However, I also recognize that 2023 is neither 2019 nor 2020. We're in a different and in some ways better and other ways more challenging position now.

Like it or not, we have to make decisions ourselves. I just want us to do that with the best information we can still get, with consideration of not only our own risk but also risk to others, incorporating factors in addition to just COVID, and with empathy for everyone who is doing their best in an impossible situation.

10/10

For one thing, it’s a roomy construct, so you can easily slot in the obvious economic, racial, and political affiliation pieces, but just considering that the virus transmits *as much through social pressures as it does through the air* is clarifying for my brain.

Like no, SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t make us take off our masks to affirm trust and belonging like a parasitic fungus, but the social brain that makes those choices has 100% been put to work as a component of the virus’s spread.