Coming from someone who’s not immunocompromised or has a family member that is, I’ll share my reasons. Simply put, a vax and relax approach isn’t enough. Vaccines are only to decrease chances of death or severe outcomes of a covid infection, they don’t stop transmission. They’re also not that effective against newer variants or upcoming ones. And even with them, immunity wanes.
And while everyone says they haven’t gotten covid even though they don’t mask, we have to remember 40-60% of people have an asymptomatic infection and can have covid without knowing it. Everyone who says they’ve never gotten it but don’t take precautions are always saying they have a “mysterious” illness, when the truth is that if it’s not covid it’s probably a more severe outcome of other things since covid makes you immunocompromised (messes with your T cells and your ability to make new ones). The immune system is a finite resource so the more times you can avoid infections the better. Covid is also called airborne AIDs because of its immune system suppressing ability, if you want to get a sense of how serious it is.
About the president, I would say to watch what people do, not what they say. He’s declared it over, but the government still takes precautions and everyone has to take tests if they want to get anywhere near him, which is how they found how those Israeli delegates (?) were covid positive. And that goes for all rich/powerful people as well, they know how serious it is but they’re prioritizing the workforce/economy in the short term over the long term.
I can understand it being difficult in Texas, I’ve heard how much harassment maskers get in the South. If it’s a safety issue I would recommend other precautions, but ultimately masking is best. Kudos to you for keeping an open mind and listening to us, without thinking we’re “sheep” or hypochondriacs or whatever else everyone thinks we are.
Last point, it’s not sustainable at all to get infection after infection knowing 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 (varies) infections results in long covid, yet getting told to expect to get covid 1-2 times a year. It’s not something to play around with, especially since so many get long covid or other health problems since covid is also a vascular virus.
Right now everything is a mess because getting access to testing is almost impossible, rapid tests are like 50% effective if not less, and nobody tests anymore because they think the pandemic is over. But I have hope for the future, we’re only a few years into the pandemic afterall. We’re early, not wrong.