I mean, some people were definitely like that, but I also just saw a lot of people who clearly didn’t understand the concept of the mask. I can only speak for my own country of course, but over here the nay sayers were a very small, yet loud minority, while the vast majority of people did their best to wear the masks. Most of them just hadn’t recieved proper instructions on how to use it.

I was lucky that we have a family member who is a nurse, so in our household, we know how to use the masks correctly, and let me tell you - fucking nobody used the masks correctly. Not even the most vehement mask users who talked about the importance of masks did it correctly. I was shown how to do it by a professional and even I did it wrong multiple times because you just kinda forget when you’re busy, on the go or tired af after a long day, that you are under no circumstances supposed to touch the mask itself. The second you do, you have compromised the effect of the mask and you have contaminated your fingers.

Do you know how many times a day I saw people adjust their masks with their fingers, scratching their face underneath the mask, securing the mask over the nose, reusing the same mask over and over and not disinfect their hands at any point, but scratching and then pick items up at the store and put them down again?

I did it myself. A single mindless moment and you have compromised the effect of the mask. And don’t get me started on the well-meaning souls who decided to sow masks without a clue about filters or anything like that.

This is something I just couldn’t talk with people about during corona because everybody were fucking hysterical about covid. The smallest attempt to have a discussion was seen as suddenly I was an anti vaxxer and a conspiracy theorist, when all I ever said was that I didn’t think the masks worked as well as people thought they did. They definitely had a positive effect on stopping the spreading cobbled with the distancing and the washing of hands. All of that contributed positively to it. But my god. I couldn’t deal with people bearly wearing their masks properly (under the nose or even under the fucking chin, my dude) or reusing the same mask over and over. I knew most people didn’t do it on purpose, but it really grinded my friggin gears to see them whenever I was out shopping groceries. Especially early on when we still didn’t know how dangerous covid was and I was being super anal about using the masks correctly and super paranoid about catching it and passing it on to someone with a weak immune system. And then you walk past some old person with the mask under the nose one minute and a group of teens having the mask hanging around their chin for later use the next. I had colleagues who kept used masks in their pockets and pulled them out for a quick use whenever they had to run errands. Then back in the pocket it went.

But what can you do? People were just trying to live their lives and adjust to the changes and most of them did the best they could even if they completely missed the point of the masks. And I mean, you just can’t expect anyone to use the masks the way medical personal do. Especially not out in the wild where life is messy. So in that sense I kinda learned to let it go, but I still have this nam-like flashback everytime I see someone with a mask underneath their nose.

Haven’t seen that shit for so long and when I saw that picture I was back in the jungle, lol.