The Forever Maskers
20th April 2021
Robin Argenti cannot yet envision a future in which she doesn’t wear a mask. “We don’t know if it is going to ever be over,” the 57-year-old resident of upstate New York said of the pandemic. She’s in poor health, and concerned that with the emergence of new variants and the “millions of people who refuse to get vaccinated,” the country will never actually overcome the coronavirus. “I will be masked up for many, many years,” she said. “There are too many unknowns.”
As more and more Americans get vaccinated, the end of the pandemic feels palpable. Most people probably cannot wait to cut out the social distancing and take their masks off. I can’t wait for the day when I can walk down the street and look at a sea of strangers’ naked faces. But there are some people like Argenti who say they plan to make mask-wearing a part of daily life, even after the authorities give the thumbs-up to bare your entire face.