I only gave it up a year ago after COVID had begun, but suddenly everyone around me is snorting and hacking, and apparently very few people bother covering their mouth when they do anymore. It’s just for crowded spaces but 1 in 65 people in Canada have COVID right now, and while I’m super ultra vaccinated I don’t want to catch anything in general. It feels strange.
Viral infections aren’t purely binary though. It has been shown that the peak severity of infection is correlated with how big of a viral load you are initially exposed to.
So a mask can help decrease the severity of the inevitable infection by decreasing how much viral bodies you inhale.