It’s time to dig your masks out and start wearing them again.

We would say that you never should have hung them up. For disabled people, particularly those with a compromised immune system or Long Covid, the lack of masking in public spaces has made those spaces dangerous. The lack of masking has essentially pushed disabled people out of public spaces.

And there was never a good reason for it. Covid has not gone away. We are now mired in a continuous cycle of infections and reinfections. Each infection increases your risk of coming down with Long Covid, and the health risks of Long Covid are severe. 20M people have Long Covid. 14% are unable to return to work at all after three months. It’s also not just the unvaccinated who are getting sick. It’s also not just people with co-morbidities (not that it should matter – if you are alive and over 40, you may not realize it, but you probably have a co-morbidity).

That should be reason enough to mask up, particularly if you consider yourself a progressive, a leftist, or an ally of disabled people. But here we are, entering a time of fascism with a government that doesn’t believe in public health or vaccines. Right now, the state of public health should have everyone reaching for their N95s.

There is a measles outbreak in Texas. There is a tuberculous outbreak in Kansas. This winter is one of the worst flu seasons in years. Cases of Whooping Cough are also at an all-time high. As bad as this flu season is, wait until bird flu figures out how to move to humans. The resulting death toll could make Covid look quaint.

There is also another sort of safety that masks provide: at a time of growing authoritarianism, wearing a mask in public just makes sense. We are in a coup. Good people taking good action should wear a mask to keep themselves and their folks safe.

Mask up, folks.