It took me a while to always remember to grab my mask whenever I would leave my apartment in the early days of NYC’s lockdown in the spring of 2020. Now, two years later, it’s became second nature to wear a mask and I would feel strange without one on my face in any indoor public setting. Going for a walk or being outside is another story. I’m fine without one on. The possibility of being maskless indoors, however, is going to take some getting used to.

I overheard similar concerns yesterday as I waited in the checkout line at a local CVS on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. An older woman who was standing near her friend on the checkout line was saying, loudly enough so most everyone in the front of the CVS store on Broadway could hear, that she was not likely to be taking off her mask. “You don’t know if someone near you has a new Covid form,” she kept saying. I assume she meant a new variant.

That’s the problem. We won’t know, and can only trust in the vaccines we’ve had (even though half the reports say the immunity to them wanes over time) and our masks.