Personally, I’m just fine with pulling the plug on the public transportation mask mandate. At the risk of sounding like a raging, bug-eyed Trump goober — or Bill Maher — masks, as a universal mandate have served what purpose they could and it’s time to move on into the next phase of COVID protection.

How the mandate has been ended is a whole other story. I am not alone in thinking it bizarre-to-appalling that in a highly-developed society of 320 million people one strategically placed partisan with precious little legal and no medical qualifications can dictate/induce a health policy for everyone. Really folks, WTF? Can we get some half-baked judge somewhere to require every pot hole in the country get fixed today?

(This on the judge from Charlie Pierce: “You see, Judge [Kathryn] Mizelle is one of those folks that the Federalist Society sent up the pneumatic tube that led from its labs to the White House. She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and was rated as “not qualified” by the American Bar Association. She was 33 when she was nominated and confirmed as the 2020 lame-duck session was winding down. She was eight years out of law school and had never tried a case of any kind. Her husband was chosen to be acting general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security through his connection to that noted devotee of the Constitution, Stephen Miller. She had no experience, but she had the golden resume.“)

Have you read her argument on “sanitation”? What for godssake is the woman babbling about?

But the science of masked airplane travel has escaped me for a while. If every environment in which we spend time in close quarters with other humans was as well ventilated and filtered as an airplane I seriously doubt COVID would have spread as far and as deep as it has.

The larger point is that after two years, and after everything we’ve learned about the virus, after the vaccines and boosters and all that is readily knowable about transmission and individual vulnerability, we are truly at the point where it is up to each of us to protect ourselves. Pre-vaccine I wouldn’t have said so. But now I do.

Feel free to tell me how completely wrong I am, but two shots and two boosters later and with no underlying conditions (other than general mule-headedness and irritability) I’m not seeing myself as particularly vulnerable to serious infection from COVID as it exists today, even in its sub-variants. Likewise, based on my understanding, if I’m carrying any level of the virus, (which immunologically may actually help me avoid a more serious infection) my viral load isn’t potent enough to do much if any damage to another similarly vaccinated, otherwise healthy person.

Which gets us obviously to those who are either not vaccinated or afflicted with some other significant health problem.

At this point in the pandemic everybody has had enough time and has access to enough information to have made an adult decision about vaccinations. Not that “adult” means “good”, you undersatand.

For those still avoiding vaccination because of some utterly imbecilic hyper-partisan political reason (which usually covers both “religious” issues and athletes with “body purity” excuses) … well, good luck to you. If your fierce stand for “personal freedom” gets a tube jammed down your throat and an early grave, you can hope that Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or Kristi Noem or some other sociopathic right-wing grifter will show up and say a few appreciative words at your funeral.

For people with emphysema, diabetes, etc., they absolutely should continue protecting themselves with masks in public settings. More to the point, they should have been doing that before COVID. It unfortunately comes with their territory.

For the rest of us, we’ve followed science, as opposed to cable TV entertainment theory, and have every good reason now to move on. Exercising, mind you, similar basic cautions we use to avoid harm from… well, pick as many as you like … spinal meningitis, hepatitis, diptheria, measles, strolling blind across six lanes of freeway, jumping out of airplanes without a parachute, French kissing Matt Gaetz … (sorry about that last one) … and on and on … and on.

Point being, there’s something out there somewhere for everyone, given the right circumstances and bad luck.

Life is like that.