My COVID protocols and parameters

This document is a description of how I’m feeling about COVID and what precautions I take to avoid catching it.

This is a snapshot in time, last updated in November 2025. My feelings and approaches have changed somewhat over time, and will likely change again in the future. If you’re reading this more than (say) six months after that last-updated date, it may (or may not) be somewhat inaccurate.

This document isn’t intended as an argument, and I’m not interested in arguing about it. This is a description of where I’m coming from and what precautions I take. Some parts of it might be useful to others who are COVID-cautious, but my main reason for posting it is to describe where I’m coming from, not to advocate anything.

Also, this document isn’t intended as a request for advice. Please don’t give me advice about it.

Short version

I want to reduce the likelihood of my getting Long COVID, and so I take various precautions to avoid catching COVID. Some of my precautions are based on science; others are more based on anxiety. In general, my precautions involve:

  • Wearing an N95 mask in most contexts when I’m not at home.
  • Waiting for people to test negative before I’m willing to interact with them in-person without my wearing a mask.
  • Avoiding large and/or not-well-ventilated in-person gatherings.

Much longer version follows.

Core point

I don’t want to get COVID.

That’s primarily because I don’t want to get Long COVID. I’ve seen some of the effects that Long COVID can have, and I don’t want to go through that.

And any COVID infection can have long-term negative effects, even for people like me who are not immunocompromised.

(Some other diseases, such as flu, can also have sequelae; but as far as I can tell, some COVID sequelae are more common, much longer-lasting, and much more severe than most flu sequelae.)

So I take precautions to avoid getting infected.

My history

As far as I know, I haven’t yet had COVID. It’s certainly possible that I’ve had it without knowing it. But I’ve been much more cautious about avoiding exposure than most people, and I’ve been lucky and privileged enough to be able to do things like work from home. And I’ve been using high-quality (“NAAT”) home tests for a couple of years now, and I’ve gotten vaccine shots whenever eligible. So I think I can say, with significantly more confidence than most people, that I probably haven’t had it.

General principles

I feel like there are two main parts to where I’m coming from; one of them seems pretty science-based to me, and the other is less science-based and more about my anxiety. Both of them affect my approaches.

  • The science-based part: I try to reduce risk by a combination of (a) masking, (b) testing (myself and others), (c) keeping the number of people I’m with low, and (d) ventilation.

  • The more-about-anxiety part: Even though I’m not at high risk, I generally mask outdoors, at least when it’s reasonably likely that I’ll be encountering people who haven’t tested negative in the past few hours. My impression is that in most outdoor contexts, there’s enough airflow that the risk of infection is relatively low (though still high enough to be an issue for immunocompromised people and others at higher risk than me); but I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder and I’m often quite risk-averse. Staying masked means I don’t have to make a bunch of decisions over and over again (such as “has the density of people suddenly or gradually increased to the point where I feel like I should put on a mask?”).

    This is one of the things that my less-cautious friends most often find surprising—“wait, you even mask outdoors?” they ask. But it’s where I am right now, and I’m not particularly interested in trying to change this right now. Especially because for me, there’s little downside to wearing a mask.

Some advantages and disadvantages of masking, for me

There are a bunch of different kinds of masks, and different masks do different things. There’s a widespread idea that masks don’t protect the wearer, but that’s not true. It’s true that a loose-fitting surgical mask with big gaps at the sides may not do much other than reduce the likelihood of your coughs and sneezes hitting other people. But a well-fitting mask that does good filtering, such as an N95 mask that fits firmly around your mouth and nose with no gaps, protects both you and the people around you.

So when I say “masked” below, I’m referring to well-fitting N95 masks. (The ones that I use are Halyard N95 respirators, the ones that look like duck bills. I use those because they’re the most comfortable-to-me of the ones I’ve tried.)

In most contexts, wearing a mask has no downside for me. Wearing one doesn’t cause me any physical or mental distress. And it has positive effects; for example:

  • Reduces my anxiety.
  • Helps me avoid having to constantly evaluate my surroundings and make decisions.
  • Helps normalize mask-wearing, which can help other people who need or want to wear them.
  • Helps make COVID-cautious people around me more comfortable.
  • Expresses solidarity with and support for people who have to be COVID-cautious, such as immunocompromised people. (Some of whom have been pretty much shut out of public life by other people’s refusal to wear masks.)
  • Reduces the likelihood of my catching whatever air-carried bugs anyone around me might have (including colds, etc).
  • Reduces the likelihood of my transmitting any illnesses I might have to other people.

The only disadvantages I’ve encountered from my wearing a mask (none of which are a particularly big deal) are:

  • I think that I get out of breath a little more easily from exertion while wearing one than while not wearing one, but I haven’t done enough controlled testing to be sure of that.
  • My voice is slightly more muffled while wearing one.
  • A few friends seem to feel strongly that it’s important for them to see the lower half of my face while talking with me in person.
  • I have to shave across my beard in two places to allow for a tight mask seal. This is very mildly inconvenient, and I very mildly prefer how my beard looks without those two shaved gaps.
  • I can’t eat or drink while wearing the kinds of masks that I wear. (In some contexts, I briefly unmask for a bite or a sip at a time. More often, I wait to eat until I’m in a context where I’m comfortable unmasking. With the Air2 helmet, I can slip a small piece of food at a time up through the collar area to my mouth, or use a straw that goes through the collar area to sip a drink. I’ve heard interesting things about the SIP mask valve, but I haven’t tried it myself.)
  • Having a runny nose inside a mask is annoying. Then again, having a runny nose without a mask makes it more likely (than if I wear a mask) to transmit to others whatever it is that’s causing my runny nose.

Tools

Some items and approaches that help me maintain my protocols:

  • N95 masks.
  • MicroClimate Air2 full-head-covering respirator, which I wear on airplanes. (The Air2 is no longer available; the Air3 is its replacement.)

  • High-quality home tests, specifically NAATs. (I currently use Metrix tests.) These are essentially lab-quality tests (like PCRs) that you can do at home; they’re a lot more expensive than single home antigen tests, but they’re a lot less expensive than PCRs. (Metrix tests cost $25/test, plus a one-time expense of $50 for the test-reader box.) They take about half an hour to run.

    My current rule of thumb is that if someone tests negative on a NAAT, then I consider them unlikely to be infectious for the next several hours.

  • Portable CO2 monitor. (I currently use the Aranet4 HOME.) (But I don’t use this as often as I should; CO2 levels are a useful proxy for how good the ventilation is, but I generally forget about the monitor, and in some circumstances I tend to feel like it’s redundant with other measures.)
  • Open windows and doors.
  • Ceiling fans to increase air circulation.
  • The cooperation and sympathy of friends, even friends who aren’t being as COVID-cautious as I am.
  • Tracking wastewater levels. (Which I tend to forget to do.)
  • Tracking hospitalizations and deaths. (Which I feel like is getting less useful as the US shifts away from tracking various things, but it still seems like a vaguely useful metric to me.)
  • Patio furniture. (For sitting outside.)
  • Patio heater. (For sitting outside when it gets a little chilly.)

Some specific examples

Here are examples of some things that I’m currently OK with doing and some things that I’m currently not OK with doing. These are not comprehensive lists.

And I may sometimes not be entirely consistent over time, even with items on these lists; there’s a certain amount of variation based on gut feelings, and on the degree to which I’m willing to be flexible when I don’t think the other people in question will accommodate me, and other intangibles.

Some things I’m OK with doing

  • Hanging out with a small number of friends, outdoors, with me masked whether they are or not. (This can, for example, take the form of playing boardgames and chatting while sitting at a patio table, or going on a walk, or going sailing, or various other options.)
  • Grocery shopping. (Masked.)
  • Walking a dog. (Usually masked, because of the likelihood of my encountering humans who want to chat at close range.)
  • Bicycling. (Usually masked. Most of the time, I’m unlikely to be near enough to anyone for long enough for it to be an issue, but if I’m stopped at a light with a group of other people, we’re likely to be breathing each other’s air for the duration of the wait, which makes me tense; and it’s hard to put on a mask while wearing a bike helmet. So I generally do put on a mask before bicycling, and that hasn’t caused me any problems.)
  • Going through an airport and being on an airplane for under 6 hours or so. (I wear an N95 mask until I get through security, then switch to my Air2 helmet/respirator.) (On the plane, I also turn on my seat’s individual overhead air nozzle.)
  • Hanging out for a few hours unmasked, indoors or outdoors, with a small number of people who have just tested negative. (The unmasked-and-indoors version of this is relatively new for me; I’ve only started being comfortable with doing that since late 2023 (when I adopted the negative-test-suggests-unlikely-to-be-contagious-for-next-few-hours paradigm), and have only done it relatively few times.)
  • Going to a movie theatre (masked) if there are fewer than 7ish other audience members and if I can see where they’re seated ahead of time and can choose a seat far away from them.
  • Going to medical appointments. (Masked.)
  • Going to dental appointments, though I get a little stressed about having to unmask there. (My dental hygienist does wear a medical mask during most procedures, though, and my appointments are mostly scheduled on days when there are few if any other patients in the office.)
  • Once in a while, eating at an outdoor restaurant table, unmasked, when there are no other customers there.
  • Having houseguests. If they test negative every morning, I’m okay with being unmasked in the house with them. But in some cases, especially when higher risks are involved, my guest and I both mask even inside the house, unmasking only in our respective bedrooms (with the doors closed).
  • Staying in a hotel room or an Airbnb room.
  • Unmasking in a space where unmasked and untested people recently were, but only after extensive airing-out. (In a car: driving with all the windows open for a while. At home: opening the doors and windows, running the ceiling fans and air purifiers.)
  • Hugging people whose current COVID status is unknown to me, if I’m masked.

  • …Also, I’m fine with audio and video calls. I spend quite a bit of time on calls with friends; usually anywhere from about three to about ten hours a week, with half a dozen different people, most of whom live far away so I wouldn’t see them in person much anyway. (And I interact with many more people on social media.)

    I mention this because I’ve been told that I obviously must be super lonely and isolated because I’m COVID-cautious, and I keep having to explain that that’s not true. (Note: this isn’t meant to devalue the feelings of people who do feel lonely and isolated due to trying to maintain COVID protocols—trying to maintain COVID protocols can be super isolating. Different people have different needs around how much time they spend with other people in person.)

Some things I occasionally and reluctantly do

These are a couple of things that push my risk boundaries but that I sometimes do anyway for various reasons.

  • Being in a car (with me masked) with unmasked and untested people. This has happened, for example, when I need to get a ride in a Lyft, or sometimes when I’ve given other people rides. I generally open my window and often ask the other people in the car to open their windows, but sometimes have left all the windows closed if the weather outside is especially cold or wet.
  • Riding on a train (masked or (post-flight) wearing the Air2). I’ve only done that briefly—taking CalTrain one or two stops to get to the airport, or riding on mini trains at the airport from one terminal to another—but sometimes (especially on the inter-terminal trains) the train cars have been quite crowded, and I find that kinda stressful.
  • Attending live theatre performances that my niece is in (with me masked). I pick performances where there’s a large section of empty seating at the back, and I sit in that section, and I usually take my CO2 monitor and expect to leave if the reading gets too high. Even so, it’s not a comfortable environment for me. (Especially the time when it turned out that all the ushers came and sat in the previously empty section.) But it’s sometimes worth it to me to get to see her perform live.

Some things I’m not OK with doing

  • Eating a meal indoors near people who haven’t just tested negative. This means I almost never go to restaurants anymore. (The “outdoor” seating areas at restaurants are often still mostly-enclosed, and often still closely packed with people sharing air with each other. In rare cases, if there’s truly-outdoor seating and nobody else around, I’m OK with eating at a restaurant.)
  • Attending social gatherings (especially if I’m unmasked, or the gathering is crowded, or it’s in a less-ventilated space) with people whose testing status I don’t know.

  • Attending conventions that don’t have strong COVID protocols in place. (Note that guidance like “attendees are encouraged to wear masks” isn’t a strong COVID protocol; in my experience, most people interpret phrases like that as meaning “There’s no need for anyone to wear a mask.”) (For more about other kinds of conventions, see below.)

    This is a little sad; I used to go to Worldcon almost every year, and occasional other conventions. And I do often like conventions. But on the other hand, they also cost me a lot of social energy, and a lot of my sf-reading and -writing friends haven’t attended the cons I attend in a while, and I’m no longer as interested in a lot of the usual convention programming as I used to be. And the online parts of conventions can be pretty good. …WisCon is the one con that I’ve heard about that has consistently had COVID protocols that I like; for more about that, see below.

  • Standing in a circle of people who haven’t just tested negative, facing each other, and singing, unmasked. (Group singing is one of my favorite activities, but under current circumstances, I consider it one of the COVID-riskiest things that I enjoy doing. So I don’t do it. I’ve considered doing it with a small group of people who have just tested negative, but they would have to be people who I trust to take testing seriously.) (…I have heard about a mask that’s designed specifically for singing in; I’ve been meaning for ages to follow up with the friend who mentioned that and find out more about it.)
  • Getting professional haircuts. Sitting unmasked for 20 minutes in close proximity to someone I don’t know, in a room that probably doesn’t have terribly good ventilation, feels like too much risk to me. I grew my hair out long for a couple years; in the past year or two, I’ve either been cutting it myself or asking a friend to cut it. (After I posted this page, a couple of Facebook friends suggested masks that allow for haircuts: stick-on/strapless masks such as ReadiMask, or masks that have ear loops rather than around-the-head straps. I haven’t tried any of those yet.)
  • Traveling a lot. I used to travel a lot, but I never enjoyed travel as such; it was just a means to get to see friends in distant places. And these days, the additional risks and inconveniences and anxiety add to the negatives that I already used to experience, making it hard for me to be enthusiastic about travel. Then, too, a lot of my travel used to be to conventions and conferences and Swarthmore Alumni Weekend (most of which no longer feel safe to me), and for work (but I’m currently unemployed), and to cities where I have a bunch of friends (but the one time I did that recently, on a trip to Portland, it was pretty exhausting to have conversations about protocols with five different friends, even though they were all super accommodating and some of them were also COVID-cautious; so trying to manage that with, say, the dozen-plus people who I would want to see in a visit to Boston sounds overwhelming right now).

Some things I’m not currently sure about doing

  • Attending conventions that do have strong COVID protocols in place. In particular, if there ends up being an in-person WisCon in 2027 and if it keeps the COVID protocols the last in-person WisCon had, I may attend. (In 2026, WisCon will be online.) I like WisCon’s COVID protocols; but they have no control over what people do outside of convention spaces, so both non-WisCon hotel guests and WisCon attendees who are less careful than I am would make it hard for me to follow my protocols outside of convention spaces. But WisCon’s track record in 2022 and 2023 was quite good (in 2023, I think that most of the people who got COVID were sitting together, unmasked, in a particular smallish enclosed room that I’ve never been to), so I think I might be up for it next time, if there is a next time.
  • Flights longer than 6 or so hours—I feel like long flights are less safe than shorter flights, but (a) the information I’ve seen about that is pretty outdated by now, and (b) probably the Air2 helmet provides plenty of protection even on a longer flight. (Though its battery would run out eventually, after maybe 8-12 hours depending on fan speed.)
  • Kam is who I see most often in person. She and I are still working out how to handle things when we get together shortly after she’s been in an environment that feels too risky to me, which happens fairly often. In such circumstances lately, I’ve been more often asking her to test than I usually have in the past.

Might I catch COVID anyway?

It seems entirely plausible that at some point I may end up catching COVID. My actions are not 100% risk-free. If that happens, so be it. But until there are good treatments for Long COVID, I expect to continue to be very cautious, both before I catch COVID and after.

(I’ve read that each time you get a COVID infection, that increases the risk of Long COVID; if that’s true, then it’ll be worth continuing to be cautious even after I get infected the first time.)

But surely I won’t keep this up for the rest of my life???

If we reach a point where Long COVID is easily curable or preventable, then I’ll probably stop using most of the above precautions. (Though, as noted above, there are other good reasons for masking besides avoiding COVID—especially helping keep environments usable by immunocompromised people.) Various researchers are working on Long COVID, and I hope that they find answers and solutions.

But if that doesn’t happen, then yeah, I do expect to keep this up for the rest of my life. There are lots of things that I expect to keep doing for the rest of my life to avoid bad effects; this is one such thing.

An analogy

A useful (albeit imperfect) analogy that helps inform my thinking: comparing COVID to STDs, and masks to barriers. (Note: the below includes a bit of info about my sexual practices; if you don’t want to see that, then skip this section.)

Some examples of aspects of that analogy:

  • Everyone who’s sexually active with other people in person risks receiving and/or transmitting STDs. Everyone makes decisions about how comfortable they are with various risks.
  • Some people use barriers for various kinds of sex; other people don’t.
  • Some people say things like “You can’t live your life in fear of HIV, and you can’t use condoms for the rest of your life; you gotta take risks.” Other people (such as me) say things like “I can indeed use condoms for the rest of my life, and I expect to, and I don’t have a problem with that, and I would like to continue to be aware of what behaviors are more and less risky, so that I can make educated choices about what my protocols are.”

Again, this isn’t a perfect analogy; for example, STDs aren’t communicable through the air, and “everyone makes their own decisions” isn’t a good systemic public-health solution. But even so, I think it’s an illuminating comparison in a lot of ways.

This writeup was partly inspired by Sumana’s extensive 2023 writeup of her protocols and approaches.