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People Are Still Wearing Masks in 2025
On any given day, most of us are encountering people who still wear face masks. They don’t seem to care whether or not the pandemic is essentially over. For some reason, or for multiple reasons, they continue to wear masks, not just indoors but outdoors, too. A person can’t even go to the grocery store without seeing people wearing masks.
Are those people who wear masks just living in fear, or do they have a reasonable explanation for wearing them?
Besides being at high risk, such as living with cardiovascular disease, pregnancy, obesity or diabetes, one blogger, who is also a mental health professional, suggests there are a multitude of reasons for people to continue to wear masks; I list a few of them here:
Maybe they do not personally have any of these risk factors, but someone they care about and spend time with does, and they are trying to protect their children, family, partner(s), friends, coworkers, parents, church members, classmates, teammates, patients, constituents, or other community members.
Maybe they live with or recently had contact with someone who has been sick, and understand they could be carrying that illness but don’t want to spread it to others.
Maybe they realize many illnesses, including norovirus, influenza and 49% of COVID infections, can occur without any symptoms, and they know that infectious diseases still spread even without symptoms or before symptoms develop – so they don’t assess whether they are ill or infectious to others based on how they feel, especially at a time when multiple viruses are running rampant.
So, the health protection aspect of wearing masks may apply to many people in the population. Here is one example:
When federal health officials recently announced that fully vaccinated people no longer have to wear masks in most situations, Jaz Johnson was among those who kept hers on.
Johnson, 46, of Kansas City, Missouri, has received both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, but she has no desire to go maskless. For the past year, Johnson has avoided the colds and flu she normally gets. So has her 95-year-old grandmother, who lives with her.
Other people, consciously or not, may be choosing to hide behind their masks:
As mask mandates ease across the country, many people are finding that their affinity for face coverings extends beyond health reasons. Even with no requirement to wear their masks, some people are continuing to do so — having come to appreciate the reprieve they provide from stifling social expectations while out in public.
These mask-wearers say they see a multitude of benefits to covering up. No one can tell you to smile when you don’t feel like it. It gives you a break from putting on makeup. And it provides a degree of anonymity.
‘It’s exhausting having to put on this smiling, very calm, brave face,’ said Cassidy, 35, of Lake Tahoe, Nevada, who asked to be identified by first name only for privacy.
A Navy veteran, Cassidy has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and agoraphobia and said masks feel like a ‘shield’ that prevent uncomfortable interactions while running errands: ‘I can absorb the environment in a much more controlled manner without having to think about what my face is doing, and having to think about someone seeing my face.’
Essentially her mask provides her with a protective barrier that shields her from situations that cause her to be uncomfortable.
But some hospitals, based on new information released, are choosing extreme caution regarding mask-wearing:
With two states updating their guidelines this week [Jan. 2025] as parts of the U.S. confront what has been described a ‘quad-emic,’ mandatory masking in some circumstances has returned in eight states.
Duke Health in North Carolina and Mass General Brigham in Massachusetts this week updated masking and visitor guidelines. The two additions now bring the total to eight states that are requiring or strongly encouraging masking indoors following Wisconsin, California, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and New York.
The World Health Organization is also climbing on the bandwagon of caution when it comes to wearing masks. In one article, they address many questions or doubts that people have about continuing to wear masks. In the lead-in to the article, they made the following statement:
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In May 2023, the WHO announced that COVID-19 was no longer a ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern,’ which characterizes the initial phase of a pandemic. However, the WHO has never ended the pandemic, and has repeatedly cautioned not to speak of COVID-19 in the past tense. It stated on December 31, 2024 that ‘the global public health risk associated with COVID-19 remains high.’
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New variants continue to emerge, and the virus is still causing significant illness and death around the world, even if hospitalizations aren’t at the peak they were before.
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Deciding whether to wear a well-fitted respirator mask (N95/FFP2 or better) indoors is about limiting the spread of a virus that hasn’t vanished. Just because the emergency has passed doesn’t mean the risk is gone.
Ultimately, all of us must make our own choices about wearing masks or not. I believe that some people wear them out of irrational fear or virtue signaling. Others may have auto-immune conditions that put them at risk.
But I hope that every person who is a normal, healthy person, will not wear the mask regularly. It creates a barrier between you and those people whom you encounter, and you might find yourself hiding behind it, isolating yourself from others.
Instead, let the world see who you are.
Published in Healthcare
If those issues occupy a significant percentage of your mental throughput, I’m more concerned with allowing you to operate a motor vehicle.
Of course, one drawback to continual mask-wearing is that it would block the normal passing-around of occasional virii that helps develop a widespread immunity. Leading to the likelihood that someone who does catch something, would be affected far more strongly than otherwise would have been the case. (Which would likely then lead to demands for MORE masking…)
But even for people who might be concerned about spreading something to a vulnerable person at home, why would they also wear a mask EVERYWHERE ELSE?
They are ugly.
I do see random shoppers in masks at the grocery but the only mandate I am aware of is at the office of the physical therapist I have been going to. The clinic reinstated a mask mandate last December, but it does not apply in their lobby or at the counter, just in the treatment rooms. Seems silly to me, but whatev.
When I see a person in public (usually in a store) wearing the type of mask that became popular in the Covid panic of 2020, I give that person A LOT of berth. I walk WAY around the person.
I figure that if the person has an arguably legitimate reason to fear for his or her health, then my avoiding them will keep them from having a bout of anxiety due to my proximity.
If they are just paranoid, they’re crazy and I don’t want to be near them.
If I see them in a car (driving alone), I shake my head in disbelief, but figure it makes no difference to me.
As Dr. Battacharya noted early in the Covid panic, there are a couple of hundred airborne pathogens that might make people sick, of which the Covid virus was just one. Although I am somewhat older (almost 69 years old), my internal immune system has worked pretty well (I have rarely gotten sick), so I expect it to deal with one more of the many pathogens it has already dealt with.
Americans rely a lot on facial expressions in communication. Not all cultures are as dependent on facial expression as American culture is. But in America, wearing a face mask inhibits much important communication.
That, too!!
40-50 years ago I went to Japan regularly. I sometimes saw masks on people (just never on children). Never asked any of those people why, although I think I was told it was because they had colds or some such.
But the whole point of the last 5 years is that they don’t really block them, right?
They might be more effective regarding cold/flu/etc than for covid. And they are likely more effective at blocking “output” rather than input. Which means the already-sick people should be wearing them, not the healthy people.
People were occasionally wearing masks in public before the covid epidemic and they will continue to wear them in the future. I wish more people who are contagious with respiratory diseases would do that. Of course, a person doesn’t always know, especially at first. (I tend to stay home when I know I’m likely to be contagious, but it’s easier now that I’m retired.)
In some cultures it seems that people go for the masks more quickly than in others. I think some of them do it because they don’t want to breathe in particulate pollution, but I’ve never stopped anyone to ask, so I’m just guessing.
If any mask wearer wants to ask my opinion about their wearing of masks, they’re welcome to do so. So far nobody has done it. Same for my opinion about their choice of spouse or partner, hair color, and a whole bunch of other things.
I try very hard to stop myself from being utterly disgusted when I see a person wearing a mask indoors, outdoors, or even more amazingly hilarious while alone driving their car. I tell myself they must be ill and do not want to spread their disease to someone else. But I don’t believe myself. To be truthful, I think these people are sick, not with disease, but with mental illness.
I think Japan is a useful example and probably provides some insight.
Masks are still quite common there. This was true before the pandemic; I was there in 2016 and 2019, and it was not at all unusual to see people wearing masks. During the pandemic, mask-wearing became pretty much universal, as it did in many places. But eventually it returned to more or less the same levels it had been at before, at least according to my unscientific observation. I was there in 2023 and 2024, and once again mask-wearing was common but nowhere near universal.
Here’s the thing: I don’t think most of those people are actually living in fear. It’s just that mask-wearing long ago became normalized in Japan, so you can wear a mask if you want to, and nobody is going to stare at you or think you’re weird. If asked, these people might say that they don’t want to spread germs, or that they’re protecting themselves from dust or pollen or whatever. But I don’t think that’s the real reason; I think they’re just more comfortable wearing masks. It’s partly a fashion accessory (sometimes literally) and partly a form of shyness, I’d guess. It’s a comfort for introverts who have to be out in the world.
I think the same thing happened here. Before 2020, you couldn’t wear a mask in public in the U.S. because it wasn’t socially accepted. People would think you were weird. But 2020 normalized it, and now people who like to wear masks are free to do so without social stigma.
I think it’s irrational and silly, but my guess is that’s the reason. It’s not fear, it’s just comforting to some people, and they would have been doing it 10 years ago if it had been socially accepted then.
It’s also possible that people now wear masks in more or less the same proportion as before covid, but it’s just more noticeable now.
Except alone in cars, or on the beach, etc. Those people are sick in the head. :-)
Perfectly understandable if you’re a Chicago Bears fan.
Even setting Covid aside, it seems like a lot of flus originate in East Asia, for some reason. If the people there have epidemics more frequently than we do, it’s natural that they would be more willing to mask up.
I remember a meme that went made the circuit a couple years ago. IIRC, it had an image of Clint Eastwood with the caption “Do those people wearing a mask while driving alone also wear condom when lying alone in bed?”
That reminds me, I need to change the cabin filter (aka mask) in our Subaru.
I remember reading years ago that in Japan, people who were sick would wear a mask to prevent spreading it. I found myself wishing at the time that people here would wear masks when they had colds so they wouldn’t pass them on to the rest of us.
I am in Georgia and very occasionally see someone in public with a mask on. It is so seldom that I assume they are either sick, immune compromised or live with someone who is.
Some years ago, when my uncle was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, his doctor recommended using the grocery store cart-handle wipes to help keep him from picking up viruses, etc. I started doing that, as well as being careful about how I used public door handles. I found I caught fewer colds. However, during the pandemic I only wore masks when forced and never wear them now and have been pretty healthy.
People should feel free to mask except in circumstances of criminal behavior where it hides identities. But I hope they are doing it with knowledge of what it can and cannot not do for net health benefit. I don’t want people donning masks ignorantly — particularly because that ignorance tends to make them feel that others should be doing so as well.
So far, because of doing the research, the one population that has figured out that what really matters is the freedom for individuals to make their own choices, happens to be the good people of Idaho.
Their new law, recently signed by the governor there, makes it impossible for mask mandates, vaccine mandates, or other health mandates to come about. Of course anyone who wants to embrace mask wearing or vaccine-receiving is still free to go full steam ahead with those activities.
I do think that some people are now terrified of the bird flu and are wearing masks because they watch TV too much.
One of the greatest losses we humans have experienced since the Great Plandemic of 2020-2023 is the loss of common sense. People no longer understand that the human immune system is a miracle without compare. Each one of us live inside a body that has umpteen particles of viral and bacterial matter floating around inside us 24/7. For the most part, our bodies readily flush out or otherwise dis-empower the nasties that otherwise would harm us.
It is ironic that one product touted through TV ads as being protective of our health is the spray-able Lysol disinfectant. It contains alkyls, which actually hamper our bodies ability to keep us safe from the virus and bacterial junk inside us. So although technically it does “purify” the air, it is in reality a health hazard.
It is also an irony that people who wear the same mask for more than several hours are actually incubating germs that they are then breathing in.
Great points, Carol Joy. Almost everything has pluses and minuses. We should be responsible for weighing both.
The most common place for me to see masks is travelling at the airport. It seems to be predominately 3 different groups:
The largest group is the young women, followed closely by older folks, and the color coordinated couples a distant third.
It all sounds about right to me, AMD!
What are color coordinated couples?
I hope nobody lets THEM on a plane!
I find a mask very helpful when mowing the lawn or using a leaf blower. Near the end of Covid one helpful neighbor walking by told. me that the government didn’t require that anymore.
I think it’s a fundamental principle of western civilization that we get to see your face.
I’m interested in how it helps? I’m serious. I do both of these activities in my own yard and would find a mask in the heat and humidity of south Texas to be very uncomfortable
Allergies.