Some Americans still wear face masks—to do what exactly? To prevent the spread of COVID-19? To signal their continuing vigilance amid growing public unconcern? As a now permanent part of their hygienic habitus?
Over the last three years, I have tried to avoid thinking about the particular motivations and reasonings that lead people around me to their various positions on masks, vaccines, and other health measures. Not least because those people were often so eager to explain themselves and attack others. People like my conservative family, who feared the vaccines as others feared COVID-19, and my academic colleagues, who imagined
