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:

• 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.’

• 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.

• 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.