But excuse me if I, like many of the people I see around me, am not yet quite ready to expose my lower face. Early on in the pandemic, I made a vow with my family that we would set a high standard for COVID-19 avoidance. Not only were we not getting this virus ourselves, if we could help it, but we were taking no chances of inadvertently spreading it to anyone else, even if that did make for a long and lonely year without indoor gatherings and travel to see family and friends. I didn’t want to go to my grave thinking that I was a link in some chain of human interaction leading to someone else’s serious illness or death. I still don’t. The vaccines are remarkably effective, but not 100 percent. Breakthrough infections among vaccinated people have occurred (witness the cluster of cases among the New York Yankees), and the science about whether and how the virus can be transmitted by the vaccinated to the unvaccinated is not yet certain. Putting aside the hard science for a moment, wearing a mask in public spaces—especially indoors, where transmission is more likely—serves a broader social purpose: It says to those around us that, whatever our vaccine status, we value community safety. When I walk outside my door into a densely populated neighborhood, I know as little about the life circumstances of the people I encounter as they do about mine. Are they, like me, fully vaccinated? Or are they in between shots, still looking for an appointment, or never planning to get a vaccine at all? Might they be in chemotherapy, or otherwise immunocompromised in some way that would prevent them from either getting a vaccine or experiencing its full benefits? Do they have children at home who can’t be vaccinated yet (as I did until last week, when the Pfizer shot was okayed for my child’s 12-to-15-year-old age group)? Did they lose one or more loved ones to COVID-19, or have a brutal and possibly ongoing bout with the disease themselves? Do they work in retail, health care, early-childhood education, or some other field that requires them to be exposed to the public in a way we lucky work-from-home types aren’t?