Here is my complaint

Everyone complains. Which is exactly what I'm doing. It is sad that people still, after well over a year of information, don't seem to understand some basics of COVID, masks and vaccines. I'm not a doctor, just someone with common sense, and the time to research a bit and read. I don't know everything either. But ...

1. Covid is a virus that wants your body's moisture and nutrients to breed in. It wants inside you and your cells. It wants to replicate and multiply, then kill your body's cells and it will evolve and mutate to become better at it if given the opportunity. To think of it better, imagine a bunch of tapeworms wanting to breed inside you. Who would want that ? Each tapeworm creating maybe hundreds or thousands more. Who would invite a load of virus inside their body to demonstrate how 'tough' they are, any more than would you ever invite tapeworms in?
2. The greater the number of incubators, ie people infected, the greater the number of viruses created and the greater the chances are someone will create a mutation, a variant. Maybe a really bad mutation. Who wants to be 'Person Zero' for a killer escaping from your body ? You create that killer, it will replicate -- and then you cough, or speak.
3. The vaccines enhance your immune system's ability to fight off this COVID virus and stop it replicating inside you - if it gets inside you, which is usually through the respiratory system.
4. To get inside your body where it can reproduce, it gets in via nose, mouth, eyes -- dominantly and easiest, it is breathed in through your nose and mouth. If you are wearing a mask correctly, and you intersect a load of a breeder's exhaled water particles that have COVID viruses attached , chances are good those water particles and the attached Covid viruses will get attracted to and tangled in the fibres of your mask. They don't get to go inside you. If a few particles do, then your vaccine enhanced immune system is better able to defend itself.
5. Similarly, if you are unknowingly infected and wear a mask, that mass of water particles with viruses you exhale, get tangled in your mask's fibres and can't reach out to anyone. The less that escape, the better it is to not be enough to infect someone. Or their mask captures those few. Or they breathe them in.
6. Statistics are a warning sign of what may happen in the future. High cases of COVID, in the past, foreshadowed high hospitalization rates in the coming days and weeks. High hospitalization rates similarly indicated a good chance more people were going to die. One begets the next. That's why the interest in caseload, not hospitalization ... hospitals have a limited capacity. They are needed for more than Covid cases. Why would one wait until hospitals are being overwhelmed to say 'wear a mask, please' ? Be proactive.
7. You've had your shots and have built up your anti-COVID immune system ... but not everyone has. How to tell the difference and how to enforce. You can't, so that is why everyone had to mask up. The vaccinated are protecting the ones not 'fully vaccinated' whether they appreciate it or not. It's a thankless job.

It is rather simple. Don't be a breeder for COVID, any more than you'd want to be a breeder for tapeworms inside you. Get vaccinated to build up your COVID immune system against this virus. And wear a mask inside, in public where there's a lot people -- 'cause your immune system might not handle everything thrown at it without some help ... and personally, outside in this heavy smoke, a mask works wonders. Smoke and ash particles are filtered out too. Give your lungs a break. It's multitasking that mask for indoors and out.

Neil Stephenson, Kelowna