Masks and old people

[Ritascornershop]

Recently I went to tea with a friend and her 95 year old
mum. 20 minutes in another friend joined us. Up to that point no one was wearing a mask. The late arrival friend wore one and said that she was wearing it as she’d been in shops and at work and maybe had been exposed without knowing it.

95 year old waved her statement away and said “whatever”. When the masked friend got up to leave my friend’s mum said “let me see your face. I want to see your smile while I still can.” She was clearly a bit irritated.

Masked friend was surprise and briefly pulled her mask down.

I’m wondering: what’s the etiquette here? If an old person is still very sharp should we not ask their preference? Or proceed as normal before masking until and unless they say they’d like us to cover up?

I thought it was presumptuous and (given that the masked friend has also recently masked when she and another friend came round mine last month), possibly something she wants for herself as she’s doing it when not around the elderly.

@DoraSpenlow I think you friends are wrong and you shouldn’t feel guilty.
THEY were the ones who told you take the masks off. They can’t then be resentful if they caught covid.

If you really don’t want to be ill (eg to go away on hols), you take steps to protect yourself. You can’t expect not to be ill, take no measures at all and then blame everyone else if it happens!

I've thoroughly enjoyed not being ill these last two years, and I'm including common cold and flu here. It's been wonderful. That isn't down to everyone else wearing masks amd being vaccinated because I live in an area that did not wish to follow the recommendations and our vaccine rates are relatively low and mask wearing in shops and busses has been pretty low. I did not realising staying well was as easy as wearing a mask and washing my hands and probably not eating handfood out in public (sandwhiches on buses after work, etc.), I will continue wearing masks until I decide it's not worth it. I hope foks let me be.

@DoraSpenlow they could have caught it anywhere though. They won’t know if the man who leaned close over the fresh veg and cleared his throat gave it to them, or a child laughing at a bus stop.

And @dudsville if you want to keep wearing one, crack on. I loathe being sick, but I also think that if we went for years catching not even the sniffles perhaps eventually we’d be hit harder by whatever virus we did catch. For myself it’s not worth hiding my face for a long period of time over.

I went to lunch yesterday at a restaurant known for its very tightly packed tables. My friend and I had no masks the entire time. Then we wandered around a half-empty mall and she masked up. We didn’t get closer than 15 feet from anyone and usually it was a lot further. For some people it’s become a bit of a habit, rather than individual risk assessment.

@EileenGC

Oh that's different. Cloth masks are completely useless, so I'm with you on this one. Masked friend was not going to avoid passing anything on to Mrs W by wearing a cloth mask, that's just basic science knowledge.

Completely agree with is. I'm in Scotland, the only part of uk still to have compulsory face coverings (until tomorrow)
It's the cloth ones most people wear and Scot gov has put great emphasis on the need to wear them and kept it in law.
And for whole of March we had highest covid cases in uk.
She yeah they're so effective.......

So anybody taking in Ukrainian refugees should insist they wear masks and live in the garden then.

For me, your friend's Mum was wrong. It's up to your other friend to decide whether or not she wants to wear a mask, no-one else's business

@Kurtanforpm

My dad is in his late 80s and can’t abide people wearing masks around him.

He’s in a care home and the staff have to. It drives him insane. We have to wear them in communal areas, but don’t in his room.

He always asks why the hell people are trying to protect him against death and asks them how much longer they would like him to live anyway. He said he’d prefer to die of covid before his dementia gets so bad he doesn’t know who we are.

Honestly, when I take him out, I have to stop him from licking handrails. He saw covid as his way out from the torture of dementia. Never seen anybody as incandescent with rage when he tested positive in hospital and he didn’t have a single symptom.

You and your dad should write a sit-com, I mean that in all sincerity.

He's not wrong, either, when you are at the point that something is going to get you sooner or later, the things that take longer (dementia, heart failure, cancer) aren't necessarily the ones you want to wait for.

@MangyInseam yes and people forget that old age isn’t nice anyway.

I hope that he gets an illness that kills him quickly because seeing him slowly die with his mind going first is horrific, mainly for him.

This pursuit of life at all costs and trying to keep people just existing isn’t worth it. Having worked in care myself, it’s certainly not something I would want for myself in the future.

85+ are referred as Super-Seniors NOT old people.

Also not in uk. Also having to still wear FfP2 everywhere. I don’t see the problem. I still haven’t had covid as far as I know, and I hardly know anyone here who’s had it either.

Il be in the uk next week, and will be wearing FfP2 mask whenever possible, I don’t fancy picking covid up just ‘because’ I don’t have to legally wear mask. So especially on all public transport and in shops

It depends WHY she was wearing a mask. If it was to protect herself she should really wear an ffp2 and nobody - regardless of age - has the right to ask her to remove it. Her choice. On the other hand if she was trying to protect the older lady she could LFT before meeting - there would be no need to even mention she'd done it. Everybody happy. Not much point wearing a cloth mask when potentially infectious then removing it to engage with vulnerable person.

@FindingMeno

If your friend feels more comfortable for wearing the mask, then the elder should have respected this. The young spent a long time wearing masks and putting their lives on stop to protect the elders and I think this should be respected.

Or..... the elders and CEV spent a long time locked up in their homes FOR tbe young to have NHS access!!!

At 95 it's likely you'll have some (OK, a lot of) hearing loss. Masks make it much more difficult to understand others as they muffle speech and make lipreading impossible. I could imagine mask wearing would make meeting up very frustrating for some - could that have been an issue? DH has hearing loss (though he's not 95!) and finds masked social situations almost impossible.

At the stage we're now at, I think people need to make their own decisions and not judge or criticise others. I think it was rude of your friend's mum to ask masked friend to remove her mask.

@AntarcticTern

At the stage we're now at, I think people need to make their own decisions and not judge or criticise others. I think it was rude of your friend's mum to ask masked friend to remove her mask.

If you say you are masking to protect someone else though I think you need to be prepared that said person might prefer you didn't, and say so.

If she was masking for herself then she should have said that.

I disagree - I don't think it matters why she was wearing a mask, and she shouldn't have to explain / justify her choice.

@AntarcticTern

I disagree - I don't think it matters why she was wearing a mask, and she shouldn't have to explain / justify her choice.

She chose to.explain herself, if people believed her explanation that's the normal consequence of saying something.

Ok, maybe masked friend told a little white lie and the mask was actually her own preference and nothing to do with visiting the 95 year old. Or maybe it was a combination of both factors. I still think it was rude and unnecessary to tell her to remove it.