Masking to Avoid Missing Things

December 15th, 2022
bio, covid-19, masks
About a year ago I wrote that I'd now:

follow official guidance and mask regulations, cheerfully go along with precautions others need, and test+isolate when sick, but I'm not going to go above and beyond to attempt to reduce spread the way I did for earlier parts of the pandemic.

And yet I'm often wearing an N95 in situations where they're not required and a large majority of other people aren't masked. Are these in tension?

My views haven't changed. I still think that if my region and the communities I'm part of aren't going to put a serious effort into keeping covid from spreading then it doesn't make sense for me to make large sacrifices on my own for pro-social reasons. But if I get covid, or one of the several other things going around, I'll need to isolate to avoid getting other people sick. That means missing things I'd be very sad to miss, and I'll take steps to avoid that:

  • I masked at the MetaSUB conference the weekend before Thanksgiving.

  • I masked at Sunday's EA dinner and my work's holiday party because I'm running music for a secular solstice this Saturday (sort of an atheist church service inspired by ideas from the effective altruism and rationalist communities).

  • I'm planning to mask at the solstice event because it's just before relatives come to town for Christmas.

On the other hand, I didn't mask at Thanksgiving and I'm not planning on masking at Christmas because being sick right after that is, while not ideal, basically fine.

While this does have pro-social effects, slowing down the rate of transmission of airborne diseases, my motivation here is primarily selfish: I don't want to miss things.

Referenced in:

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, mastodon, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Paid Subscriber Questions Post

I have picked up a lot of new paid subscribers since the last time I did something like this, so: let's do a subscriber questions post!

via Thing of Things July 21, 2025

Retrospective on life tracking and effectiveness systems

I’ve been doing life tracking for around 10 years, and this post is looking back at some things I learned from the data (since my previous retrospective in 2017). Highlights include what I get out of the Oura ring, correlations between sleep and deep work…

via Victoria Krakovna July 4, 2025

Elixir's Last Dance

On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew from across the country just to hear Elixir play one la…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts June 5, 2025

more     (via openring)