Masked Rebels

Now that our little banana republic recommends wearing masks indoors again after about two weeks of having people flock to nightclubs and wear masks practically nowhere, all I can do is roll my eyes and say: "Well, no surprise there". I sometimes wonder if there is any sense of reason and self-awareness left in people. And with people I explicitly don't mean most of my friends and family who seem to take the same approach that I do, i.e. still are cautious and don't pretend coronavirus has evaporated simply because some guidelines have changed. 

Last Thursday I was on a business trip in Linz, where I gave a presentation as part of a training for civil servants. None of them wore a mask and I realised it looked a bit weird if I, the presenter standing in front of them, was the only one who did. I explained that I had plans for the weekend, including meeting some old and at-risk people (including my bedridden uncle whose doctors decided that getting vaccinated against Covid-19 posed too great a health risk for him) but they could of course remain as they were. I admit that it was a bit awkward and I almost was a bit apologetic for what was not actually required. 
Last summer I was looked at like an alien when I went shopping wearing an FFP2 mask in Carinthia, being used to that from Vienna and also believing that the virus did not differentiate between a grocery shop, where it was and "non-essential" shops, where it was not necessary to wear a mask. 

Don't get me wrong, I don't actually enjoy walking around with a tight-fitting mask, but I don't want to actively provoke getting infected. So far, I have been lucky in several cases where I was a potential contact person, but you never know. According to statistics I have the "best" blood type that gets infected less easily, but still, you know, better be safe than sorry.