Even then I had sent some n95s from a large box I had to my parents and they said don't worry we wear gloves when we go out 🤦 I remember in the very early days a woman at the pharmacy chin strapping a mask that she was supposed to be wearing because of a high risk elderly person she was taking care of. I was flabbergasted that she was just wearing it on her chin like that. Then of course it became less surprising over time as people just don't understand how an airborne respiratory virus works.
It's not that they don't understand on an intellectual level, it's that monkey brains are terrible at dealing with invisible, statistical threats. It takes a strange monkey indeed to listen to their prefrontal cortex all of the time.
Yeah, the virus is in the fucking air, dude. That's why I always thought that "6 feet away" shit was stupid. When I'm in an office, and the guy two cubicles over has a cold, I still catch it. (And that's more than 6 feet.) It just didn't seem plausible that those particles would fall out of the air at 6 feet.
Every time I see this picture it reminds me so much of my dad. Dude looks a lot like him.
... That's also exactly the type of thing I would have made him do, had we been leaving the house at the time. Instead we locked in, had chickens, and survived off canned food reserves and eggs for nearly 3 months until more news had surfaced and there was a reasonable plan on how to stay safe.