Last week, my husband and I discussed how masking amid the pandemic has changed our perspectives on public health and safety for good. “I’ll probably wear a mask every flu season,” I said, noting that mask-wearing is customary in other parts of the world as is. (See: The episode of Sailor Moon when Sailor Mars arrives to fight in a mask because she has a cold.) He concurred, adding that we hadn’t had a cold or the flu in over a year.
A few days later, on April 27, the Center of Disease Control (CDC) updated its guidance regarding masking outdoors, indicating that fully vaccinated and inoculated people can walk, run and socialize in small groups without masks while outside. Almost immediately, states announced they would ease outdoor mask mandates to comply with said guidance, including New York, where I reside. Yet despite being fully inoculated and a big fan of science and the CDC I struggle getting myself to go maskless outside yet. It simply feels too strange, even if