or KN95 and you can order those on Amazon.
I’m wearing a KN95 with a cloth mask on top.