一个人可以习惯任何事情。过去的15个月没有做任何事，什么也没做。事实证明，在足够长的时间轴上，将棉盾绑在一个人的脸上，以防止空气杀死您，而不是杀死他人，可以成为每天的另一个不明显的元素。外面的例行程序仅扩展，包括检查潜在的挽救生命的可穿戴医疗设备以及通常的钱包，钥匙和电话。做足够的时间，并且该行为被所有反乌托邦的荒谬耗尽。一个乏味的细节。就像用预防性的手捡起大流行小狗的大便一样，起初是一种奇异的行为，逐渐被正常人吸收。
What’s also incredible is the phenomenon of gettingun习惯于奇怪的转变为Quotidian。和纽约和加利福尼亚本周完全重新开放, and reports that COVID-19案件在高度疫苗接种的地区下降在相反的情况下，许多美国人将在一年来第一次离开家中没有口罩。这是一个值得庆祝的里程碑，即使COVID-19继续在未vaxx的人中造成严重破坏。然而，终于搁置了面具，一定会产生一些复杂的感觉，即首先必须戴上面具。
At least, that’s what happened to me.
When I arrived in my new home of Minneapolis last October, just before Minnesota ramped up its safety requirementsby executive order，这座城市被困在封闭和开放之间的束缚空间中。我会从附近的一家餐厅拿起外卖，并注意到座位的，未面临的食客在我的脸的浅蓝色下半部分。他们看上去并不一定很生气，但是在他们中间的面具的存在似乎使房间的核心温度降低了几度。我试图不背叛任何判断，但是在纽约参加早期大流行峰，我觉得面具一侧更加安全。那时，警惕仍然是一种生存行为。妄想症和悲观主义只是良好的实践。
Despite the routine nature of it, sustained mask safety took a lot of work. Every now and then, I’d get a few steps outside of my apartment with a denuded face before rushing back in to fish out a clean mask amid the lipstick-smudged ones my wife left by the door. Once, after taking a phone call inside my apartment, I went for a walk and made it all the way to the produce section of the closest grocery store before realizing I’d forgotten to mask up. I was mortified, the weak link in the community chain. I pulled my shirt over my face-holes and hauled ass outside.
半年有什么不同。
Once pretty much all adults in Minneapolis had the ability to get vaccinated, things changed fast. The masks-off dam seemed to break little by little—barely anyone wearing them by the lake, the occasional cashier going without—and then all at once. A couple of weeks ago, fully vaxxed, I wore a mask into the theater to see my first non-drive-in movie in more than a year (一个安静的地方2- 很好！），但是一旦我看到没有人穿着的人就把它摘下了。当然，剧院中的任何人都可能具有感染力，但是如果我们要相信疫苗的功效并达到了实际的大流行时代，我认为也许是时候双脚跳进去了。所以我做了。
My new frequent masklessness was so glorious, it began to feel like an obnoxious formality to actually have to wear one. The grocery store down the street, which I once ran out of with my shirt over my face, discarded its mask restrictions before my apartment building did. Suddenly, I bristled at having to don a mask just for the time it took to get down the elevator and out the lobby, or walk 10 steps through the hall to throw trash down the chute at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday. All the nearby bars and barbershops had fully opened up. Was the mask signage still in my building the result of cautious care, or just laziness? Either way, who were we kidding?
The battle against COVID-19 in America is undoubtedly moving in the right direction. By the time my apartment complex finally took down its signage last weekend,12个州已经完全接种了超过50％的居民。我们在一个宏伟的实验的泥泞中深处。幼儿还无法免疫，但是科学领导了许多地区的管理机构，以自己的认可将公民从面具中释放出来。有一天，我们可能会回顾这一刻，对我们的傲慢感到羞耻，但是就目前而言，让人们感到欣慰，希望和喜悦。
我刚刚开始感觉到离开房子的曾经陷入困境的常规。钥匙，钱包，电话和。。。没有其他的! One less thing to have to remember. Bliss.
但是，过渡并非完全无摩擦。前几天，当我从Caribou拿起咖啡时，我注意到商店里的一个年长男人对我的无脸反应。当我靠近时，他争先恐后地及时地抬起面具，担心他可能会食用冠状病毒拿铁咖啡。
I had become somebody else’s pandemic villain.
在面具安全判断的另一端真是太奇怪了！我立即感到防御。他甚至在咖啡店里什么都在做什么？this担心thisstage of the pandemic? I quickly realized he wasn’t wrong for still being scared, though. As a matter of fact, I was wrong to be annoyed, and I needed to examine my reaction before letting it become the default when the same thing inevitably happens again. The alternative, after all, is a slow slide intoTed Cruz territory。
But catching myself feeling low-grade hostility toward one vigilant post-vaxx masker for one moment had an unexpected side effect: It made me remember all the people who have reacted like vaccinated-me throughout the entire pandemic. This involuntary reflex I now know to keep in check was the animating force behindso many people’s violent actionsthese past 15 months. The nerve! The homicidal confidence! How dare they feel as面部有资格就像我现在所做的那样，仅仅基于他们的灾难性不正确的预感，即面具是某种骗局。
As excited as I am to embrace bare-face life until it just feels like life, period, I’m also livid that the people who could never be bothered to do their part get to luxuriate in this freedom as well. Even though we are on the same side of the mask issue now, we are not the same. Practically all of us are about to become anti-maskers; only some of us have earned it.