I’m married to a healthcare worker. Early on I understood me living it up like others around me would get my S/O sick as well as her immunocompromised patients, putting her job in danger.

And over the years I’ve seen the way people living it up around me have dealt with the consequences. And with every new research regarding long covid it becomes increasingly obvious trying to not get sick is the way to go.

another reason I still take covid19 seriously: in Puerto Rico we are losing specialist doctors to the USA constantly. Not that long ago a friend had a heart attack episode. The appointment for a cardiologist was one year later.

In some places people have to drive for hours just to get an appointment. The queues start at 3am sometimes and the doctor’s offices open at 9am. I wish I were joking or exaggerating.

(1) Above all, it's because I've never been invested in "normal". Everyone around me seems to have a preconceived idea of what they and their immediate environment are "supposed" to be like, and their brains blow fuses when they contemplate any fundamental change to that for any length of time. So they deny or minimize anything that would require such change. (And where #COVID19 is concerned, minimization is such a violent distortion of reality that it is effectively denial.)

(2) Also because, while I'm not an extreme introvert — I can easily enjoy interacting with other people face to face — I don't NEED that. Most other people seem to see isolation, or alienation from others — being thought "weird" and repellent by others — as the ultimate horror. My feeling is that if others don't like me, it's principally their loss, not mine.

Be careful with anything novel.

Nothing since then has made me change my mind.

Reading the responses here...man, you guys are my people.

For myself, when asked by people I don't know well, the reason I'll give is that my partner has MS and is on immunosuppressives. I've got to be real careful not to get her sick. This reason is true, but it's not all.

Really, even if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't want to get anybody else sick either. Even a stranger. Its been surreal to realize that very few people give a shit about others at even this very basic level.

Then, underneath all this, is a sort of value I hold: I aspire to be a thoughtful person. I think its admirable to be adaptable. To be able to change ones mental model when presented with new information. Like a global airborne pandemic, for example.

@pandemicene @askazero

In the beginning, we had very young children and lived in a different country to our families, so in the first instance in 2020, we didn't know how we'd care for them if we got sick and in the worst case, orphaned them. Then we continued to stay updated on the evolving research and we felt Iike we were entering some kind of dystopian hell-hole as the governments abandoned protections. We'd generally trusted that the government basically had our best interests in mind, but not anymore. So we took "personal responsibility" and now, we keep going as more evidence emerges. We also enjoy not being sick with any kind of virus. And I also rest well at night knowing that I haven't infected, disabled or killed anyone.

Also, we have to avoid the brain fog - One of us needs to work for money, and the other of us needs to home school the kids, to give them the healthiest start.

Edited slightly because I read it a second time and struggled with some grammar, tense changes and general errors

The two main factors that made me take covid seriously were:

1. I had preexisting health concerns, and didn't want to make them worse.

2. I've always been a bit geeky about reading medical information, and by the time that most people around me were abandoning precautions, it was clear to me that covid caused long-term damage to the body.

I have a bachelor's degree in nursing with an emphasis on maternal/ newborn and public health and had planned to get a masters in public health. I read the book The Hot Zone in the 90s and was immediately taken by it. I knew I wanted to be an epidemiologist. I had just moved to Colorado, and there was only one school of public health there. This was before the internet took off, so there were no options except the actual physical schools. Unfortunately, that program lost their accreditation. I had no idea how long it would take, so I got my masters in education instead and became a special education teacher as I had little kids to feed. But my interests in diseases never waned, so I kept track of news stories.

In 2016, I got Mono, which changed my own health drastically. When 2019/2020 rolled around, I was following what was happening in China and knew without a doubt it would be huge and that i didn't want it. I surely did not need another virus on top of what i already had going on. I had a few masks i had purchased for emergency prepping, donated most of them, and started using the ones i had left and sewed my own.

I just haven't stopped because I'm not a dumbshit and because I follow the science the best I can. And it's getting worse, not better. No one listens to me, though, so I'm doing it mostly on my own, which is fine because I'm a bit of a loner, an introvert, and a bonafide weirdo and always have been. Like others, I have never really fit in, first as an immigrant and then because of the other traits.

I still work, and I use filtration and ventilation in my classroom. I got covid last October for the first, and god help me only time, because I let my guard down around my toddler grandson when I was babysitting, and not at school because i use mitigations. I haven't done that again. I'm retiring this summer and that will make it a little easier, except we have a fascist in the WH. I will be moving back to Norway as soon as I sell my house and had hoped to travel back and forth, but now I feel this sense of urgency to get my kids and grandson out because of the fascism, and because all they are doing to stop information and assistance for diseases.

At the start it was the uncertainty about the risk of serious chronic impacts. That became a certainty as we now have mountains of evidence the risk is very substantial.

Believe it or not deep down it's probably because I'm still optimistic about better vaccines and/or therapeutics eventually coming through.

I also suspect I may be a bit less neurotypical than I thought.

We continue to follow the good ol' precautionary principle. It's never seemed like a big ask to just sit still for a bit and wait for more information. This feels key, in retrospect. My specific set of circumstances allowed me to stay open and take in what's happening in real time, in spite of the uncertainty. I realize what a privilege that is.

I became ill in January 2020. Assumed it was a bad flu I'd picked up from a family I was working with. It was awful and symptoms persisted much longer than expected. Once the pandemic was declared in March of that year, I quickly realized what had knocked me down at the beginning of the year was likely Covid.

My health was....wobbly. Navigating health care was...frustrating. Fatigued, I couldn't do much without feeling super depleted. I was then diagnosed with celiac disease and anaphylaxis allergies (quicker than usual because of my own research, persistence and perseverance). I already had asthma, so along with the demands of these new conditions, my health became my biggest priority.

Besides being a confident, practical person with a strong sense of empathy, I have an incredible partner. Not sure how well I'd cope without him.

Alongside the loss and neverending grief, this pandemic has fostered an opportunity for me to see clearer. I've been untangling lies and lots of ignorance. I think differently. My politics have changed. I understand the power in agency. I now view the world through the lens of disability, and it's made me a better human.

Grateful to all of you 😷🫂💝

If I had to make a full list, I would probably start with these:
1) I was able to do the math, and was willing, long before 2020.
2) I read Ontario's SARS Commssion report, and realized Dr. Henry had abandoned the precautionary principle, and was not intrinsicly trustworthy. A whole lot of "two truths and a lie", unfit for office.
3) I learned that humans do not develop any lasting immunity to SARS-nCoV2, so each infection puts your immune system / brain / cardiovascular system / liver / kidneys (and so on (and on and on)) in harm's way.

I was able to understand that public health messaging was not directed at supporting public health, but rather brr "Line Go Up."

And yeah, "people like me" has the potential for a lot of axes.

I want to move to the timeline where people smartly wore N95 masks until Covid died off 😔

git switch mask-branch