Masking

 Herself speaks.

At the office where I work, virtually everyone (with one exception - an individual who appears to have anti-vaccine leanings, as far as I know, and yes, I am feeling unfairly judgmental based on knowing that the individual voted for The Orange Turnip) is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. That's great! And it means that the mask mandate we had in the office has been lifted for all except the one unvaccinated person. That's... great? 

I'm not particularly happy with the situation. There are COVID variants, un-fully-vaccinated household members and people whom others visit, breakthrough infection that could be passed around, and other factors that make wearing a mask still a good idea. We read the CDC guidelines, and yes, they've lifted a lot of the restrictions. Does that make things safe? or just relatively safe? For us, yes. For others, who knows?

I spoke with another coworker at the time the intraoffice mask mandate was lifted, and we concurred that we would still be wearing masks. And so we did, for a few weeks. Though yesterday, as I was passing by a conference room (with my mask on my face), I saw that particular coworker having a meeting well within six feet (in fact, within an arm's-reach) of an unknown individual. And the coworker was not masked. 

I was weirdly bothered. 

I suppose it was safe for the coworker, who is fully vaccinated. Yet I couldn't help but think about those who are in very close contact with that coworker -- the coworker's spouse and household members, for example. What risk was there to them? Small, but not irrelevant, risk, given breakthrough infections. How trustworthy was the unknown individual? Well, nobody really knows. 

Am I legitimately concerned about germs? Or rather, is it more of a discomfort with physical proximity? In this Pandemic Age, that seems at first glance to be a fair concern. Or is it just a projection of my specific inner feelings of discomfort regarding physical proximity with other people in general? 

And where did this very unwelcome inner sense of, people are uncomfortable with/repelled by being in physical proximity to me, come from? Is it ridiculous? Or am I picking up some kind of low-level but clearly perceptible disgust from other people? It's not pandemic-related, because it has existed in low-grade form prior to The Plague. What is this? 

I don't know. I am not sure I want to dive into this feeling. Perhaps if I ignore it long enough, it'll go away. 

Maybe a hug or two would help. 

At any rate, I will still have my mask on in the immediate future. Because.

(Sign found here: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/04/us/social-distancing-florida-alligator-trnd/index.html)