On masking in an ongoing airborne pandemic

I have a friend with some debilitating disabilities who I have been giving as pass on mask wearing to because they already have a lot to manage & masking is actually difficult for them.  But even after their last round with Covid had them throwing up and shitting themselves for 2 solid weeks, they recently made some crack about masking and I went a little mask off in my reply.

Here it is so I can reference it later:

I don’t insist you mask around me because you have a slew of disabilities that make for harder for you than most, & I think people with fewer barriers should be doing more of the work to protect you and not place all the burden on you — not because it’s safe for me to be around you when you don’t wear a mask. 

You may not even know if you give me a life ruining virus but I care that I don’t give one to you and prefer to not get sick. The only reason I’m resigned about your attitude and not incandescently angry all the time is that public health and the medical establishment told you you could vax & relax. And you should be able to trust the public health authorities on stuff like this. 

But right now we can’t. I know better so I do better. You ask when we can eat inside. I haven’t eaten inside with you, not once, for five long years, because it’s not safe enough. I don’t do this because it’s fun for me. I do it so you don’t hurt me & I don’t hurt you. I will continue to have to be on guard even around people who claim to like me until viral transmission is *orders of magnitude* lower or we get sterilizing vaccines. If that never happens, then I will be eating alone or outside forever. 

Because the alternative is a faster, more painful disability that leads to my early death. And as much as my disability and not being able to eat comfortably are a giant pain in my ass that I would give up tomorrow if I could, I prefer them to being in a nursing home or dead. 

It’s particularly not safe for me now that you routinely _lie_ to me about whether or not you are ill, whether or not someone in your household is ill, whether or not other people are in your house at the time I plan to be there, and whether or not they are ill. Add in asymptomatic spread and it doesn’t matter if people think they’re ill or not because they can still be infectious. So I mask around everyone. Then when I show up to help you shower, and you casually drop that you’ve been sick with covid all week, I have some protection already in place. 

It’s not safe but it’s a bit safer now that many people are vaccinated so I can briefly remove my mask in public if outdoors, (preferably in direct sun to reduce viral exposure). I do understand that it’s limiting but my choice isn’t “eat with friends indoors” or “eat outdoors”. It’s “eat with friends outdoors” or “eat alone”. My goal is limiting viral exposure because fewer virions means less for my immune system to fight off and less virus means less damage to my vasculature. Which is what covid damages. Wearing a mask means I can limit my risk of heart attack, aneurysm, and stroke. I can limit my risk of losing even more energy. I do not understand why my wanting to prevent illness and debility is controversial. It’s not popular but it’s not wrong.

On the “Polite No” & Comfort

A friend asked if it would be ok to not eat when at my house.  My soul wants to feed people. But more than that, I want people to be comfortable, and if them not eating my food makes them more comfortable than eating my food, then to be a good host, I must let them starve on my watch. I’m told it’s even safe for people to go 3 hours without eating. It fine. I’m sure it’s fine. This blog is a reminder I need to be better at letting people refuse food. 

This friend wasn’t worried I would judge them. They were worried that their choice would distress me. I needed to assure them that any distress about them not eating my food isn’t harmful to me. I’m only ensuring they aren’t refusing for politeness purposes, as I want to include them and if there’s something they would eat if offered, I would provide it. But if they would rather not eat *for any reason* — other than being worried I can’t provide without straining my resources — as a host my priority is their comfort, not *my* idea of what comfort is.

Here comes the monologue!

A lot of people spend a lot of time worrying what others think of them. Evolutionarily this makes sense because community is the best survival advantage humans have By Far. But while people can & do judge, the judgment, even if other people are thinking about you specifically, which they often are not, is rather passive. This means, by and large most reasonable adults let things slide unless & until it hits a threshold of taboo/ick/safety/weirdness. 

Unfortunately autism can put people into uncanny valley territory, a weirdness people pick up on and have difficulty leaving it be until they address it head on. Uncanny Valley triggers, like some autistic traits, make people fearful & aggressive unless or until they acclimate that version of autism into their “acceptable”, if not normal, paradigm. I would say that most people who care enough to aggressively judge someone on performing normalized behavior, where a deviant behavior is harmless, aren’t worth bothering with. But that only applies is they can’t or won’t hurt you.  For many autistics, we learn that people will hurt or exclude us for being weird so reducing the quantity of weird is useful, if tiring. Masking is one way to do this.  Learning societal scripts by rote, instead of osmosis, can also help to know how to manage expectations on both sides.

After navigating weirdness, food can be fraught. Food is also central to survival so a lot of hosts want to make sure everyone is fed. A better host makes sure everyone’s needs are met, which may or may not include eating. There are  STRONG cultural scripts around offering people food/drink. The dominant script in many places, including here, in one where the host offers dood/drink/service, the guest refuses to “be polite”, and the host overriding ones’ “no” insists on providing said food/beverage/service. This gets tricky because there are fewer scripts allowing you to say no because you mean no. 

One piece of writing that has stayed with me more intensely than anything else was a travel guide. 

Really? Yes! They explained that when you come to their house/store/restaurant, you will be offered coffee. The polite thing is to refuse, no matter how thirsty.  This offer-refusal pattern happens thrice, and after the third “no” coffee will be provided, and they watch you drink it. Everyone there understands this.  My problem is that I don’t like coffee  I can’t drink it to be polite. I don’t know how to operate in that system. I have spent literally years trying to figure out “polite” ways to navigate such a situation. The easiest is to offer an alternative  “I don’t enjoy coffee, do you offer tea?” would be my go to but as I age I’m now comfortable saying “no means no”, ignoring the coffee, or leaving to make my point. (You can see where similar situations that aren’t about coffee, but use the same script, and rely on the host correctly intuiting a no nmeans yes, could be problematic?) I never yet travelled to that particular region in part because of this coffee situation. Meanwhile I have noticed that script is actually common nearly everywhere.

Saying no when not meaning no (a thru line to many social problems) and hearing no & not respecting it is the culturally dominant script and it can take a lot to shake us off script. Some people literally can’t, and others won’t, parse that you really mean no. Some of us, like me, take an iteration. Because as a host with food it would be rude to not feed you, tho better hosts know it would be rude to give you something you don’t want. But probably 70% of people are on the main script and don’t question it. Or even know to question it. So a guest has to offer up a reason to break script to get the “no” to register, which is a problem if the reason is personal. 

Maybe you’re on a special diet. Maybe you’re pregnant. Maybe you have a feeding tube. Maybe you’re on a schedule. Maybe you don’t trust the host’s hygiene. Maybe you’re having a bad day and food isn’t appealing. Maybe you’re a zombie, but a polite zombie. It should not be incumbent on a guest to divulge personal or medical information to get a host to listen but it’s often required as anything less than “I have a notarized doctor’s note for a recognized & respected disability” won’t flip the script,  which makes it tiring & emotionally draining on the guest. A tired and emotionally drained guest who is that way because of you is not comfortable. If your hosting instincts say “feed them” override that with “make guests comfortable with or without food”.

At most gatherings where one don’t want to draw attention or don’t feel the need to share personal details, taking a small amount of food and casually disposing of it draws less comment/concern than refusing food outright. So for most encounters it is the sensible, least effort choice. Or lying and saying you ate already or are on a special diet & you “forgot” to bring some, etc… 

But at my house please say “I would prefer not to eat” and I will let you not eat.  I do have the “must feed people” script locked and loaded and will doublecheck. I try to let things go after 2 no attempts (I do 2 instead of 1 because some people do have that “refuse, to be polite” practiced to a reflex.) My concern is you not feeling included you or you being hungry when I can solve that, especially knowing how long I can extend a goodbye.

There’s also a confounding factor.  Part of raising kids to adulthood is introducing them to foods they may not initially take to, and not everyone navigates that ideally. But it does mean that people offering food who have outwitted cranky toddlers have a lot of persuasive scripts and techniques at their disposal to help convince you to eat. Including putting the food within reach so if you change your mind you don’t have to humble yourself to get the food. Which is fine if the timing was off but irritating if you don’t want the food there.

I really don’t want to give someone coffee who doesn’t genuinely want coffee. I don’t want to sit there with stinky coffee I will never drink. In a society where false “no” is considered more polite than truth, this host-guest dynamic remains tricky. But respecting a no is a good start. And those people who judge one for making off script choices really aren’t worth bothering with if/when we can escape them.