Social Lens No. 27: Faces After the Pandemic

This is the continuation of the Social Lens series.

Why 'Social Lens'?

It is called Social, because I am interested in everything related to humanity, how people live and act, what we do consciously and unconsciously, how we effect the world around us and treat one another.

Lens in this context refers to -- wait for it -- the lens of the camera I will be using to take the pictures of what I am seeing (that at least is pretty obvious...), but it also refers to my viewpoint - everything I watch and see is observed through my eyes. There isn't really a way around that of course, and as long as one is aware of that it shouldn't be much of a problem. After all, life is experienced individually and every point of view can add to the greater whole.

In the previous post I looked at people on the streets just shortly after the main corona restrictions were lifted here .

Mas wearing has definitely left its mark on people's faces - almost permanently as seen here:

I finished with this note:

It is interesting how many people are still wearing masks outside now almost 2 weeks after the mandates have been lifted here. How will this behavior evolve in the coming weeks and months?

Unfortunately I have been really busy so I couldn't do a follow up right away. But I have kept a mental record of how things evolved here. In April when mask mandates were lifted for most places I noticed that a majority of people kept wearing them. This really surprised me - I still remember how I went on one of the first days to a supermarket and 99% of the people were still wearing masks. This behavior didn't change much over the following weeks and even months. Even after 2 months about 80% were still wearing masks. Although I did notice that the behavior was dependent on the places as well. For example, in cheaper retail stores less people wore masks, but in more affluent places there was a much higher percentage of mask wearers.

Now almost 4 months after the lifting of the mask mandates the numbers have come down a lot. In supermarkets there are about 40-60% of mask wearers and perhaps 10-20% of people still wear them outside. In other words, 2 years of rules and restrictions as well as sanctions have left their mark, not only on people's body directly, but also in their behaviors. Of course this is limited for the place/country I am living. I have heard that this behavior is quite different for e.g., Denmark where mask restrictions were discontinued earlier and the state ended the pandemic earlier.