Fiona Nielsen

Six Years and Six Winters Without Getting Sick I haven’t been sick since 2018. No flu. No colds. No COVID. Nothing. Same for my wife. Same for my son. Six winters. Six holiday seasons. While people around us got hammered by one infection after another, we stayed healthy. There’s no fucking secret. We wore masks, everywhere. Not those useless blue surgical masks that leave gaps the size of freight trains around your cheeks. Not the limp cloth things that might as well be made of tissue paper. Real respirators. N95s and KN95s that actually seal to your face and filter the goddamn air you breathe. Here’s what they don’t tell most: There’s a significant difference between a mask and a respirator. A surgical mask is just fancy fabric that catches, well, spit. An N95 has an electrostatic charge that grabs particles and holds them. Think about rubbing a balloon on your head and watching your hair stick to it. That’s the science working to keep viruses out of your lungs when you breath, instead of letting them waltz right in. I know a nurse. Seventy-three years old. She worked in a busy family practice through the worst of the pandemic. Small exam rooms. Sick patients all day long. She wore an N95 every single shift until she retired last year. Guess what? She never caught COVID. People want this to be complicated. They want it to be about genetics or expensive supplements or some elaborate wellness routine they can sell you. Most of the time, it’s not complicated at all. If a virus spreads through the air, the air you breathe is where the battle happens. A properly fitted respirator changes everything. Can’t take vaccines? Mask up. Immune system issues, well now you have an option, for many viruses. Once I found masks that actually fit my face (Dräger X-plore 1950 for me ), the discomfort I’d imagined just wasn’t there. I can talk, walk, shop, and travel without constantly fiddling with straps. Half the time I forget I’m wearing one until I catch my reflection somewhere. But here’s the real reason I keep doing it. Millions of people are living with Long COVID right now. They’re carrying damage to their hearts, blood vessels, brains, and immune systems. For them, another infection isn’t just a shitty week in bed. It’s another step toward disability. More pain. Another organ system pushed past its breaking point. They can’t afford to get hit again. When I put on a mask, I’m not just protecting my family. I’m breaking transmission chains that could lead straight to someone whose body is already hanging by a thread. The cashier at the grocery store. My neighbor. The person standing behind me in line whose immune system can’t take another round. We’ve normalized getting sick. People shrug and say everyone’s down with something this month. Everyone caught the latest bug going around. That’s one way to live, I guess. Another way is to admit we have tools that work. Simple tools. Effective tools. Tools that can cut your risk of infection dramatically. My family chose the second way. It’s not heroic. It’s not perfect. It’s just looking at what repeated infections do to people and deciding that wearing a piece of filtered material over my face in crowded spaces is worth it. You want to know how we’ve gone six winters without getting sick? That’s the answer. We wore real masks for ourselves and for all the people who can’t survive another hit. The science works. The question is whether you’re going to use it.