They don’t have to. We make below poverty wages and still somehow find a way to wear a mask (and a proper one!) every time we are outside our home because we actually don’t have a choice. I fuck around with this virus and I die. So we’re not fucking around with this virus as long as we have a roof over our heads, and we fucking barely have that. My wife works four days a week and is out of the home for 12 hours, and she wears an n95 the entire shift and commute to/from.

We offer her coworkers from our own supply of masks and let them know that covid is still a problem and they refuse. Every time. She eats outside in a fucking back alley by the dumpster because they will not mask themselves or filter the air in the building for her to unmask for thirty minutes a day without risk. I have sympathy for the homeless, children, and animals who actually don’t get a choice; I do not have sympathy for these people. It’s not a matter of “can’t” for an overwhelming majority of even people in financially precarious situations exactly like us, because we literally are offering to give them our shit and they say no. They won’t do it. We have barked up this tree every fucking day for close to five years. I know exactly what they “can” do, because I work with orgs in my city to provide outreach and supply masks to anyone who wants them for no charge. They don’t want them. No one wants them, except for people like us who have to care, and a very very small minority of others, and I’m tired of making excuses for the rest of them. It is just negligence.