@Furthering I'm not fond of the act of masking either, it hurts my ears, it pulls on my hair. Yet I do it everywhere, inside always and outside if there's people. I'm lucky that I don't have to mask every day for 8-hour sessions, but 3 hours at most during long medical appointments.
I think there's such a general massive fear of admitting the inconvenience of masking, because it will be used as an excuse by most people to not do it. I've been bullied too by people, as have many others, by people refusing to mask, acting like little toddlers throwing a tantrum about how annoying the inconveniences are, and being a crybaby on purpose. Nobody wants to accidentally cater to that or give them ammunition to continue.
There's also this aspect that even though masking sucks, the suck levels can't compare to the harm done of not masking. Accidentally hurting others with infection, making yourself ill with all of the consequences, tiring out limited healthcare, helping the virus mutate... Even if the discomfort of a mask is a 9/10, the consequences of not doing it will be at least 10/10. It's not just an individual choice to make, it's something that impacts all of those around us too. So there's this fear of turning masking into a "do or don't based on if you can handle it"-topic, or a simple risk assessment, but in my eyes it's way more severe than that, it's not optional and we just have to bear it.
Like you, I wish there was more compassion in all of this. We can't force people to mask with yelling, probably. And we can't let not-masking slide. The making them do it but also having care for the shittiness of it all, is a very difficult middle ground. Because the world is currently so actively anti-mask, tolerating mask complaints feels like too much of a dangerous slide into anti-maskness for many, I assume. There's a strong desire to weigh in on the pro-mask side to compensate. I felt the desire in me too when I read your post, even though I get it. Yet here I am writing a long comment because I'm like "yeah true but, but, but"
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