I'm visiting a small town, a generally red area, but with some very blue parts due to a local university.
I went into a gaming store today for some Christmas shopping. The door said "Masks Required" but I assumed it had just been left up. I enter and the proprietor says, "Masks are in the box." I say, "Oh, masks are still required?" Answer, yes.
I turn to my kid and say, "Ok, we'll go back out."
As I turn to leave, the owner immediately gets upset and yells "Well EXCUSE ME for not wanting to die. I'm immunocompromised, I want to stay healthy, THANKS FOR CARING."
It's worth noting that the owner appeared to be some non-binary blobfish of a human. Honestly no idea if he or she. If s/he REALLY wanted to be healthy, xer would lose about 75 lbs.
That's pretty much the craziest covid interaction I've ever had.
The masked, vaxed 5++ ( with flu vax ) in my family keep getting respiratory viruses, including the gain of function darling of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
They still don't get it and blame other people for going out while sick.
They don't understand trying to avoid common colds dosen't work.
The longer you manage to delay, by avoiding people and not breathing inside with other people ( masks don't work in the grand scheme of things ), the lazier your immune system gets, and your vulnerability to smaller and smaller viral load exposures grow.
And when you do get exposed to a contaminating viral load, your rusty immune system is less prepared and it hits harder. Immunity dept is the coined term for that observed phenomena. ( Glossing over all the seasonal patterns to vulnerability to respiratory viruses that "experts" are still totally incapable to include in their "models", when they don't flat-out deny it exists. )
Injections is not a substitute to natural exposure, otherwise the quadruple-injected+ would have lower infection rates. But they have higher infection rates.
I took the J&J vaccine very early on because I figured "how bad could it be." Oops. I was sick with colds and shit all the time in fall 2021/winter 2022 which is not normal for me. Thankfully I seem to be back to normal this year.
The vaxxed people I know are all "uh, yeah I got covid three times but I didn't die any of those times so the vaccine must be a success."