I’m going to state at the most unpopular opinion there is right now: Covid is not over.

In fact, as I write this, there are two new mutated strains of the omicron virus that are making their way through our population. Wastewater spikes are highest in the Midwestern states right now. Wastewater monitoring is the only place that anyone can find any consistent data anymore, because most health agencies and hospitals have stopped reporting on Covid.

People in general have also stopped home and rapid testing or going to their doctors if they have symptoms. Many people are getting what they are terming “the August flu” which — y’all, sorry not sorry to burst your denial bubble — ain’t a thing. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt: maybe it is bad allergies. But are you really sure?

Covid is an airborne disease that transmits via aerosols. If you don’t understand this, go ask reputable sources on Google. It’s not a disease that, like many of the cold and flu viruses, tends to hang out in large droplets or on surfaces transmitting via fomites. Yes — some of those viri and bacteria also transmit via aerosols, but I’m leaving that out at this point to *make* a point. You can Clorox wipe or hand wash or sanitize the crap out of your environment, but that doesn’t address the air.

Aerosols from a Covid-infected person can stay suspended in the air for up to five or six hours. That means, if you are entering a space in which an unmasked, likely non-symptomatic Covid-positive person has also been, and you are also not wearing a properly-fitted, high-quality mask, you run a non-zero risk of contracting the virus from those aerosols, dependent on the aerosol concentration and amount of time you spend breathing in infected air in that space.

Translate this into a quick run into the store without a mask, where a shopper before you who likely was asymptomatic was also shopping and breathing and, well… you get the idea why I’m still making these unpopular and unwelcome noises about this disease.

But wait. There’s more!

I have believe and stated since mid-2020 that the most important thing we can do in situations in which we are not sure if we are sick or someone else is sick, is we *not share air*.

This is of course why I continue to run HEPA filters and wear a mask while working, and also ask my clients to wear masks. We are together for an hour or more in a small, enclosed space. We have to trust one another and our mitigation measures. We are making a temporary contract to protect each other in order to do good work. I realize that our risk even with these measures is also non-zero, but at this point, I have some confidence that my mitigation efforts in my personal life and my professional life can help put us at a relatively acceptable risk level. It will never be non-zero. It never has been non-zero. But so far, in my return to practice during Covid, we have been OK.

Before this particular pandemic, my basic universal precautions and sanitization procedures in my work space were effective. In over 30 years of practice in many different types of spaces with ventilation ranging from adequate to absent, I could count on three fingers the number of times that I’ve picked something up from a client, or, heaven forbid, possibly gave a bug to a client. I have rarely been a person who would go into work sick — only the desk jobs where I didn’t have close contact or share an office. When I’m working in the close, one-on-one situation that my profession demands, my ethical boundaries do not allow me to possibly expose you, my client, to anything that I might have. I will take the financial hit and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or beans for a week rather than risk making you sick.

In that, I am showing my privilege. I have the privilege of working for myself, and being able to not work when I believe I might be putting other people at risk. For the most part, my clients over the last three decades have also been this kind and thoughtful. I have always stressed that if you are not feeling well, let’s reschedule. We are very lucky that we have this capability and this privilege to look out for one another and take care of one another. I am aware of this and grateful for this every single day, especially during a pandemic.

But, we don’t know everything we need to know about Covid, even at this stage. I absolutely could be wrong about the sanitation measures I uphold and my newer air-quality improvement efforts being adequate to keep us safe. Awareness of this non-zero risk is actively in my mind every single workday.

I am still wearing a mask in public and testing myself almost every week. I’m still masking around family members who are not part of my household. I know, this looks wacky! But it is in line with my own ethical standards. I’m not just doing this to protect my clients and my practice; I am also protecting my own health and that of my loved ones, even when I see them let their guard down. Call me anxious or worried or even a Doomer; I no longer take that as a personal insult. I believe that what I am doing is just remaining Covid-conscious.

One of the lessons I learned early on in the ethics of my profession was to keep my boundaries stable even when other people let theirs down. I apply my rules and ethics to my entire life so that my boundaries in my practice and my confidence that I am doing everything I can to mitigate our collective risk and exposure allow me to sleep at night.

Yes. Of course I’m very tired of the extra time and expense of consistently checking and replacing my MERV 13 and HEPA filters. Yes, of course I am tired of the extra expense of having to re-order well-fitting KN95 and N95 masks to wear when I am around people who are not in my household. Yes I’m bloody tired of wearing a mask! Especially in 100° weather. But this is my normal now. Even when other people are relaxing their boundaries and giving in to the idea that they may catch the virus and it could possibly “not be bad”, these are my lines in the sand.

But do you want to know what I’m not tired of? Never having had Covid.

My friends — and I can call you friends if you’ve read this far — we do not yet know the insidious and long-term effects of Covid. Spinning the roulette wheel of possibly having no long-term effects after an infection is utter madness. What is that old adage? Repeating the same behavior and expecting different results?

I hear and see so many people now who are willing to take the risk of catching Covid (multiple times!!) just to do something “normal” or “fun” again. Trust me. I feel you. I haven’t had an actual vacation since the fall of 2019. I’m feeling the strain, folks. I’m right there with you. However…

Some people even believe that having a mild or asymptomatic infection can impart partial immunity, so they think it’s a good thing, no big deal. I disagree, and science has not come to a conclusion regarding potential “partial” immunity. For me, the possible risks of having horrid, long-term effects from even one infection are too great to take chances with.

That is my personal line in the sand.

People with long Covid are being told that it’s all in their heads. People who have debilitating ME/CFS-like effects from having even just one infection of Covid are being dismissed, minimized, and marginalized by our ableist, back-to-work, save-the-economy-and-the-billionaire-landlords society. Ethics and compassion and thinking about anyone else but ourselves and our needs are out the window. Caring about not killing a random stranger’s grandma, which we talked about at the beginning of the pandemic, is no longer in style.

Our toxic, capitalist culture demands that we grind. This culture demands that we put aside our own health and even actively risk other people’s health in order to pursue the almighty dollar.

An example: greed and toxicity and the status quo make it so that our rents and our mortgages for the most modest living spaces are trending toward $2000 a month. For that amount to be only 30% of our income, as most economists suggest, each household has to be bringing in almost $7000 a month. Quick math tells me this is a minimum wage of $30 an hour if someone is employed 40 hours a week.

Most people barely make half that; some significantly less. This is why most people work more than one job.

In order to bring in $7000/month at a $7.25 minimum wage, one person would have to work 965 hours in a month. There are only 720 total hours in a 30-day month, however. Think about that.

I have an incredibly privileged job; I have an incredibly privileged life, all told, when I think about it. I am housed. I’ve been protecting my health. I have people who love me. I have access to food. I can communicate my needs and feelings, and I have tools to express myself and take care of myself.

My ethics in this privileged position demand I continually review and adjust my way of being in the world so that my lifestyle is less destructive to our world and more sustainable.

Sure, I still drive a gas-powered vehicle when I need to, but I drive much less than I ever have, and I use an electric bike a lot now. Sure, I still order things from Amazon rather than drive all over town looking for one thing, wasting gas and time. I’m not perfect; none of us are. But we don’t have to be perfect in order to make a difference.

I work with an incredibly privileged population. We are privileged to be able to incorporate techniques of self-care and wellness into our daily grind. We can use that resiliency we develop to do good in the world. We can think about other people. We can think about our carbon footprint. We can make wiser choices in how and what we consume. We can also be aware of the people that we as a society are marginalizing and endangering by no longer being Covid-conscious.

We need to continue to pay attention to the numbers, even though we are so very tired. We need to mask, even though we are so done with masks. We need to filter our air and retrofit our buildings so that they have a good exchange rate of filtered, clean air. This isn’t just because of Covid; this applies to wildfire smoke as well.

We absolutely need to stop excluding people from participation in society because of our active denial of the risks of the disease, though. We also need to work through our pandemic-caused trauma, both collectively and individually. We have a *lot* of work to do.

By making a better effort to ensure that higher-risk people and less-advantaged people can participate alongside us in our society and various activities in our community, safely and with a lower risk of catching Covid, our lives will all be enriched.

Full access to and participation in community is the bedrock of a democratic, pluralistic society. But we’re all acting really selfish right now. We’re going to take that overseas vacation, even though the world is literally burning. We’re going to spend $1600 dollars on concert tickets to stand in a sweaty, unmasked crowd for a few hours because that is what fun is now, I hear.

I am hearing more and more stories about Covid-conscious people being criticized, ridiculed, and yelled at for wearing masks in public. I myself try to head off any potential conflict at the pass by being relentlessly cheerful, nay, practically gregarious, when I’m in a store (yes, for this introvert, it’s exhausting). I always tell my cashier that I appreciate them as well, because I do. I learned that from Ted Lasso.

After three and a half years of this pandemic, I’ve finally come up with a retort in case somebody actually challenges me on wearing a mask in public; I will now, hopefully, remember to say: but I’m protecting YOU!