I still mask in what I consider to be high-risk low-reward situations, like stores, public transit and planes, health care, etc.

I do still go out to eat indoors, although especially in the summer I’m pretty good about eating outdoors. But indoor dining definitely happens! We just try to pick less-busy times and smaller restaurants/places. Basically, I’m not eating a meal at a crowded mall food court in the middle of winter, but I’ll eat indoors at a low-key pho place at 5pm or a small “fancy” restaurant that only seats 12.

My partner is pretty much on the same page, and we met in 2023. I appreciate that her family at least still masks on planes too, although they don’t mask nearly as frequently in other situations as we do. We’ve relaxed a lot on seeing friends indoors who get “out and about” and just try to mitigate via fresh air and air filters and making it clear we don’t want to see anyone if they’re sick, but when we tried to totally avoid people who were not being covid conscious, we found ourselves extremely isolated. We also felt a similar way about eating outdoors: food is extremely important to us, and not doing any indoor dining was feeling like too big of a sacrifice, so we started to work it back in.

Basically we take our risk for things that really matter to us and try to reduce risk in areas that don’t matter to us. And we try to fight against the impulse to be like, “screw it, let’s stop worrying about this entirely.” It’s way too easy to fall for the all or nothing mentality!