I look at this graph and think to myself "if there is more covid around now than there was in January 2021, shouldn't my behavior continue to be the same as then?"

Sure, there's been vaccinations and boosters (although rates of people getting them are depressingly not high), but that doesn't prevent long covid. My understanding is maybe it helps some but not significantly? Sure, there's also paxlovid/antiviral availability now, but am I really going to bank on a 25% reduction in long covid symptoms??

I've got enough chronic mysterious health conditions as it is!! I've had an eight year long tension headache and am exhausted and mysteriously fatigued all the time. Besides, I am old and tired as it is. I don't need any extra bonus health conditions or to give them to others.

I wasn't able to dig up good numbers on this, but I do know that there have been high excess "non-covid" deaths in the US in the past few years. I don't think it's fair to assign that to covid directly or indirectly, but my bias is certainly that there is likely undercounting of covid deaths.

I guess it's just I see drastic changes in behavior and attitude from other people, and I don't understand what has changed over that same time period to cause that. (And cynically, maybe the answer is just that nothing has changed, but maybe I am missing something too?)

Let me maybe talk about where I'm at these days, airquotes covid protocol-wise. There's not really a way to rationally be like "is this enough" or "is this ok", but I feel like maybe talking about what I'm doing would be helpful for me at least, and maybe others. Personally, I feel like this conversation is very elided in my personal circles for whatever reason.

Possibly it's because I've had so much disconnect with friends where I realize that my "taking covid seriously" was at a vastly different end of the scale. I strongly suspect that some of you will read this and feel the same about my own behavior. But in that vein, I would honestly take any feedback of "X is probably not a risk" or "X is more of a risk and you might want to be concerned" thoughts if they're coming from a good place.

Mask on inside public spaces: 100%. My biggest exposures are grocery store (30-45min/week), allergy shot (45min/month), drug store (30min/month) and public transit (although BART has good air filtration imo). Definitely no eating or drinking inside.

Mask on outside: 95%. Probably ~once a week I will have a coffee outside at a coffee shop with low numbers of people around and good air flow or ~once a month we will eat outside at a restaurant (with nobody else around).

I need to step up from the kn94s I've been wearing, although I think they fit me well.

We've got 2-3 sets of friends (I refuse to use the word pod here) that we see inside without masks: My partner has a once a week knitting friendtime; we have friends with a kid we see ~once a month; I've been doing outdoors yoga with another friend (who lives upstairs from previously mentioned friends so additional risk probably low). I think they all take covid more seriously than most (e.g. masking) although I think they have more exposure than we do.

My partner and I both try not to fly frivolously. We have flown twice since 2020 (me once, partner twice) to visit his family, and my partner's second trip was not over a holiday. I know there's air filtration on planes, but the anecdotal number of stories I know of folks getting covid from flights is a lot. Also, personally speaking I feel like if I had covid and didn't know, taking a flight would be one of the worst ways to spread it to a bunch of people?

I haven't gotten a haircut since 2020 (probably will just cut the length myself soon) and have shelved a bunch of other things like tattoos, acupuncture, swimming that felt like risks that I didn't want. I find it very hard to evaluate these sorts of things. I miss swimming so much but indoor pools seem suspect. No conventions, even if I miss WisCon dearly.

I don't test regularly, but I do test whenever my body feels out of whack. (I feel like I have many checkboxes for covid symptoms at all times.) I had some home molecular tests that old work provided (so expensive) and have been using rapid tests in the last six months as needed. Always negative so far, but I know that's mostly luck and privilege at this point and not some purity point.

Mostly I'm not sure what metrics I would even use to decide to change this behavior. Maybe if covid rates changed? Maybe if better air filtration in public places became normalized?

I think I'm just resigned to continuing as-is indefinitely, at this point.

@picklish I dunno, I feel like I'm far more cautious than most but also less cautious than I should be. Like it's probably not going to make much difference, but what I'm doing is barely an inconvenience anyway.

I've been going to conventions that have mask+vaccine policies (but those are *also* limited by me budgeting my flights).