How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?

For most of the world, COVID is a distant memory. A bad one, with recollections of mobile morgues on wheels, lockdowns, and mask mandates in all public places.

This is an interesting prompt, to be sure. For most of the world, COVID is a distant memory. A bad one, with recollections of mobile morgues on wheels, lockdowns, and mask mandates in all public places. The urge to “return to normal”, spurred on by the restless cog in the machine of capitalism, was too strong for most to resist. Governments, local, state, and federal (I’m speaking in the context of the United States, which is the only context I feel comfortable speaking in), at the urging of powerful business interests, were quick to drop even the most rudimentary of precautions.

The normalcy bias spread faster than even COVID-19 itself, for people don’t like to confront or accept changes to the established design, especially not for extended periods of time.

The normalcy bias spread faster than even COVID-19 itself, for people don’t like to confront or accept changes to the established design, especially not for extended periods of time. But here’s the harsh truth: Nothing will ever be the same. Most people have not made the connection between the return (resurgence?) of illnesses like tuberculosis and measles and the immune dysregulation that can result from just one COVID infection, let alone multiple infections. Almost everyone I know is sick now multiple times a year, often multiple times a month. And this constant illness has been normalized. People think it’s totally normal now for their kids to have COVID, RSV, flu, and colds right back-to-back. Someone I know in my own family has three elementary school age children who had all four of the above mentioned in January and February of this year alone.

Almost everyone I know is sick now multiple times a year, often multiple times a month. And this constant illness has been normalized.

I personally have only been sick one time with a communicable disease caused by airborne pathogens since 2020. In 2022, I became sick with COVID and proceeded to have an onslaught of new medical conditions in the aftermath of the initial infection. Asthma, which I never had before. High blood pressure, which I had never had before. In fact, prior to my COVID infection, my blood pressure always stayed within 5 points of normal. After COVID, my blood pressure got so high that I was in danger of having a stroke. A lot of people, in fact I would venture to guess that the majority of people, don’t know that COVID is a vascular disease. It’s also oncogenic, meaning that it can cause people who get it to develop various cancers later down the road. It’s not just a cold. It’s a BSL (Biosafety Level) 3 pathogen, which means that it is classified, along with tuberculosis, Yellow fever virus, and others, as a microorganism capable of causing serious and potentially lethal disease in human beings.

After COVID, my blood pressure got so high that I was in danger of having a stroke.

So what have I done to avoid becoming sick? Masking. N95 masks don’t fit the shape of my face well, so even though those are among the best particulate respirators, I wear KN95 masks whenever I’m in public settings. I work in the public, and as a bookseller, not in the medical field, so this means I am masked almost all of the time. I also use antiviral nose sprays and CPC mouthwashes.

Now, I’m not perfect. For almost four years, I went largely without dining indoors or socializing any at all. I did it to keep myself and my family safe, to keep from becoming further disabled by another infection. I can’t tell you the mental toll it takes or that it took being the only person willing to do something as simple as covering my face for that long, and I’m still doing it most of the time. I occasionally eat out with friends now, in lower risk situations where it’s not as busy and I’m fairly certain they’ve not been exposed to any airborne illnesses.

Some people might judge me for that, and that’s okay. I know that with the world we live in now, every time I go unmasked in a public place is a risk I’m taking. I hate that I have to frame it that way. I hate that to people who gave up any and all precautions years ago, I’m seen as hysterical and a hypochondriac. I hate that to people who haven’t taken any risks at all, who have remained completely steadfast in their anti-infection controls, I am seen as a hypocrite and a coward for making the decision to occasionally go unmasked now. As a pathological people pleaser, there’s no way for me to win. And that’s okay.

For my part, I’m going to continue to mask 99% of the time, but I’m going to try not to judge myself for that 1% when I don’t. I’m going to continue using antiviral nose sprays and CPC mouthwashes when I do have possible exposures. When at all possible, I’m going to avoid large indoor gatherings even when I am masked because one-way masking, while it has been effective for me, is not completely foolproof if there’s a high enough viral load in the air.

The life we had prior to 2020 isn’t coming back, and if some people would mask at least some of the time, at the very least in healthcare settings and in grocery stores, I believe we would see far fewer people being constantly sick. What I guess I’m saying is we need more participation from the general public, because the number of people who are still taking COVID seriously are fewer and fewer as time goes on. It would also help if businesses and governments would commit resources to cleaner indoor air, with next-generation filtration and ventilation systems that would reduce the amount of respiratory droplets and pathogens in the air.

Your health is a precious thing, and so much more fragile than people realize.

Everything we do or don’t do has consequences, and I can only hope that my efforts have made a difference. I know they have in my own life, because no one in my household has had a viral infection of any kind, at least to my knowledge, in more than three years. Your health is a precious thing, and so much more fragile than people realize. Take care of yourselves. You only get one life.

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