I wish I’d been a grown-up and taken that mask out of my bag

I had brought a mask with me, tucked away in my evening bag. In fact, I had two in there, one in leopard skin fabric, more in keeping with the black-tie dress code. Stupidly, that’s where they stayed. I didn’t wear either at any point in this event that put 350 talkative people together for several hours in an enclosed ballroom. And now I’m in bed with COVID-19.

In my defence, it’s difficult to wear a mask when you’re at a function with pre-dinner drinks and a two-course dinner, although you’d think by now someone would have invented at least a drinking mask, with some sort of valve apparatus and a champagne straw. Still, there were certainly times in that gala evening, which turned out to be a gala superspreader event, that I could have worn it. During the speeches. During the pre-and post-dinner chit-chat when people were leaning in close to make themselves heard over the racket.

So why didn’t I mask up? I was still wearing a mask in shops and other public places. Why not there?

I’m ashamed to say I think it was because no-one else was wearing one. Not a single person, as far as I could see. We’re supposed to be above peer pressure after adolescence but we’re not, of course. I’ve seen the same thing happen in shopping malls: rises and falls in mask-wearing that appear to have as much to do with what everyone else is doing as they have to do with mandating. On public transport, people are copying others, including railway workers, and abandoning masks. I’ve never seen anyone on a train be told to put on a mask, let alone fined. We, the masked passengers, say nothing. (We’re also a bit confused about whether it is actually still compulsory or just ″⁣recommended”.)

If anything, it’s the mask-wearers who are being made to feel embarrassed. Crazily, wearing a mask has come to seem wimpy and over-anxious. The domain of fretful pensioners. It has got to the point where those of us who do wear masks in shops or gyms or hairdressers bravely salute one another with our eyes.

I was in a cooking class not so long ago and I put a mask on. Several classmates gave me a grateful look as they reached for theirs. It was as if they’d been waiting for permission. Which is why it is so much easier when it’s mandated, although it’s sad we have to rely on the state to make us sensible. The medical experts have been telling us for months to keep wearing masks as a simple precaution. It’s harder, of course, for people who have to wear them all day but I imagine they don’t want to get sick either.

Given our relaxed, let’s-party attitude, it’s easy to ignore any surges in COVID cases, until you get COVID. It’s like, meh. Big deal. Worrying about COVID is so last year.

I’m not going to die from this case of COVID-19, or not if my symptoms keep going as they are, which is, relatively, not too bad. On the other hand, I’m losing at least a week of human interaction. I’m feeling crap. My throat is killing me. My body hurts. I’m sick of Netflix. I feel like Typhoid Mary. I can’t attend a friend’s funeral. I fear long COVID. My Wordle scores have gone south.

Now, of course, I wish I’d listened to the alarm bells about such an event and not gone at all, even if I had “harmed the economy”. It was fun but not so fun that it was worth this. It could also have been designed for a COVID era and made much safer. At very least, I wish I’d followed my instincts and put on a mask for as much of the evening as I could. It might have saved me. And others might have done the same, which might have saved a whole lot of us.

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