Why Are People Wearing Masks in 2025?

a mental health professional’s perspective

photo by Gritchelle Fallesgon for Disabled and Here

This piece has been brewing in my head over the last few years as I’ve watched a dramatic shift happen. In a very generous framing of this dynamic, a growing number of people are questioning: what possesses someone to still wear a mask, aren’t they just anxious and paranoid?! This has created tension in families, partnerships, friendships, workplaces, social groups, and other communities. Since the answer is unclear to many, I want to address this.

And I say all this as a mental health professional who specializes in working with the chronically ill and disabled communities; is trained to recognize the impacts of trauma, cognitive biases, and thought distortions; with education and training in research methodology who has poured over infectious disease research for several years; who has lived with Long COVID and been part of this community for 5 years; and who has welcomed far too many new faces to this community in recent years.

What I think when I see someone wearing a mask in 2025:

Maybe they are immunocompromised and they need to avoid any sort of illness because they are at high risk for long-term health impacts, disability, or death.

Maybe they have one of the many conditions that puts them at increased risk for severe outcomes from COVID infections (yes, even from current variants), including asthma, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular conditions, a BMI over 30, pregnancy, any history of smoking, substance use disorders, depression, ADHD, autism, and many others.

Maybe they do not personally have any of these risk factors, but someone they care about and spend time with does, and they are trying to protect their children, family, partner(s), friends, coworkers, parents, church members, classmates, teammates, patients, constituents, or other community members.

Maybe they live with or recently had contact with someone who has been sick, and understand they could be carrying that illness but don’t want to spread it to others.

Maybe they realize many illnesses, including norovirus, influenza, and 49% of COVID infections, can occur without any symptoms, and they know that infectious diseases still spread even without symptoms or before symptoms develop - so they don’t assess whether they are ill or infectious to others based on how they feel, especially at a time when multiple viruses are running rampant.

Maybe they believe in body autonomy and understand health within in the context of consent, and they choose to honor others’ bodily autonomy by acting to prevent transmission of the many airborne infectious illnesses that are currently spreading since they cannot get consent from everyone they come in contact with in their daily life.

Maybe they are an ally and advocate for groups who experience health disparities, and they know women, older adults, chronically ill and disabled, those with mental health concerns, LGBTQIA+ and trans people, and racial and ethnic minorities are all at higher risk for more severe health impacts.

Maybe they realize spread of unmitigated illness is a tool of colonization that harms systemically marginalized groups, and they actively choose not to engage in this.

Maybe they enjoy not being sick.

Maybe they avoid illness because they don’t get any paid time off at their job.

Maybe they are actively sick but they cannot stay home, so they are preventing further transmission to others.

Maybe they know that the scientific review claiming masks were ineffective at preventing illness was retracted, but the retraction/correction didn’t get as much press as the initial “gotcha” headline, and in fact there are multiple meta-analyses showing the effectiveness of masks at preventing airborne respiratory viruses, including recommendations that good-fitting respirators are used since vaccinations are inadequate.

Maybe they know norovirus, COVID, influenza, tuberculosis, measles, and other infectious diseases are airborne and spread by aerosols that can linger in the air for hours, and that handwashing or sanitizers are insufficient.

Maybe they know that regardless of how someone feels, people can still spread illnesses for many days (COVID = 10 days, norovirus = 14 days, influenza = 7 days, RSV = 8 days, rhinovirus = 14 days) including days before there are any symptoms.

Maybe they are aware that there’s a measles outbreak, and that it still carries many risks, including immune amnesia/the immune system forgetting how to fight off illnesses it had once learned to fight.

Maybe they are health-conscious and take a preventative approach with a good diet, exercise, and avoiding viruses that can have many long-term impacts.

Maybe they adapted to new knowledge and decided to avoid illnesses after reading recent research that suggests many viruses first assumed to be mild (including chicken pox, Epstein-Barr [mono], herpes, influenza, norovirus, and others) may actually contribute to the development of neurodegenerative diseases, like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and multiple sclerosis.

Maybe they know this flu season is the worst in 15 years and people are currently being hospitalized and dying of the flu.

Maybe they know the difference between microbes and pathogens and understand that these type of viruses are not beneficial to the body.

Maybe they know that the COVID virus has been found to have multiple impacts to the immune system.

Maybe they realize that the more times someone has COVID, the risk for Long COVID increases, that even mild COVID infections from current variants are still causing Long COVID and other health problems, and that people still get these long-term, often disabling conditions whether or not they have had vaccines.

Maybe they don’t engage in exceptionalism, and realize these long-term consequences can happen to anyone.

Maybe they remember the guildeline presented in 2021 for “going back to normal” was less than 10,000 COVID cases a day, and know we haven’t hit that benchmark in the US since it was set (or since March 2020), so they don’t think this is normal.

Maybe they realized that the hopes for the COVID vaccines to stop transmission or prevent Long COVID did not come to fruition, and that we never reached herd immunity through vaccination or natural immunity, so they wear masks as a layer to help prevent infection.

Maybe they know that, despite the hopefulness, Paxlovid has been found to not be very effective at preventing or treating Long COVID, and the only way to prevent Long COVID is to prevent COVID infections.

Maybe they have a healthy distrust of authority and question that the move to reduce COVID isolation guidelines from the original 10 days to 5 days came after pressure from executives, and not because the risks or infectiousness changed.

Maybe they were aware of the marketing research team that advised the Biden administration that people didn’t want to hear about COVID anymore so talking about it in the past and “taking the win” would be a good political move to be re-elected, but this advice was not because the health risks were gone.

Maybe they know that when the WHO declared “COVID-19 over as a global public health emergency” in 2023, the Director-General also said, “However, that does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat….As we speak, thousands of people around the world are fighting for their lives in intensive care units. And millions more continue to live with the debilitating effects of post-COVID-19 condition. This virus is here to stay. It is still killing, and it’s still changing….The worst thing any country could do now is to use this news as a reason to let down its guard, to dismantle the systems it has built, or to send the message to its people that COVID-19 is nothing to worry about.” and they decided to heed this caution.

Maybe they have seen evidence that recent COVID policies have been economic decisions and not health-oriented, even though Long COVID has had major impacts to the economy and may have an annual economic impact of approximately $1 trillion.

Maybe they know the COVID is “no worse than the flu”narrative was from Trump’s pick for NIH and was based on bad science.

Maybe they know there have been over 447,000 publications on COVID, and that among these, there is evidence of long-term health risks that can affect multiple organs and body systems, and these can occur among all age groups.

Maybe they try to avoid chronic health problems because they have seen how much people struggle to get care due to insurance hurdles, lack of knowledgeable doctors, increasingly long wait times, or the realities that health care is now a risky environment for vulnerable people.

Maybe they want to protect their health because they anticipate the already strained healthcare system will only face more challenges as a growing exodus of doctors leaving medicine is creating a shortage of providers, and changes being made by this administration are likely to create more barriers to getting care.

Maybe they are a healthcare worker who has worked with patients who have Long COVID, have seen how life-altering and debilitating it can be, know that there are no approved treatments, saw the Advisory Committee on Long COVID get axed by this administration, and they do not want to risk having this fate or and passing this on to others.

Maybe they are in good health but have assessed their other risk factors and don’t have exceptional financial means, job security, or social supports/potential caregivers if they were to get sick and become disabled or unable to work.

Maybe they noticed an air quality alert that day and know that exposure can harm people’s health.

Maybe they never felt it was ok to let “the vulnerable fall by the wayside” even though this was government policy.

Maybe there are reasons they did not get vaccines, and they wear a mask to protect against communicable diseases.

Maybe they are aware that 75% of people lie about having contagious illnesses, and that this includes 61% of healthcare workers.

Maybe they have a major event or gathering coming up and they don’t want to be ill or bring an illness to it.

Maybe it’s important to them to create spaces that are accessible because the next several years are going to require community - and they want that community to include everyone and to be healthy enough to respond and act.

Maybe they don’t believe it’s ok to leave anyone behind and know everyone deserves and has a right to exist in public spaces, and they see continued masking as a way they can actively embody and advocate for this.

Maybe they know that vulnerable people have been harassed and assaulted for continuing to mask the last several years, and that masking helps change cultural attitudes and supports the right for citizens to protect their health.

Maybe they believe that, much like smoking indoors or drunk driving, an individual can assume personal risk with their choices, but that “you do you” freedom needs limits if those choices threaten other' people’s health and safety.

Maybe they decided to do something that actively protects vulnerable groups instead of a safety pin or blue bracelet.

Maybe they care more about their health and the health of others than about fitting in with societal norms, and are willing to be weird to not go along with government-sanctioned eugenicist policies that abandon vulnerable groups.

Maybe they realize that the world as it was in 2019 no longer exists, and they opted to adapt to the risks in this new landscape by taking steps to prevent constant illness in themself or others instead of normalizing it.

Maybe they know that, despite the strong case for upgrading air filtration and establishing indoor air quality requirements, this has not been done, and masks are an easy-to-implement, effective layer of protection against pathogens.

Maybe they have seen the growing efforts to outlaw masks, even as infectious airborne diseases are raging, public health is being dismantled, wildfires are only likely to continue, and it’s important for them to actively defend rational preventative health measures.

Maybe they know that these mask bans have language about “medical exceptions” but that police or vigilante citizens should not be in a position to determine if medical needs are valid or not, and bans would only increase discrimination, threat, and harm to already vulnerable groups?

What I do NOT think when I see people wearing masks in 2025:

They are weak, living in fear, have irrational anxiety, or are paranoid.

They are uninformed and stuck in the past.

They are a criminal or planning to commit a crime.

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For myself and many others, there’s been significant emotional and intellectual whiplash trying to understand the jump from the “we’re all in this together” masking camaraderie of the early pandemic days to the demonizing, pathologizing, and harassment of mask wearers today. Not that long ago, wearing a respirator was accepted as part of basic infectious disease prevention, established as part of public health policy focused on the greater good, and expected of everyone able to wear one as part of our shared responsibility to fellow citizens in this society.

I’ve watched this simple act, which protects the health of the wearer and everyone around them, get politicized and distorted into a sign of mental illness or criminal behavior. Anti-mask rhetoric that was met with disdain when it came from the fringe, alt-right in 2020 has made its way across the political spectrum and is now being promoted among even the most left “radical” groups. If there isn’t straight up hostility and vitriol, there’s often avoidance, annoyance, and refusal to accommodate mask requirements that would make spaces and gatherings accessible.

False narratives are being used to dehumanize people and criminalize a basic preventative health practice. In reality, most of the people still masking are among the strongest, most self-assured people I’ve known. They are the least concerned about other’s perceptions, the most concerned about others/our collective well-being, are embodying self-care by protecting their health (and mental health), willing to interrogate their choices and motivations, and are committed to accepting and integrating data and new information - even when they want desperately to be wrong about what they learn. They are also among the most alienated, judged, ignored, harassed, invisibilized, and forgotten.

So if your intersectionality includes these groups, your framework for social justice includes disability justice, your anti-oppression work includes ableism, or your spiritual practices involve “loving your neighbor” - please consider what you will do to reintegrate, include, uplift, and care for these valuable, integral badasses.

photo by Gritchelle Fallesgon for Disabled and Here