The WaPo feature “Covid experts today: Eating out, masking less, even booking cruises” is an interesting read. The lede sets it up nicely:
Just like us, they disinfected groceries, left their mail outside for 24 hours, canceled family gatherings, stopped eating out. But today, for the medical experts at the forefront of dealing with the coronavirus that causes covid-19, everyday life has become more normal. All have been vaccinated and boosted, and many have had covid too, a combination that seems to provide more durable protection. While the pandemic isn’t gone, their risk calculations these days look different.
While I never left my mail outside or disinfected groceries, this otherwise describes me well. I’m quadruple vaccinated but finally caught COVID, which presented as a very mild cold, presumably because of all the vaccinations.
Otherwise, the various experts interviewed have slightly lower risk tolerances than I do—many of them still mask in grocery stores, for example—but otherwise are pretty much back to normal. (Even the masking seems a bit performative: “I’d still wear a mask if I were going to be grocery shopping for an extended time when there is a lot of activity in the store. If I jump out of the car and get to the door of the store and realize I’d not remembered to bring a mask when I’m out for a bottle of ketchup, I doubt that I’d double back to the car to get a mask before going into the store” and “I still mask in grocery stores, and I try to remember on airplanes, but sometimes I forget.” I mean, either it’s important to mask or it’s not.) The only one that’s truly still cautious is one who has a relative undergoing cancer treatment living with them; but that makes sense—they have a specific, highly elevated risk factor.
All of them are back to eating in restaurants, although some still try to sit outside when that’s an option.
None other that the one with the cancer patient are still testing or asking visitors to test if they’re asymptomatic.
Most still mask on airplanes—although some do it as much for other viruses as COVID at this point.
They’re all remarkably confident in the vaccines. One interesting data point: “My 88-year-old father, who has been treated with chemo for B-cell lymphoma, has had five covid shots. We had his antibodies tested, and they were sky-high, which is what really persuaded me about how well these mRNA vaccines work.”
Overall, it’s fairly encouraging: they took their own advice to get vaccinated and boosted and they’re now doing what those steps were designed to do—get back to a more or less normal existence. Most of them are medical professionals who have to mask at work—indeed, had to do so before the pandemic—so it’s not shocking that they’re more apt than the general public to wear them in other circumstances.
